Impact vs. Equilibrium

“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also…” (Acts 17:6)

Equilibrium (def.): A condition…resulting in a stable, balanced, unchanging system.

It’s common for church leaders to work very hard to maintain constant equilibrium in their congregations. They try not to upset anyone, especially anyone with a voice that might negatively affect the status quo. In this situation, they do all they can to make as many people as happy as they can. And sometimes to make one group (or person) with more power happy, they need to do something that makes the group (or person) with less power unhappy— then next time they might switch sides to keep the equilibrium.

This can create a growing congregational tension that will eventually snap and cause massive destruction, or it might simply produce long-term complacency and addiction to the status quo. Alternatively it could generate what John P. Kotter in his book A Sense of Urgency (HBS Press, 2008) calls a “false sense of urgency” that keeps everyone in the body busy with unproductive and anxious activity.

Impact (def): The striking of one body against another; the force or impetus transmitted by a collision; the effect or impression of one thing on another.

I also know church leaders who feel they are called to make an impact by encouraging the people in their congregations to be open to transformation. An impacting church is a stretching place: Not always comfortable, but lovingly challenging the status quo in lives and programs for the purpose of positive and radical Kingdom change.

Oddly, many of those who really want to create an atmosphere for making an impact are also working hard at maintaining a culture of constant equilibrium. I say oddly because these are two opposite concepts: Impact always disturbs equilibrium in some way. We can’t have a stable, balanced and unchanging church at the same time that collisions and impressions are happening to it. A collision will upset any balance going on. When Valium I am truly impacted, it always changes me and messes up something about my status quo.

I’m not suggesting that we should constantly seek to upset equilibrium with impact. In fact, I think it is vital to wisely discern the right time and place to encourage stability and balance. Often, when one part of the church (or our life) is experiencing impact, another part desperately needs stability. Too much impact all at once can make us (or our church) feel like a car-crash!

One of the best things I have read on this subject came from a book by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky called Leadership on the Line (HBS Press, 2002). These authors say that leaders are like thermostats, sometimes turning up the heat and sometimes turning it down. As a younger leader, I constantly leaned towards heating situations up to influence change. In the last decade, I’ve learned the great value of strategic stability as I engage in turning the world upside down for Christ! More importantly, I’ve accepted that God is the One who makes an impact through me and that I must be discerning to match the leadership temperature I’m setting to the temperature the Holy Spirit has determined to select.

Here’s a leadership nugget from that book:  “To stimulate deep change within an organization, you have to control the temperature. There are really two tasks here. The first is to raise the heat enough that people sit up, pay attention, and deal with the real threats and challenges facing them. Without some distress, there is no incentive for them to change anything. The second is to lower the temperature when necessary to reduce a counterproductive level of tension. Any community can take only so much pressure before it becomes either immobilized or spins out of control. The heat must stay within a tolerable range—not so high that people demand it be turned off completely, and not so low that they are lulled into inaction.” (page 108)