Our friend Don Zimmer is back with his monthly installment on books. As you may remember, Don is a member of our Church Champions Editors Board and a long time friend. Unlike your truly, he reads deeply and remembers what he reads. He is my number one expert in finding a book for the topic to be addressed. This month he follows up his previous columns on leadership with a discussion on thinking styles and how they affect our conception of work and the church. "Some years ago, Bob Dale and George Bullard introduced me to a relatively new instrument called the Success Style Profile (SSP). The SSP provides an assessment of how we have learned to think. Over the next year I gave the instrument to several hundred leaders in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the congregation and judicatory levels. Everywhere a clear, consistent pattern of thinking was present. I accepted the pattern as normal, after all, every organization has its culture and people are shaped by it. Later, as I gave the instrument to more people in more diverse settings other patterns emerged. Variations tended to cluster around organization forms and cultures, some were slight, some significant. I found myself asking what do these patterns mean for the processes that must occur within an organization for it to be responsive to changing environments? Heifetz spoke of "technical work" and "adaptive work", the former, work done to accomplish known tasks, the latter, work done toward the unknown. The observed patterns suggested each organization had a style that had evolved over time that enabled them to do the known "technical work." While each was successful in varying degrees, I found myself asking how can they do the "adaptive work" necessary to respond to rapid and profound change when some styles of thinking are clearly under-represented? It was a short intuitive step to the question, "How does thinking style relate to our spirituality, prayer forms, worship preferences, and theology?" I do not purpose to offer an answer, but I believe that there is clearly a link. Dr. Corinne Ware's book, Discover Your Spiritual Type and Kent Groff's, Active Spirituality (Alban Institute) together with my training as a Spiritual Director have helped organize and further shape my thinking around this question. The spiritual typology Dr. Ware's book contains offered me a way of relating spirituality, prayer form, worship preferences and theology to thinking style. The instruments provided a way of opening up a dialogue around the possible relationships. Methodologically, I walk folks through the SSP experience where I spend some time on brain body research then I invite them to take Dr. Ware's instrument. We post the results and talk about our observations. Several things have emerged from these sessions. First, people perceive how they express their spirituality as different from how they perceive their church body expressing its spirituality. Second, people are mixed in how they view that difference. For some their church provides a base from which they can explore while others see their church as unable to support the full range of their spiritual needs. Third, thinking style is potentially a major factor in much of what divides us as a the church and if we can name that perhaps we can reshape the dialogue among diverse church bodies and help further unbind the latent gifts present within the church. Over the years as our organizations have evolved, certain thinking styles, talents, and behaviors have dictated what goes on in churches and how it gets done. The "business model" is everywhere present. But what is good for business is not necessarily good for the church. If God intended us to be a "body" why is so much of the body excluded from the processes that shape much of the direction and focus of churches and judicatories? The answer lies in how we shape those processes and how we shape those processes is determined by the prevailing thinking style. In the early 1990s, I encountered Chuck Olsen's work that eventually became Transforming Church Boards and later Discerning God's Will Together (Both published by Alban Institute and the latter co authored with Danny Morris). Chuck offered a different model for church boards and committees. It is a model focused on consensus versus majority rule, on discernment rather than decision, on story more than data, on listening more than speaking. It was a model that values the "wholeness" of the body and the process of inclusion more than "efficiency". The people who tend to do well in contemporary church organization shape it, and as they do, others who do not do well self exclude themselves. The result is a process in which the body of Christ is disproportionately represented by certain thinking styles. Clearly there are many roles to be played within church organizations, and not everyone can do everything, but by defining our church organizational and governance practices as we have we have, we have systematically excluded the voices and gifts of many. If we sought to carry out church differently, could we involve more people from the body in discerning God's will, seeking to follow it, and in being better stewards of the enormous diversity of gifts that people have to offer? Part of the challenge we face in governing churches and judicatories is how we conceptualize church. When we conceptualize the church as an organization we tend to emphasize the structure and roles that define that organization. During the course of planning the program for a mid-level judicatory pastor's conference, I had the privilege of spending time with Loren Mead. He was just finishing Transforming Congregations for the Future (Alban Institute). When I read the book Chapters 2 and 3 really spoke to me. A short time later I was looking at a map of the German forces deployed across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg just prior to the Normandy invasion. It hit me. The relevant issue is where forces are deployed not where they are based. The military commander focuses on the troops in the field not just the headquarters and bases that support them. What if we saw our church-selves as people rather than organizations and roles, scattered as well as gathered? What if we paid attention to enlisting, equipping, empowering, and enabling people to serve where they live their daily lives versus through congregation activities? Perhaps the most effective point for communicating the authentic gospel is in the contact that occurs in everyday life as people connect around pain, needs, and shared interests, activities and experiences. Is our often-myopic view of church yet another product of the thinking styles that define our organizational structure and practices?" You can send Don some direct feedback at DonaldZ7@aol.com. He will appreciate your comments and dialog. Don has agreed to be a moderator at one of our November Team Forums focused on lay persons.