“Life is change.  Change is growth.  Growth is painful.”

This was a favorite saying of my Mom’s, and her words have been ringing in my ears recently as we in The Reid Group work with religious communities seeking to plan for their futures, and with Catholic dioceses committed to the successful merging of parish and school communities.

Life is change.  As much as the status quo is familiar, it is not often a place where individuals or groups can stay for a long time.  The external environment is constantly changing while the internal dynamics of relationships and challenges also make change inevitable.  The key is to make that change constructive.

Change is growth.  There is no magic formula that automatically transforms change into growth.  We call the process of change, transition, and the magic of changing well for individuals, religious communities, parishes or schools involves lots of work and is accomplished through five crucial steps:

Remember and celebrate the past. 
For any new reality to take hold, there must first be a conscious, intentional honoring of the past—the milestones, traditions and important relationships that have shaped the individual, community or parish.  Storytelling and rituals of all kinds can be helpful in this stage.

Honor the present.
Any change takes place at a particular moment in time.  In order to maximize the present moment, leaders in religious communities, parishes, schools and dioceses must have the courage to identify the strengths in the organization as well as the key struggles it faces.  The path to growth and new life is found through the maximizing of strengths and honest confrontation of struggles.  This new path builds a bridge to a meaningful and exciting future.

Acknowledge hurts and losses.
The most meaningful transition processes are those in which leaders attend to past and present  hurts, help people grieve their losses, and facilitate moments of healing and new life.  These healing times are growth opportunities.  Just as in faith we say that death can lead to new life, so too can hurts lead to new growth.

Respect and learn from what is remaining or deepening.
The scariest time for merging communities is when they think that everything is changing and little or nothing is staying the same.  In fact, this is rarely the case.  For a religious community, most of its members will remain the same even though its ministries, living quarters or worship space may change.  For parishes and schools, a familiar building may change or a favorite pew or classroom might be lost but one’s faith in God and the commitment to live out that faith remains the same or can even deepen through the change process.

Live out new hopes and dreams.
As Scripture says, without vision the people perish.  In this stage, it is imperative for leaders and members to identify key hopes and dreams and combine them with plans for action to move from an uncertain present to a more life-giving future.

Growth is painful.  While my Mom states one reality that most growth experiences involve pain, there is also truth that they can also include some joy, especially when work is accomplished in all five steps mentioned above.  While I have listed these five steps in a particular order, in reality they may be experienced by different communities in very different sequences.  The order is not crucial, each step is.  All the steps matter, and organizations need to pay attention to them all to ensure a positive experience of change and transition.

John Reid, Senior Consultant
The Reid Group