Today, I want to talk to you about building a coalition for change in your ministry or church. To do so, I’ve created this 9-box to help you assess where a person is and how to bring them into your coalition for change. Let’s take a look.
First, rate a person’s influence in your church as low, medium, or high. Next, rate if that person is invested as low, medium, or high. Mark where the two intersect on the 9-box grid.
I suggest that you only focus on people that fall in this upper quadrant, as they’re the most invested and influential. Here’s how to build up each type in your coalition for change.
For the high influence and highly invested people, use them as spokespersons for your church. They already have influence and are already bought into your church’s mission. Drop these people out front, give them a microphone, and make sure they use their influence and buy-in to move forward.
For the high influence and somewhat invested people you want to tie this strongly back into your church’s mission. Then leverage them as well.
Similarly, for the medium influence and medium invested people, cast vision to earn their buy in. It’s easier to increase their investment than their influence.
For the highly invested but medium influence people, you want them and their stories up front and center. This may seem like an unexpected move because they’re not the most influential, but what you are doing is coming back and validating by bringing their stories a few weeks behind your initial launch. Bring their stories to the attention of others to build credibility and social proof. This is the everyday man getting behind this versus the people that we all assumed would be on board anyway.
Now that you understand this 9-box assessment and how to build a coalition of change in your church, what are you going to do about it?