Adapt, adapt again!

No matter how you cut it, this last year has forced every church to adapt. As a pastor, most decisions that come across my desk have blown my mind 🤯. Today is a perfect example…

My phone rings. A seminary student is on the other end. He’s looking for a pastoral internship. 

Now, I’ve had multiple interns work with and for me. Pre-pandemic, I would have been able to respond to this request without a second thought. But this time, it’s not so easy. I’ve had to stop and think through everything from how to integrate a new staff member into a community that primarily exists online to how to assess and give direction to his ministry from a distance. 

This is NOT necessarily an adaptive challenge, but tools from an Adaptive Leadership Framework will help solve it. 

Adaptive challenges refer to situations where there are no known solutions to the problem. I may have never had an intern in the midst of a pandemic, but I have had interns. I’ve also been leading in the pandemic for more than one year. I can borrow from those experiences to move forward, but those experiences will need to be adapted for new particularities. 

Here are a few adaptive tools that will help us keep our heads together.

1. Bring invested parties into conversations early.  Invest in conversations with other key players like staff, leaders and key members to imagine possibilities together.
2. Adjust expectations.  Flexibility is essential, but so is naming essentials. What are the core elements that must be present no matter what?
3. Be gracious. If it seems as if everything takes longer these days, that because it does! So build in extra time for the extra work that needs to be done, and if that’s not possible…
4. It’s OK to say ‘no’. Consider your own essentials. This year’s reality is different from others. Saying ‘no’ may be the best for everyone.

Taking time to stop and think, investing in conversations, reimagining possibilities, and knowing essentials are not only good for your organization, they are good for you. No matter what may come across our desks this year, let’s not lose our minds.