Best Practices in Leading Organizational Change in the Local Church: A Multi-Case Study

Abstract

The current study was designed to identify embedded best practices for leading organizational change in the local church ministering in an urban context. The study also sought to determine whether it was possible for the leadership in the local church to lead their congregations through successful organizational change and meaningful culture engagement without forsaking biblical and theological orthodoxy.

The study validates the majority of best practices identified through the literature review and it also encountered distinctive best practices common to all three participating sites that are unique to the ministry contexts of the local church. These five distinctive best practices are: allowing doctrine and theology to inform practice, discipleship, preaching, adaptation and flexibility, and internal cultural change through transformational leadership.

Chapter 1 introduces the research problem and the purpose of the research study. Chapter 2 reviews extensively the precedent literature on the subject of organizational change. This chapter emphasizes the church’s role as an organizational system and provides essential information on the area of leadership. It also focuses on John Kotter’s 8-Stage Process for leading organizational change and The Transformational Journey Method proposed by Jim Harrington, Mike Bonem, and James H. Furr. Chapter 3 provides a detailed explanation of the research methodology of the entire research study while describing the roles of the case study and content analysis approaches. Chapter 4 provides a profound and detailed analysis of the findings, and chapter 5 offers some concluding thoughts regarding the study’s contribution to the literature base as well as considerations for future research.