The Work Beneath the Work

By Deanna Hollas & Jennie Birkholz

Churches are used to solving problems. Other people’s and our own.

We name what is not working. We clarify the issue. We build a plan. We identify outcomes and, if we are being honest, we hope to measure them. Even when we use spiritual language, the underlying instinct is often the same. Fix what is broken. Improve what is lacking. Move things forward.

It is not a bad instinct. It has helped many communities move forward. But there are forms of transformation that do not respond well to being treated as problems to solve.

In one congregation within our Houses of Hope rural church initiative, that tension surfaced almost immediately. The question came early and directly. What is the outcome going to be? It is a fair question. Most church-based initiatives are built to answer it. They promise clarity, direction, and results. They offer a path from where we are to where we want to be.

But this work did not operate that way.

There was no defined outcome. No project plan. No set of metrics that would determine success. Instead, there were practices. Simple ones. Ancient ones. Practices like gratitude, discernment, and listening. Not introduced as techniques to achieve a goal, but as rhythms to inhabit over time.

This created a different kind of experience. And, at times, a different kind of discomfort.

Without a clear outcome, it is easy to feel like nothing is happening. Without a plan to fix what is wrong, it is easy to assume the real issues are being avoided. The instinct to intervene rises quickly.

Even as coaches, we felt it.

When conflict surfaced in the group, the reaction was immediate. They need tools. They need training. They need something to address this directly.

Band-aid, band-aid, band-aid.

It is a familiar impulse. In many ways, it is what we have been trained to do. But instead of stepping in with a solution, the invitation was to stay with the process. To trust that something deeper was being formed. To believe that if people learned how to be with one another differently, the surface-level problems would not need to be managed in the same way.

That shift, from fixing to accompanying, is subtle but significant.

Fixing assumes that the problem is the primary focus. It centers on what is wrong and how to correct it. It often places the leader in the role of expert, the one who can diagnose and resolve.

Accompanying begins somewhere else.

It assumes that transformation happens not only through solutions, but through presence. Through learning how to be with one another, with God, and even with ourselves in new ways. It resists the urgency to resolve everything immediately and instead pays attention to what is forming beneath the surface.

This does not mean that problems disappear. Conflict still exists. Hurt still surfaces. Uncertainty remains. But the way those realities are held begins to change.

In one of the gatherings, the group was doing a simple check-in. The kind that can easily become routine. People naming how they are arriving, what is going on in their lives, and then moving on so the “real” work can begin. One participant shared that they had had a really rushed day. You could hear it in how they said it. The weight of everything they were carrying into the room.

In many settings, that moment would be acknowledged and then passed over. A quick nod, maybe a word of empathy, and then the group would continue on. But this group did something different.

They paused.

Instead of moving forward, they stayed with it. And then they asked a different kind of question. Not “What’s wrong?” and not “How do we fix this?” but “What would make it easier for you to be here?” It was a small shift, but it changed the moment. The participant responded with a kind of surprise. Gratitude, not just for the question itself, but for the experience of being asked it. They named that no one had really asked them that before. Not in that way.

And in that moment, something subtle but important was modeled for the entire group. This is how we can be with one another. Not rushing past what is hard. Not trying to solve it immediately. But paying attention. Making space. Asking what is needed so that someone can actually be present.

Nothing about that moment would register as innovation in the way we typically define it. There was no new program being introduced. No strategy being rolled out. No measurable outcome attached to it. And yet, something important was happening. The group was learning, in real time, how to accompany one another.

People are learning how to attend to one another. Over time, that attention begins to reshape the community itself. Listening deepens. Defensiveness softens. Conversations that once escalated begin to hold more space. Individuals carry these practices into their families, their relationships, their daily lives.

None of this can be easily programmed. It cannot be reduced to a set of steps or guaranteed outcomes. And that is precisely what makes it difficult. We have been formed to believe that meaningful change should be clear, efficient, and measurable. When it is not, we question whether it is happening at all.

But what if some of the most important work in the Church is not programmatic, but formational. What if innovation is not always about creating something new, but about recovering ways of being that we have neglected. The move from fixing to accompanying does not eliminate the need for strategy or planning. There are still decisions to be made. There are still realities that must be addressed.

But it changes the posture from which we engage them. We are no longer trying to control outcomes as much as we are cultivating the conditions in which transformation can take root. That work is slower. It is less predictable. It often resists easy explanation. But it may be the kind of work that lasts.

Because when people learn how to be with one another differently, they do not just solve the problem in front of them.

They become a community capable of facing whatever comes next.

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Jennie & Deanna serve as coaches to the Houses of Hope initiative and offer their learnings and insights in two guest posts for the Congregational Innovation Substack.