Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation

Consensus Volume 46 Issue 1 Faith Communities: A Wider Expression Article 12 1-25-2025 Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation M. Beth McCutcheon Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus Recommended Citation McCutcheon, M. Beth (2025) "Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation," Consensus: Vol. 46: Iss. 1, Article 12. DOI: 10.51644/DJHN7336 Available at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol46/iss1/12 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact . McCutcheon: Sustaining While Disrupting Book Review Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation F. Douglas Powe Jr. and Lovett H. Weems Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022 I n order for twenty-first-century Christian congregations to respond faithfully to Christ’s call, both sustaining and innovating practices are required—as well as leaders who value both. The “while” in the book’s title is crucial. It is not one or the other—sustaining or innovating—but both simultaneously, so much so that the book might equally have been called “Disrupting While Sustaining.” The purpose of this book is stated on page 8: “This book gives church leaders in established congregations theological insights and practical skills for two crucial tasks: to sustain and strengthen foundational elements of their churches and to guide the critical innovation required to serve a context vastly different from the one in which many current assumptions and behaviors were established as normative.” The authors, the Rev. Dr. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., and the Rev. F. Douglas Powe, Jr., are colleagues at the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., USA. Weems is a Senior Consultant and founding director (2003) of the Center, and Powe serves as its current director. Before assuming the directorship of the Center, Weems served as pastor of a church and, later, as a seminary president for 18 years. Powe is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church with a Ph.D. in systematic theology. Together they bring a wealth of church leadership experience. Sustaining While Disrupting assumes the reader is familiar with congregational life. Specialized knowledge is not required. It is theological, yet not weighed down by specialized theological language. The book is easy to read and, at the same time, able to maintain the interest of readers more versed in theology, biblical studies, or leadership theory. Although leaders in established Protestant congregations in the North American context are the primary audience, Roman Catholic parishes and not-for-profit organizations may also find helpful insights in this book. The book opens with a description of the changed and changing context of North American churches: “Many congregations with long histories and proud traditions find themselves facing challenges beyond what they have faced in the lifetimes of their members and pastors” (p. 1). In addressing these new challenges, Powe and Weems incorporate concepts and language currently employed in leadership literature—for example, the distinction between “adaptive challenges” and “technical challenges” as defined by Ronald A. Heifetz. (Technical challenges are familiar problems that can be solved with existing knowledge and some tweaking of existing practices. Adaptive challenges involve unfamiliar territory and require knowledge and behaviour yet to be acquired and which will result in shifts in an organization’s culture.) Powe and Weems introduce these concepts early (p. 3) and they reappear throughout the book, with Powe and Weems’ fullest explanation appearing on page 118. Sustaining While Disrupting is theologically and biblically grounded. Chapter 1, “Sustaining and Innovating: A Biblical Model,” points to Acts 15 to illustrate the tension in the early Christian community between sustaining and innovating. The second chapter, “The Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2025 1 Consensus, Vol. 46, Iss. 1 [2025], Art. 12 Pastoral Leadership Dilemma,” draws attention to different leadership skills that are needed for sustaining versus innovating and the discernment that is needed to identify a challenge as either technical or adaptive. Chapter 3, highlighting both the opportunities and limitations of sustaining leadership, is followed by a fourth chapter, “The Leader as Sustainer,” and a fifth, “The Leader as Innovator.” Chapter 6 identifies skills necessary for simultaneously sustaining and innovating (now called disrupting). Chapter 7, “Tools for Discerning Your Next Faithful Steps,” invites the reader to focus on discerning what God is calling their church to do in the very near future, given their church’s mission and context (pp. 95–96). This the authors contrast with an all-too-common focus on improving “an existing, well-functioning ministry.” An assumption that undergirds Chapter 8, titled “A New Model for Leading Change,” is that “innovation cannot use the sustaining model” (p. 115). Learning is an essential element of this new model being proposed: “The most important tasks for leaders, once they determine that an issue is indeed an adaptive challenge, are for them to learn themselves and to guide a learning community” (p. 118). Here Lovett and Weems are again building on the work of Heifetz. In this context, by “learning” the authors do not mean information gathering. Instead, they envision the fostering of a learning culture within the leadership that will be extended to the entire congregation. They assert that good conversations marked by depth and honesty are crucial when dealing with complexity and insist that learning should include a wide range of conversation partners (p. 119). In the final chapter, Lovett and Powe flesh out some of the points from the earlier chapters by walking the reader through the steps that a congregation they call “Broadway Church” takes when embodying innovative leadership. At times the authors make broad claims that might not stand up under examination. For example, their claim that “leadership is essential for religious communities because it is what links past and future” (p. 2) seems overstated and unduly limiting. (Liturgical practices and church buildings also surely link the past and future.) Nevertheless, Sustaining While Disrupting delivers what it promises and its thesis that wise leaders always attend to both sustaining and innovating is maintained throughout (see pp. 37–38, 141). This is not a book for advanced studies in church leadership. Instead, it is designed for pastor and people to read together to discover a way forward that is faithful in these times. The book’s value lies in making insights from leadership theory accessible to a wide audience and in its cap (...truncated)