Committing yourself to agreement: a little more humility please

I’ve worked in enough congregations placed in the middle of farmland to be able to feel farmers feeling spring. Seeing cropland emerge from under snow cover changes the demeanor, adds to the sidelong glances to check how well the fields are drying out as you drive to town, and affects the subjects of coffee shop conversation. Farmers begin making comments about how busy they will be in just a few weeks. Speculation increases about the cost of materials and commodities.

Many other persons in rural congregations work in businesses that support agriculture. They too begin sitting a little more on the edge of their seat as spring looks like it might get sprung. It is a second skin that cannot be shed. Persons living in it might not realize how ingrained it is, but it is a rhythm they have learned to trust and live by. It is what they KNOW.

Working with congregational systems as long as I have I can sense where most congregations are in the cycle of organizational development. I get a good idea pretty quickly about what might be done, by whom and by when. This is my second skin. I sometimes don’t realize how deeply ingrained it is. It is a rhythm I’ve learned to trust and live by. It is what I KNOW. This is why I say I can feel farmers feeling spring. I feel it because I know the impact it has on church life when there are crops to be planted, crops to be harvested, the winter time when everyone goes on vacation.  Important decisions that require broad conversation and widespread ownership have to be woven in between these times.

All of us have these deeply ingrained patterns that we trust. They are a base of knowledge for us. Our tendency is to trust what we know and to distrust what we do not yet know, because it might force us to adjust or reorganize the knowledge we do have. Even if we can observe the new knowledge to be helpful , we tend to distrust it because it means changing our assumptions or our patterns of living.

A graduate professor of mine, B. Wayne Hopkins, used to tell of a Texas oil refinery worker who hoisted himself across catwalks and up ladders to adjust a valve several times a day. It was the most boring of jobs, but he tolerated it because it provided for his family and it was believed spinning the wheel to adjust the valve was necessary for the refinement process. After thirty years his job was eliminated because it was discovered adjusting the valve had no effect on oil refinement. The man sunk into despair because he now felt unnecessary and as if the purpose of his life was declared worthless.

This story illustrates a good reason why we might distrust new knowledge! It might be accurate, but it can simultaneously dismember what we spend our lifetimes building.

Distrust of new knowledge might be rooted in arrogance (I know what is best and what works), or anxiety (I don’t know for sure if it will work and I certainly don’t want to fail), or even anxiety masked as arrogance (That is a stupid idea!). These reactions show up when we have hard decisions to make and differing operating patterns out of which we make them.  Somehow, we have to move beyond what we know to what we do not know in order to embrace solutions that move us beyond stuck places.

Prairieview Mennonite Church is a good example of why moving to what you do not yet know is good and helpful. This congregation has now spent ten years already moving to an unknown place as two previously separate congregations merged to form one. Now, this congregation must move to the unknown place as a ten year old congregation whose people came from one of the previous two congregations, but everyone else now present and anyone else who comes to them did not. Having been two congregations is now the history. Living as one congregation is the present.

Here is a way of diagramming what being humble enough to move to new knowledge looks like:

I first learned of this diagram while working on my doctorate. I had to write a philosophical orientation that I bring to any research, revealing any biases I might discover. This provides a way for any future researcher to critique my work. If I reveal any bias I might have, it makes the work easier to build future knowledge later.  One of the biases I wrote about was my strong belief that the more that is learned, the more we learn, exponentially, that we do not yet know.

Look at the diagram and you discover it is simple to grasp. Each of us an arena of knowledge (the upper left hand corner). For instance, I know how to lace a shoe. This is the arena of those patterns we have learned to trust because they work.

Next come the items we know that we do not know (lower left corner). There are other ways to lace a shoe. This I know. How to lace them up in that manner I do not.

Third, are the items I do not know that I know (upper right hand corner). This can be tougher to grasp, mostly because I am describing something of which I am not aware. So, in this discussion of lacing shoes, we could say that I’ve forgotten that I could figure out how to lace shoes up in different ways if I simply sat down and became creative.  Of course, the minute I figure out an alternative way to lace up a shoe, it shifts over to the Known Knowns quadrant.

Finally, there are the things I do not know and I do not know that I do not know them (lower right hand corner). Are you confused? It is okay to be confused about this corner of the diagram because we are describing not only a lack of knowledge, but a lack of awareness of that lack of knowledge. Perhaps there are other ways of fastening shoes that remain to be discovered and I’m not thinking about it at all. Now that I am, however, it shifts over to the Known Unknowns because I’m conscious of them.

