The thing that struck me about the article about people dropping cable in greater numbers was a comment made by Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, "The first thing that happens is you deny it. I know the drill. I have been there."
This really reminded me of a statement made at a conference I attended several years ago sponsored by the Harvard Divinity School, called Finding our Way. One of the presenters was Diana Butler Bass who was talking about a book she read entitled The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai.
She found some comments made by Andy Rappaport about struggling businesses to be completely applicable to the church. This is what she had to say in conveying her memory of what Rappaport had to say to Bai:
There are four steps of an organization that is not succeeding:
The first step is an organization that does not admit that it has a problem. 'Everything is fine, this is just a little downturn' only this downturn has continued for several years, but they keep saying 'Oh, we’re going to get out of this, there’s not a problem here.' That’s the first sort of flag that there is a problem .
The second step is that an organization admits it has a problem, but then blames it on its customers. The organization says, 'if only we market better, they will buy X item. It’s their problem, they just don’t know that we have this product which will change their lives and so we just need to educate these benighted consumers and that then they’ll come back and buy our product.'
The third step is that the organization recognizes that it has a problem, and it’s not the consumer’s problem, it’s them. And so what they begin to do is they will do everything they can to find 'the thing' that will fix them. When you see companies searching for 'the thing' you know the end is near.
There’s the fourth step, I come in with my cash and I buy the organization. But sometimes there is another step, once in a while, it doesn’t work that way, when they get to that fourth step, and something happens in the corporation itself, and the corporation changes. It almost always occurs in the same way, some innovative edge will begin to be heard by the central structures and powers and it’s that creative edge that has a new vision for what that company should be and they begin to bring in the innovation and practices from the edge to the center. That’s the only way that a corporation can renew themselves, and when it does happen it is quite powerful.
Mainline churches have denied there was a problem, that it was the audiences’ problem. Somehow all those very intellectual, thoughtful, open, tolerant Protestants have deserted us, and what we need to do is market ourselves and get them all back. Then we got to the place where we said to ourselves, we do have a problem, and it’s not our congregation’s problem, but it’s our problem and we have to find a solution in order to fix it.
And that’s where mainline denominations have been for the past ten or fifteen years, that’s the stage where most mainline denominations have been in, and we’ve been looking for “the thing” that will fix us. I don’t know if there are any pictures of the ideal consumer hanging up in the denominational headquarters, but I wouldn’t put it past them. That’s when the handwriting is on the wall. Is there any possibility for our communities, is there a creative edge that is working out there that is wise and transformative that can be adopted and brought into the center to revitalize what we are doing.
This statement struck me at the time, and it still does, although she was not remembering what Rappaport had to say correctly. Bass did have the first steps correctly, which according to Rappaport are:
1) Denial: "It's not our fault. we're right, and everyone else is wrong."
2) Acknowledgement: "OK, something here's got to change."
3) Frantic search for the Thing: "We have to find the thing that will save us."
Bai then asked Rappaport what happened to companies after the desire for the Thing had abated. "In some cases, Andy explained, the entrenched leaders of an ailing institution managed to summon the perspective and creativity to make the radical changes needed to save it. But that was rare. More often, real change didn't come from inside, but through what Andy identified as phase number four: the shareholder revolt. Eventually, he said, shareholders came to understand that the people running the company had failed them, and that they were going to have to take control of the situation themselves." (Bai, 65. Emphasis mine)
Of course what he doesn't say, is that sometimes these companies die because either the revolt is rebuffed, it is done too late, or simply doesn't work. The question I want to ask is, what does a "shareholder revolt" look like in a mainline church? Do the people even know enough to know that a revolt might be necessary? And who are our shareholders?
As Bass says, we certainly have seen the first three points encountered in the church, although as I've written numerous times we are still looking for "The Thing" which will somehow magically solve all of our problems. But when is the leadership of the church completely honest with itself and then as a result with the average person in the pew.
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