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If the new pastor has the skills, information, and political support to raise the formation questions again effectively, a new era of vitality might ensue.  More typically, the forces driving the decline — internal dysfunction, external change, or both — will be ignored until things get worse.  In that case, the new pastor will experience (and often collude with) the congregation’s two most destructive illusions:  the fantasy that growth can occur without change, and the fantasy that change can occur without conflict.

Beginning Ministry Together, Roy M. Oswald, James M. Heath, Ann W. Heath, page 143