ABSTRACT
Religious leaders and their faith communities face continual change in the fluid society of the twenty-first century. Faith communities can be classified as a “missionary organization” with ideology as its main coordinating mechanism. Such organizations have specific ideological and moral challenges in adapting to change. This chapter describes several trends in how some religious leaders responded to change, how they adapted the organization of their community and the language of their leadership. This leads up to the present situation, where churches, as highly traditioned organizations, need agile leadership to navigate contemporary challenges. A theory of traditioned agile churches is presented to describe the attitudes, sources, and practices that religious leaders and their communities need to sustain these communities in times of uncertainty.
