Tod Bolsinger: Leading through a Little Ice Age

In the April 2022 Crucible Newsletter. Told Bolsinger shares insights on leading through the “little ice age” we are from the massive disruption of Covid-19. Two bits of advice: first, don’t predict, prototype; and second, keep clear on what will NEVER change. Read the full newsletter here.

Leading through a Little Ice Age
Tod Bolsinger
Executive Director, Church Leadership Institute

Early in the pandemic, Andy Crouch, Partner of Theology & Culture at PRAXIS and a Fuller Trustee, wrote an article with his colleagues on the kind of perspective needed by leaders to both survive the massive disruption of Covid-19 and thrive afterward. Andy wrote specifically of the need for leaders to assume that we were not going through a “blizzard” that would last a few days or weeks, or even a long “winter” of one extremely harsh season, but instead a kind of “little ice age” where the length and severity of the pandemic would lead to a completely different environment.

As a virus that first disrupted the world in 2019 now stretches into the second quarter of 2022, it is clear that Andy and Co. were right. Even as some signs of a return to the “normal” things of the past hearten us, we know that we are in a completely different environment than we were in 2019.

And it’s not just the losses and deaths, the grief of families, the length of time, the severity, and the recurrent variants from COVD, but the way that the pandemic has brought new ways of working, communicating, interacting, and even day-day living into our lives. Home sales and rentals skyrocketed in rural communities and smaller cities because remote work has allowed more people to choose where they would live. Churches have all figured out that some form of high-touch, high tech combination of services are going to be the norm as a number of churches face decline in the traditional metrics, even while trying to figure out how to reach, care for, and engage people who clamor for more community and connection. Throw in things like the explosion of social media, the possibilities of the metaverse, and the emergence of crypto-currencies and it becomes difficult to discern exactly what the future will bring us.

Recently I was asked to speak at a conference framed around the theme of trying to anticipate where the church would be in 2030. I told the organizers that I didn’t believe in trying to make predictions, but that I did believe that we could wisely work toward the future in a couple of key ways.

One, don’t predict, prototype. In the 1990s many of us learned the leadership maxim that was attributed to hockey legend, Wayne Gretzky, “Don’t skate to where the puck is, skate to where it is going.” There was a time when that felt like creative wisdom for innovative leaders. But what if we live in a world where there are four pucks going for different directions at any one time? Predicting is impossible in such unpredictable chaos. A prototype (as we teach the church leaders in our cohorts) is a small, simple, modest, inexpensive experiment that is focused NOT on “Did it work?” but instead on “What do we need to learn?” As begin to live in this new environment, I have found that the most energized leaders are not trying figure out what the future is going to bring and instead, get used to moving slowly into the future one simple, small experiment at a time.

As futurist Eric Hoffer wrote, "In times of great change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.“

And second, keep clear on what will NEVER change. So many leaders think that the key to healthy change is to get creative, to “think outside the box," and to start brainstorming. And while those skills are indeed necessary, they are not the first priority, even when doing something new like prototyping. Before we focus on what needs to change, we get clear on what is essential to our organizational identity, our values, our reason for being, our mission, AND at the same time get clear on what those whom we are trying to serve really need from us. That clarity gives us the irreducible core, the “wine” that is in the wineskin, and the very reason why we exist.

Then, in the words often attributed to Jim Collins, once you are clear on what will never change, be prepared to change everything else. For leaders who are seeking to be innovative, this means that there is a curiously conservative step that begins each process.

At the Church Leadership Institute, we help leaders and their teams develop the capacity to learn, discern, and face necessary losses for a new future. We do so with a research-based methodology and at a scale that means that no church or organization needs to miss out because of costs.

If you are interested in being part of our next cohort or utilizing any of our resources, know that we are here to help.