Building Bridges, Not Bombs: Communication Strategies for Change
By W.J de Kock, ThD
Educational Consultant to Partners in Ministry
Professor of Practical Theology at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University
6 minute read
There is a particular kind of hurt that happens in church announcements. The pastor stands at the pulpit with a professionally calibrated smile of reassurance and announces that "after much prayer and discernment," something people love is ending. The words are chosen carefully—"new season," "strategic realignment," "exciting opportunities"—and yet what lands in the congregation is the concussive force of a detonation. Change has arrived, delivered with all the gentleness of a grenade wrapped in a worship bulletin.
The problem is not that churches change. Change is inevitable, even necessary. The problem is that most church leadership has been trained in communication strategies better suited to corporate mergers than to communities held together by memory, liturgy, and the fragile threads of shared belief.[i] We announce change as though we are unveiling quarterly earnings, forgetting that what we are actually doing is asking people to let go of the sacred.
The Myth of the Airtight Announcement
Leadership teams labour for months crafting the perfect announcement. Every word is workshopped. The rationale is bulletproof. The vision is compelling. The FAQ document anticipates every conceivable objection. And then they deliver it—once, with confidence—and are genuinely confused when half the congregation seems not to have heard a word.[ii]
Here is what actually happened: people heard it. They simply could not absorb it. The human brain, when confronted with information that threatens its sense of home, does not process linearly. It deflects, it resists, it replays the announcement in search of loopholes. You could deliver the most eloquent, theologically sound explanation for why the evening service must end, and what many will hear is static punctuated by the word "ending." This is not wilful obstinacy. It is the soul's immune response to trauma.[iii]
The myth that haunts church communication is that clarity equals comprehension, and comprehension equals acceptance. If we just explain it well enough, people will understand. If they understand, they will agree. This is the logic of someone who has never tried to explain to a child why the family dog is not coming home. Clarity helps. It does not, however, make the loss hurt less.
The Sermon That Never Stops
If there is one iron law of communicating change in churches, it is this: when you are absolutely sick of talking about it, your congregation is just beginning to hear you. Research on organisational change suggests that messages need to be repeated seven to ten times before they penetrate, and that is in corporate settings where people are not emotionally attached to the org chart.[iv] In churches, where identity is wrapped up in liturgy, and a favourite pew has sacramental significance, the number is likely higher.
What this means practically is that the announcement is not an event but the beginning of a prolonged conversation. The pastor who mentions the change once from the pulpit and considers the matter communicated has essentially shouted into a canyon and expected everyone to catch the echo. Effective communication requires repetition across multiple channels—sermons, newsletters, small group discussions, one-on-one conversations with key stakeholders—until the message becomes ambient, a reality people live with rather than a shock they are trying to recover from.[v]
The challenge, of course, is that leaders grow weary of their own script. By the tenth time explaining why the building must be sold, they are bored of their own reasons. But congregants are not hearing it for the tenth time. They are hearing it for the second, or maybe the third if they were paying attention during announcements, which is optimistic. Pastors must develop the spiritual discipline of saying the same true thing over and over without letting their exhaustion bleed into contempt for those still catching up.
The One-on-One Before the Announcement
There is an old rule in organisational change that the people most affected by a decision should hear about it personally before it becomes public knowledge. In churches, this gets translated into awkward pre-announcement meetings where leaders inform key volunteers that their ministry is ending, hoping this softens the blow. It rarely does. What it does accomplish, however, is signal respect.[vi]
When a longtime volunteer learns from the pulpit that the ministry they have poured decades into is being "sunset," what they hear beneath the words is: "You do not matter enough to be told personally." The pain of the loss is now compounded by the pain of being treated as a constituent rather than a co-labourer. The one-on-one conversation before the public announcement is not about damage control. It is about basic human dignity—acknowledging that some losses are too personal to be communicated via mass announcement, no matter how well-crafted.[vii]
This requires more time, more emotional labour, and infinitely more courage than sending an email. It also means sitting in rooms with people who are angry, heartbroken, or both, and resisting the urge to defend, explain, or redirect to the vision. Sometimes, the most Christlike communication strategy is to say very little and absorb a great deal.
Listening as Subversive Act
The reflex in most church communication is to talk more—more vision-casting, more explanation, more reassurance. But the deeper failure is often the refusal to listen. When leadership has already made the decision, listening can feel like a waste of time or, worse, an invitation to reopening settled matters. So town halls become one-way information sessions. Feedback forms are offered but rarely shape outcomes. The congregation is consulted in theory but not in practice.[viii]
Listening in the context of change is not about reversing decisions, though sometimes it should be. It is about making space for grief, anger, and confusion to be spoken aloud and taken seriously. It is letting someone say "this feels like a betrayal" without immediately countering with "but here's why it's not." It is the discipline of not having the last word, which, for those of us trained in ministry, is a spiritual practice roughly equivalent to fasting.
When churches build bridges instead of dropping bombs, they create space for people to walk across slowly, with their doubts and their grief and their objections intact. The bridge does not eliminate the distance between what was and what will be. It simply acknowledges that the journey is real, the loss is costly, and no one should have to make that crossing alone while being told to smile about it.
[i] Communication Change Strategies in Church Congregations," Western Kentucky University Digital Commons, 2015,
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2507&context=theses
[ii] Seth Muse, "7 Ways to Effectively Communicate Change in Your Church," Seth Muse (blog), June 5, 2017,
https://www.sethmuse.com/communicate-change/
[iii] Navigating Change in Your Church - Communication Strategies That Work," Be Known for Something, September 6, 2024,
https://beknownforsomething.com/navigating-change-in-your-church-communication-strategies-that-work/
[iv] "How to Communicate Change," Church Leadership, May 19, 2016,
https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/how-to-communicate-change/
[v] "Navigating Change in Your Church (Communication Strategies That Work)," Biblical Leadership, December 29, 2024,
https://www.biblicalleadership.com/blogs/navigating-change-in-your-church-communication-strategies-that-work/
[vi] "Effective Communication Strategies for Church Changes," Practical Church Podcast, August 13, 2024,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pil3lPeaQ-o
[vii] "Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Pastoral Transitions," Standing Stone Ministry, April 7, 2025,
https://standingstoneministry.org/shepherd-resources/avoiding-common-pitfalls-in-pastoral-transitions/
[viii] "When Tensions Rise: Tools for Conflict Transformation in the Church," Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), February 10, 2025,
https://chchurches.org/church-conflict-resolution-tools/