Moneyball and the Future of the Church, Part 2
2. Challenging Cherished Practices
Harvard Leadership Guru Ron Heifetz makes a critical distinction between technical and adaptive problems. In the former, we need to revise our way of doing something in a particular context; in the latter, we need to revise (or reinvent) our whole way of thinking about the context in which we are doing things.
Again, Moneyball provides an excellent example. (If you haven’t seen the film
But in the following clip, Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) argues that the real problem is an insufficient understanding of baseball itself and, in particular, how baseball games are won. He therefore asks Billy Beane not to refine or change established practices (technical change), but rather to reconsider his whole way of thinking about baseball and in light of that changed pattern of thought to discover new practices (adaptive change).
Again, I think there’s something quite similar going on in the church. Rather than refine preaching by adding a slide show, changing worship by employing contemporary music, or jazzing up confirmation by showing cartoons, we need instead to reconsider the fundamental nature of being the church in the world today.
In the previous post I suggested that the dominant reality is the one to which we’ve paid the least attention: Church is no longer an assumed part of people’s lives. More than that, our people are besieged 24/7 with obligations and opportunities and will not keep giving an hour a week to an activity unless it contributes tangibly to improving the other 167 hours.
Yet we continue to practice ministry like they’ll come back if only our pastors figure out how to do what they’ve always done, only better. And that’s just the problem: our focus is on what the pastors do. In our current model of church, the pastors are the interpreters of Scripture. They are the ones who make connections between faith and life. And they are the ones comfortable talking about their faith.
What’s more – and to put it both more bluntly and more accurately – the pastors are typically the only ones who interpret Scripture, make connections, or talk about their faith. They are, in a very real sense, the professional Christians. And, oddly enough, we are at a point where I think the better our pastors performs these tasks the deeper the crisis gets, as after a riveting sermon the average lay person can only look on in admiration and acknowledge that he or she could never do that.
This way of thinking, if not medieval, is at least better suited to the church of the mid-twentieth century rather than the twenty-first century. So we need to shift from a “performative” model of ministry – where the mark of competence is that the professional does the central tasks of the faith well – to a “formative” model of ministry – where the mark of competence is that as time passes the congregation members get better themselves at the central skills of the faith, skills like interpreting Scripture, making connections between faith and life, and sharing their faith with others.
What does this mean for our practices? To be most truthful, I’m not yet sure. That’s part of the challenge of adaptive problems: they don’t simply require an answer but rather need to be lived into until an appropriate response suggests itself.
But I do have some hunches. I think that preaching, for instance, needs to become more participatory, where congregants don’t simply sit back and listen to what the professional Christian says but are given a chance to acquire and practice some new skills. Worship needs to be concerned less with looking like a concert performance (whether of traditional or contemporary music) and more like a dress rehearsal for our life in the world. And confirmation needs to give our youth and the significant adults in their lives opportunities to work out why their faith matters and practice using that faith to help them navigate the challenges they are facing.
Foremost, we need to re-imagine that pastors are not first and foremost excellent practitioners or performers of the faith but rather are coaches, teachers, and conductors whose success is gauged by their ability to increase our skills and confidence in using our faith in daily life.
Next, Pt. 3: The Risks and Rewards of Adaptive Leadership.
Note: Heifetz has written extensively on adaptive leadership, first in his landmark Leadership Without Easy Answers
Nail and head. This is pitch perfect, pun not intended. Not that there is any perfect “answer” or program, there are many organizations I know that are trying to encourage a move toward leaders making leaders rather than performing service. 3DM is the one I have been involved with that has helped me take all the reality that I have been doing church wrong (my definition- providing spiritual services that create spiritual consumers rather than spiritual producers) and helped me have a practical road map to shaping my own spiritual character as well as how to pass this spiritual DNA into others without a need to go to seminary. I wonder how we might further these paths in our seminary educational systems, for example, to teach us how to create preachers not just preach. How do we help shape not just prayers but pray-ers?
Great to hear from you, Jay. I stumbled on 3DM a month or two ago and was intrigued by what they’re doing. (Actually, I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing but loved their opening video. 🙂 ) Thanks for writing, and say “hi” to your stellar intern.
Dear Pastor Lose, I’ve enjoyed your posts for sometime, and especially have enjoyed your Moneyball posts, as they reflect on many of the same feelings I had when watching this movie.
As much as I enjoy your challenges to discern how do we adapt, I see something in it, and in many of the other discussions I’ve had with colleagues etc. over the past few years, (I’m in my first call right now). This thing that I see, sense, and feel in the conversations, is anxiety, (and I’m anxious about this too) over our consistent failure to get the Gospel message out. I sum this feeling up in the two words that have dominated our desire to share God’s love with others more than any other words since I’ve become engaged in such things. These words are, “we need”.
