Let's Get it Started: The Gospel as Change Management

For the sake of discussion, let's make a few more assumptions. With this post, we're basically done with the "fundamental assumptions" part and ready to dive into the meat.

There are a lot of books out there on organizational change. You can get doctoral degrees in the subject, actually. It's a relatively recent topic of study, but it's growing quickly and is immensely interesting to lots of smart people. That's not an assumption, that's just a lead-in.

God is omniscient. By that, we mean that God knows all propositional truth. There's some debate over "experiential knowledge," but that's not immediately relevant. For the sake of this discussion, let's go with omniscience meaning "God knows every fact that exists." He knows every fact about science, about technology, about history, and about human behavior. Including behavior such as how we react to change.

My dad has a lot of leadership maxims. One of his favorite is "One step ahead is a leader. Two steps ahead is the enemy." The idea is that if you want to lead people, you have to stay close to where they're at. Too far ahead and you stop being somebody they follow and start being somebody they shoot at. It's true in wilderness hiking trips and it's true in transitioning multi-million-dollar companies.

So here's something to ponder.

What if God is using principles of organizational change management in order to transition humanity from a rebellious state into one that is more receptive to him?

I'm not saying that God waited until some 20th-century business consultants figured this out and then He used their ideas. Quite the reverse... that the stuff we call "organizational change management" is just an a rediscovery of the what God's been doing with us for the past few thousand years.

Many people are bothered by the fact that, at least superficially, God looks different in the Old Testament than in the new... and yet God himself declares that He doesn't change. So what if it's not God that changes? What if humanity has been changing a little bit at a time over the millenia, and God always reveals himself in a way that's one step ahead of where we're at?

What if God is carefully walking with his creation in order to always stay just one step ahead? Close enough to reach out to, but never stationary? Always within reach, but never within our grasp?

What if this process is still going on?

This is a significant part of what Judi and I call "The Tweak." Among other (related) things, we'll be exploring this idea in the Old and New Testaments.