Let’s put the same box to work in a church context—a church that is between pastors.

You might be further interested to hear an observation which I hold about people who prefer rural living and those who prefer an urban lifestyle. While everyone functions from what they know, it is my observation that urban people are much more comfortable with ambiguity, marked by the gold circle in the next diagram. They might even prefer to be in an environment that keeps forcing them to have new experiences, but remain uninterested in figuring it out. They often pay people who know rather than having to know themselves. Rural people, by contrast, often prefer a higher degree of self-sufficiency, wanting to master skills and doing without rather than paying someone else to do them until they either have the time or the knowledge to do so. You can see their arena marked by the grey circle.

So, while we have much in common as humans, we also have significant differences—differences that become more marked and distant in our culture. We emphasize the difference and choose to accentuate them rather than to find new ways of working together.

I point this out because those who are moving into the small towns around farm land may well reflect a more urban mindset than a rural one, and that is different from yesteryear. It will make discernment and decision-making more intricate because not only will people have different opinions, they will also use different words than those who are already present at the church. When they use the same words, they will often mean something different than what was meant before. How complex it all becomes if we are not humble servants!

Becoming a humble servant is what the Apostle Paul has in mind as he writes to an internally conflicted and externally persecuted Philippian church, even while he languished in prison.  He writes:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,  but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

-Philippians 2:3-11 NIV

It is good for us to hear him inviting those who lead the church and those who are called to be mature to move more comfortably and less anxiously toward the unknown unknowns we inevitably face.

It is also good for us to hear each of Paul’s instructions in isolation:

1. Do nothing from selfish ambition. Life is not a homecoming game with losers you trample on in order to win. Instead, life offers a chance to build your succession. Each of us needs to matter less even as we raise the standing of others. This is what Christ does, yet look at the exaltation he receives.
2. Do nothing from vain conceit. Remember, our resistance to moving into the unknown unknowns can sometimes be our belief that we know better. Conceit of this type is destructive and refuses to acknowledge that our unknown unknowns are well-defined known knowns that others possess.
3. In humility, consider others better than yourselves. This is almost the same command as not acting from vain conceit. It is stated in the positive, however. Paul’s instruction is for us to stop being conceited and to pursue humility. We can start by deferring to the knowledge others have and we do not. This is what starts building succession as you raise the standing of others.
4. Have the same attitude as Christ Jesus. This is the same word Paul uses when we calls the Philippian Christians to have the same mind. “Mind” and “attitude” are the same expression in Greek, referring to a disposition, a direction one points their mind. We can easily draw the conclusion that not only does Paul tell the Philippians to have the same mind, but the mind he has in mind is the mind of Christ.

As the Son of God, Jesus could lay claim to omniscience and omnipresence. There are no quadrants with him. It is all Known Knowns. Yet, we see him functioning in the place of unknown unknowns, trusting that God would complete the work of salvation, putting the welfare of all humanity ahead of his own, and being held up as the example for our trust in one another, our making decisions together and our offering ministry to others.

I recall the missiologist Ray Bakke telling of an urban Baptist church in Chicago he pastored as it decided to add a Spanish language worship service. It has become one of my favorite stories that depict change. Apparently this English-speaking church had a particular member who resisted any Spanish language service. She was the oldest member and blocked any vote with her defiance. “Let them speak English if they want to worship with us,” she would say.

Ray knew that the church actually once spoke Swedish when it was an immigrant congregation but made the change to English back in the day. He was sly enough to know this woman had lived through the change so he went to visit her and asked her to tell him the story, if she remembered it, when this church she loved so much had made the original change in languages.

It turns out she was the culprit. She had begun a bible study with women in the neighborhood, and of course, none of them spoke Swedish. When they asked if they could come to church and perhaps hold an English service there, the leaders said no.  If they wanted to come to their church they needed to speak Swedish. So, this now elderly champion of English began holding English worship services anyway—to the point it could no longer be resisted and the change was made.

Half-way through her story the woman stopped, fixed her eyes on her pastor and said, “I know what you are doing! You caught me! All-right, I will support a Spanish service.”  According to Ray Bakke, at the next meeting of the congregation, she stood, shared the story, repented of her resistance, and invited her sisters and brothers to join her as they marched into a new round of unknown territory.

A good number of people gather in worship services today who face a similar scenario. The next years are unknown unknowns for them individually, and for the congregations they love. Their readiness to assume the mind of Christ and to move into what they do not yet know and cannot foresee will make all the difference to the impact of their witness.

-mark l vincent