From an individual level, “we need to get more involved at church”, to a congregational level, “we need more people in church”, to a denominational level, “we need more people and more leaders”, to all sorts of other levels. While it is important to assess our needs, we don’t “need” any of these things. Our “we needs” generally are merely hopeful (imaginary)visions of what “we’d like” to see happen.
Which brings me to my point, as I wholeheartedly agree with your entire post, there’s a hole in it as it relates to faith, and the lesson of the video. Jonah Hill’s character says that losing Johnny Damon is not a problem, but a unique opportunity. As a denomination, I think our aging/declining membership is a unique opportunity, that can help us put to death the ELCA as we know it, (it’s already there)and do so in a faithful manner, not only to see what new life comes from it, but also what joy can be experienced in the dying process.
In other words, we have a plethora of people concerned with what they will leave behind, (not simply money)and so how can we focus on turning these loaves and fishes into abundant food? How can we faithfully minister to the people we do have that they have been given an unshakable faith that will be passed on, looking nothing like their practices of old? How do we break the body we have been made into?
In your first post on the topic, the clip talked about “What’s the problem?” As I discern, and worry, and pray, about this, “the problem” is too big and unsolvable, but “the opportunity” is exciting, challenging, and joyful, and the gift that we’ve been given in the waters of baptism.
Again, I am thankful for your posts and have especially enjoyed these on Moneyball, and appreciate the chance to leave a reply and engage you with questions and thoughts that you’ve helped to ignite. Peace be with you.
Fabulous response, Mark. And I couldn’t agree more; I too often also fall into the “we need” category. Your larger point about opportunity is actually the subject of the next Moneyball post on the risks and rewards of adaptive leadership. In fact, I started the first draft of this post by saying, “One of my hallmarks of good leaders is that they habitually turn crises into opportunities.” But as I wrote further I realized that was leading me to a different topic. So…thanks for reading…thanks for writing…and stay tuned. 🙂
I don’t know if this thread is still active, but I keep thinking about these Future of the Church clips (and forwarding them to my church’s Admin Board). The church I’m serving is doing “okay” right now, but when I look ahead 20 years or so… well, none of us will be doing too well. And I think these posts are spot on, as others have said, and the “we need” comments from Mark too.
I’m in my first appointment too, but in the United Methodist Church. I’m coming out of other professions though, and one of them was as a high school teacher. My training as a teacher emphasized “Active Learning”, trying to really cultivate a variety of learning methods and esp. appreciate the “lecture method” as the one with the lowest retention rate, on average. And so we tried to live by the goal to be “The guide on the side, not the sage on the stage,” and even if we only covered a tenth of the material, but if we got the students to internalize the material, really think about it, and maybe even reject it, well, real learning was taking place. Completely covering material is pointless if there is no internalizing of the ideas; and if there isn’t internalization, there isn’t learning, and there isn’t any teaching taking place.
It sure didn’t work out all the time; and many times a lecture was all the students were going to get. But now I find myself in a profession even more bound by tradition- that views the lecture method of teaching (read “sermon”) as sacred. I try ending my sermons with discussions sometimes, but those only go so far because it is such a foreign activity in church. Thank God for the hymns, which I think hold most of the retained/internalized learning in church.
I guess I mainly struggle with the feeling that we (the Church) don’t even seem to know what our goal is. “Learning” I had a vague understanding of; lower-order thinking names/dates/facts, but mainly higher order concepts/ideas/appreciations. “Creating Disciples” as a goal seems to lead straight back to doing things the way they have always been done….
I really appreciate your thoughtful comments, Craig. I do think the issues you wrestled with in the classroom are very similar to those we are facing in our congregations. When the pastor becomes “the sage on the stage” our people can be inspired and certainly admire his/her efforts, but that doesn’t mean they can do anything for themselves. I think about this in terms of prayer: we talk a lot about prayer; pastors pray a lot; we pray together, often a printed or memorized text; we talk about praying for each other, etc. But do we ever teach our people how to pray – for themselves or with each other? And so why do we think they will intuit that skill without a chance to try it out with guidance and support and practice until they have confidence? This all worked when the culture was nominally Christian and people just came to church. Those days, however, are passing.
i LOVE this post. i’m even more eager to see where this all is going. i think your comments about congregational life being more “participatory” are spot on. as a youth pastor, i’m troubled by the all the data pointing to the fact that our Christian kids are leaving the church. i mean, even if only 20% of our kids leave, that bothers me. the one thing that seems to produce “sticky faith” in kids is their participation in the life of the church. when our young people are encouraged and given ample opportunity to serve in the church, they realize that their presence actually matters; it makes a difference. i’m looking forward to a day when the words: “i didn’t get anything out of that,” are banished from the church!