The power of deficit thinking

(Sent from a friend)

The next time someone urges you to focus on the gap between where you are and where you hope to be, ignore them. You know the gap is there. It’s far better to focus on whatever success you’ve had in bridging that gap. That builds self-confidence and encourages you to take the risks needed to improve further. Focusing on what’s missing will encourage you to play safe to avoid still worse happening.

Deficit thinking is an ingrained habit of focusing on gaps and weaknesses. It’s focusing on what you can’t do, not what you can. Instead of your dreams and ambitions propelling you forward, you let the gap between your current state and your desires become a continual source of frustration and depression.

You would imagine this type of thinking would generally be discouraged, but you’d be wrong. It’s everywhere, because people suffer from the mistaken belief that paying attention all the time to the gaps between what you have and what you think you want will be motivating. It will propel you forward to fill the gap.

That may be true for some people, but for most the effect is the opposite. Faced with continually falling short of what’s supposed to be attainable, they give up — and then feel even worse for having done so.

Besides, many of the other ‘gaps’ are there because, deep down, what they represent isn’t you. You don’t want to be different or ‘better’ in that precise way; it’s other people who tell you that you ought to do it. They want you to change to suit their agendas, and you go along — at least on the surface — because it’s polite, or socially desirable, or you wish that you could agree with them (only you don’t). This gives you almost zero real motivation to change. As a result, you talk a great talk about whatever it is, yet never quite seem to be able to turn the talk into effective action. If you truly wanted to change — or give up whatever it is — you would find a way to do it, believe me.

The error of rivalry

I was speaking with leaders of the congregation I serve about how we view ourselves with respect to the other UCA not too far away. I came across these reflections from "business".

The trouble is that human competition is more in the nature of rivalry. We are obsessed by the behaviour of our competitors, which is not the same thing as being seized by a desire to win the comp.

The first rule of business success is to focus on the customer, not your competitors. But rivalry is all about focusing on your rivals, on what they are doing and what you must do in response to what they do.

There are more than enough "customers" for us and every other church. What we in our congregation need to do is to not put our focus on what the others are doing but, rather, what is God calling us to be and do with the varied constituency passing by our doorstep. Trying to be like, match,etc. our rivals will sink us. In many ways we cannot compete with the new buildings and so on. But we have lots going for us. Let's go with the lots we have!

Commodification - yes or no?

Again I've been in discussion with people in the newly formed UCA close by that I've referred to in previous posts. Again the conversation went along the way of them being the form (building?) for the future & we (heritage church building) being that of yesterday. I've also spoken with an acquaintance in another area looking to rationalize buildings, bring together congregations, re-form worship, mission, etc. And the more I engage in such conversations the more the following, which is part of a review of Peter Ward's book "Liquid Church" comes true. The reason why I refer to said book & review is because one of the ministers to whom I spoke referred me to it & spoke so glowingly of what it had to say.

Special attention must be drawn to Ward's discussion of liquid church in consumer culture. Ward notes the church's function within an increasingly diverse and competitive spiritual marketplace and this has resulted in the commodification of the church as expressed, for example, in the Alpha Course in the U.K. (later exported to the U.S.) and "seeker" church approaches such as that of Willow Creek Community Church. Ward states that he believes that "commodification is essential for evangelism," and he provides an example from the "What Would Jesus Do?" or WWJD product marketing. Ward views this positively and states that "WWJD managed to incarnate Christ inside this fairly arid world [of fashion-conscious adolescence], and it did so by commodification."

In this area I must share my disagreement with Dr. Ward on multiple fronts. First, while it is true that the church has been shaped by consumerism and commodification within modernity, and to a certain extent there has been some benefit from the utilization of marketing aspects related to the seeker movement, it would seem that the modern church which is so often concerned about the dangers of syncretism has already been compromised by syncretism in its combination of consumer culture with its expressions of church in order to reach the seeker and its creation of an evangelical subculture that is consumer driven, as evidenced by the emphasis on programs, buildings, and the production of evangelical products for religious consumers inside and outside the church.

Second, I find it hard to find much that is positive with the WWJD phenomenon, whether for adolescents, children or adults, and in my thinking this provides a negative example of commodification rather than a positive example of penetrating the culture. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate and beneficial to have our lifestyles of service and self-denial serve as our personal identifiers of connection with Jesus rather than WWJD bracelets.

Third, I strongly disagree with Ward's contention that commodification is essential for evangelism. Instead of commodification we ought to be considering contextualization

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From Craig Mitchell

Craig Mitchell is on study leave o'seas & posted this on his blog. Paragraphs 2 & 3 are worthy of reflection.

why am I here? my study leave is about exploring the place of 'new media' in immersive/interactive worship and education experiences/events, particularly in new/fringe/emerging faith communities where many existing boundaries are being reconsidered. basically, I think that the communication revolution has bypassed the church, and its one of many reasons that people under 40 don't connect with us.

the church is pre-occupied with oral delivery of literal culture. both our education of leaders and our congregational practices are based on this. and I'm coming to realise that our understandings of postmodernism underestimate the roles of communication and technology.

I think that the digital and communication revolution is much deeper and more pervasive than the church realises. we are either stuck in reactionary criticism of contemporary communication without understanding the issues or trialling entry-level appropriations that simply reinforce our current practices of power and interpretation.

So I want to find some ways forward by looking within the realm of visual culture, installation art, interactive media and immersive experience rather than being derogatory of such developments as the church so often is.