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.