Here is the outline for my talk called Gaining Ground While Standing Strong: Five Strategies for Leading Change Amidst Opposition that I delivered at Orange Conference 2013 in Atlanta.

Change is one of my favourite subjects. In fact, this talk is a very short summary of a few of the key ideas in my latest book, Leading Change Without Losing It (you can get more info or buy a copy here.)

Why Do People Change?

People change when the pain associated with the status quo is greater than the pain associated with change.

Strategy One: Do the Math

People typically divide into four groups:

Early Adopters

Early Majority

Silent Majority

Opponents

Most leaders make two mistakes:

They assume loud=large

They assume volume=velocity

Although the opponents are loud and claim to represent ‘everyone’, they don’t. They represent about 10% of the population.

Although they claim to be going somewhere, opponents typically have a vision for the past, not for the future.

Focusing on the early adopters and early majority will help you navigate change.

Strategy Two: Choose Your Focus

You can focus on who you want to reach, or who you wan to keep.

Shifting your focus engages your fear.

is it more frightening to lose a handful of people or never accomplish your mission?

Would you rather lose the opponents, or the early adopters.?

Strategy Three: Find a Filter

Without a filter, everything sounds compelling.

As a leader you need to develop the questions that will shape your future.

The two question I ask are:

Is there a biblical argument in what the opponent is saying?

Is this the kind of person we can build the future of the church on?

If the answer is no to either question, listen graciously and move on.

Strategy Four: Attack Problems, Not People

Separate the people from the problem.

Turn to God. Because if you don’t turn to God you’ll turn on them.

Empathize with your opponents.

Wait a day before responding to any kind of correspondence that upsets you.

Strategy Five: Don’t Quit

Most leaders who change the world don’t move every five years.

Find good friends you can talk to.

Create an encouragement file (save anything positive that comes your way).

Develop a devotional life that has little to do with work.

Those are my notes. What are your questions about change?

I talk to so many people outside the church who say they get along better than people in the church. If church people behaved like they tell other people to behave, they might come.

I’ve met so many Christian couples who just couldn’t work it out. Famously, the Christian divorce rate is almost identical to couples that wouldn’t call themselves Christian.

And as Christians, most of us realize fighting is destructive and likely unChristian, but we don’t know what to do about it.

The truth is that all of us fight.

Couples fight.

Church leaders fight.

Boards fight.

Denominations fight.

Siblings fight.

Friends fight.

Staff fight.

Parents fight their kids.

Kids fight their parents.

Sometimes I fight with myself.

Okay, you get the picture. People fight.

And the stakes are high. Families, churches and friendships break up as a result. And unchurched people stay away.

But since this week we’re talking about lessons I’ve learned from Orange, I want to share one with you that changed me forever.

Shortly after Reggie Joiner and I met, we started working on some ideas that would eventually find its way into our book, Parenting Beyond Your Capacity. During that process, I learned about a very different kind of fighting.

I learned how to fight for the heart. Let me explain.

You can fight with someone. Or you can fight for them.

These two small words– for and with–represent a world of difference in how you fight.

Most of us have only ever had someone fight with us. If someone fights with you:

It’s a zero sum game.

They need to win and you need to lose and you need to win in order for them to lose.

The people who fight care more about themselves than anyone.

Both walk away feeling diminished–usually even the ‘victor’ does over time.

Contrast that with fighting for someone. When you fight for someone:

You’re fighting for them so you want to see them better off.

The fight is happening because you want to see them win, not because you want to win.

You care more about their interests than you do about yours.

Both walk away replenished– with the relationship stronger in the short and long term.

Even if the other person doesn’t respond well, you have done everything in your power to help them, not hurt them.

Fighting for someone means you want their best interests to prevail, not yours.

It means that when there’s conflict, the conflict is about moving through an issue so the person you’re fighting with is better off, not that so that you are right or feel vindicated.

And finally it means that everyone leaves better than before the fight rather than depleted. Relationships are stronger and the issues got dealt with in a way that actually helped advance the mission.

You know who taught us this?

Jesus.

No one modeled fighting for someone (rather than with someone) better than Jesus. As his enemies nailed him to the cross, he said “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

What they didn’t realize of course, is that this Jesus they were killing was dying for them. He was fighting for them while they were fighting with him, and it changed the world.

So what do you think would happen if parents, church leaders and families started fighting for each other rather than with each other.

Question….when was the last time you fought for someone rather than with them?

How could that change your family? Your church? Your life? The world?

I love conferences. But like any good thing, if you’re not careful, you can still fall into some traps.

This is a piece I originally ran for last year’s Orange Conference, but human nature hasn’t changed that much in the last 12 months (at least mine hasn’t), so I want to repost it again as over 5000 of us descend on Atlanta to learn together and (we pray) serve God better as a result.

Here are five conference traps I see, most of which I have had some personal experience with:

1. Accepting inspiration as a subsitute for execution. Sometimes you really do need a new idea or insight. And inspiration is amazing! Conferences provide that. But what you absolutely must do is execute. So many great ideas fail for lack of execution. A great conference is not about how inspired you feel, what you did with what you learned (and experienced).

2. Assuming the speakers have it all together. As Steven Furtick has somewhat famously said, all of us compare our B roll with everyone else’s highlight reel. What you are getting from conference speakers is their very best material. They go home to problems just like you do – just different problems. When we forget that – even for a moment – we start to feel badly about our own ministries and begin to imagine how awesome it would be if we worked for another church. Guess what? Once in a while even the best speaker feels the same way. They see all the cracks in their organization too – just like you do. Ironically, good leaders always see the problems. You just see yours more clearly.

3. Poking holes in other people’s success stories. This is the flip side of trap #2. You can believe that some leaders live in a land of bliss, or you can become the cynic who discounts every other success story and comes up with a thousand reasons why they have met with more success than you have. Quite frankly, that’s just envy. And insecurity. And not from God. Just don’t go there. That kind of conversation doesn’t help anybody, not even you.

4. Skipping out. Somewhere on day two, we all get overwhelmed. It’s easy to skip out on sessions and you are on full overload and go for a coffee instead. I suppose if you paid for the conference fully out of your own pocket, you are free to do that. But if you didn’t, you kind of have a responsibility, don’t you? And althought it might be two or three days of intense learning, if you take good notes, you can really benefit from what you learned over a few days for years down the road.

5. Not thinking systems. Sure, we all get dozens of ideas at a conference. But they tend to come from a variety of sources and contexts. Most leaders operate within a consistent ‘model’ or ‘system’. When you hear multiple speakers, you are actually hearing mutiple models and multiple systems. While they are all ‘successful’, they are not all compatible. It’s work, but it’s a great idea to think through the assumptions and systems underneath each idea and then figure out how they integrate together and how they might integrate in your system. Otherwise it’s a bit like taking your MacBook in for repair and fixing it with parts from an iPad, an Android smart phone and a gaming system. They all work within their context, but put them together randomly in your computer and nothing might work.

These are some traps I’ve seen (and sometimes fallen into). What traps have you discovered?