Transition Time

Peter Bregman comes up week after week with practical stuff about leadership on the Harvard Business site – and does it with self-effacing humour.

In a recent article called Optimize Transition Time (and stop being late) he writes about how he’s the sort of person who thinks if he just drives fast enough or runs fast enough he’ll make it on time. His wife, on the other hand, needs ‘transition time’ and that takes advance planning – if you want to be somewhere for seven, then you may have to start ‘leaving’ by six, and that means getting ready by 5.30 and so on. (His example is a lot more complex!)

A lack of transition time, he points out, means that lateness for scheduled meetings compounds until the last meeting of the day is so far over time it’s finished before it’s begun. Moreover, transition time gives breathing space, allows for thinking about the meeting coming up (instead of trying to think on the fly) and is easier on the stress levels.

ChurchMorph: How Megatrends Are Reshaping Christian Communities

Eddie Gibbs was born and grew up in the UK where he served in the Anglican Church as well as working for many years with the Bible Society in the areas of church growth and church development.   In the video on Alan Roxburgh's page, Eddie talks about the way God is working, changing the institutional church and re-shaping it.

Elsewhere he notes that it is among the 'dowdy' Anglicans and Methodists in the UK that the Spirit is at work re-shaping communities in mission for the kingdom.  Eddie writes in churchmorph how some of the gurus who’ve been telling us all the institutional, organized church is over will probably be writing books about the rediscovery of the church among the denominations.

In churchmorph, he goes beyond an analysis of causes to show how many churches and faith communities are actually breaking the downward trend.  He expertly maps current converging church movements - emerging and missional churches, mainline renewal groups, megachurches, urban mission, new monasticism, alternative worship, and expanding networks - and offers a positive assessment of the reshaping of today's church. The core of the book identifies trends and movements that provide signs of the kingdom and reveals how different faith communities are working out what it means to be "church" in a changing world.

Transitions from work to retirement

Sylvia Dixon has produced a study for NZ Stats that looks at changes in the way people now head into retirement. Whereas in the past there was a tendency for a definite cut-off point from work and a sudden move into retirement, now people tend more and more to transition. This is another aspect of the way in which older people regard their lives differently from their forebears.

Dixon's abstract is as follows:

Survey responses indicate that the majority of working-aged New Zealanders would prefer to make a gradual transition from work to retirement, rather than move abruptly from full-time work to non-employment. This study describes the employment patterns and transitions of people who were aged in their 60s and moved from employment to inactivity during the 1999–2007 period, using longitudinal data from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset.

Four different types of transition to retirement were defined and the relative frequency of each explored. We find that phased transitions, involving either part-time work or a number of transitions in and out of employment before the final exit, were far more common than discrete transitions from full-time work to non-employment. Men were more likely than women to take a traditional path from work to retirement. Although there were some significant variations in the frequency of different work-to-retirement paths across major industries, phased transitions were more prevalent than traditional transitions in all major industries.

International evidence shows that phased retirements are also common in other countries with similar labour markets. The literature suggests that many older adults retire gradually, but some are constrained in their labour supply choices and are unable to achieve the flexible transitions to retirement they would prefer.

Transitioning....?

Gordon MacDonald writes a semi-fictional account of what it's like to be in a church in the process of change....

Who Stole My Church? : What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century, by Gordon MacDonald.

MacDonald (Ordering Your Private World) charts new territory in church growth books by turning what could have been a long list of dos and don'ts into a highly readable, even novelistic, approach to the subject. With himself as narrator, MacDonald creates a cast of church members in their 50s, 60s and 70s who meet each week to discuss where their church has been, is now and should go in the future. All I know is that someone stole my church and I'd like to get it back, says one. MacDonald delves into the feelings of the older generation as they watch new leadership take over, see changes in music and use of technology, and begin to wonder how they will fit in. He challenges their understanding of what the church is, then looks at the early church and the modern church and the many cultural influences that transform Christian spirituality. MacDonald is especially strong when he includes young people's perspectives or brings research to bear on how people view and act on change. This is a challenging, innovative approach to a delicate subject. It's sure to benefit church leaders and members of all ages who dream of a reinvented church.