Companions,
Above is a still from the one of the videos from Willow Creek's RevealNow website (http://www.revealnow.com).
In this segment, Greg Hawkins is saying, "Increasing level of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone is becoming more of a disciple of Jesus Christ."
In case you can't see the the set of activities clearly, it is services, classes, small groups, caring ministries, and servant ministries.
And again, the finding-- simply doing more of these things, or even generating more participation in these things, does not predict that the outcome is discipleship to Jesus.
Even creating a system that makes all of these things available and somehow gets lots of people into them does not generate discipleship to Jesus Christ of its own.
In other words, there is no black box.
The Black Box
Okay, so what's a black box? A black box is a component of a system that takes inputs and does something mysterious with them to produce certain desired outputs. The mystery is that even if you know what the components inside the box are, you don't really have much clue how they work. It's just known (or at least believed!) that they do.
Now, black boxes actually work very well in a variety of iterative mechanistic functions. That is, when you have to do a lot of the same kinds of calculations on similar kinds of data over and over (such as when you're testing software for bugs), or when you have to keep generating a part in exactly the same way, and you also need to make sure nobody can mess with or even learn exactly how that happens (trade secrets, that sort of thing), the black box is exactly what you need. And when a given black box is no longer generating the results you are looking for, then you either replace it or get someone to diagnose and repair a faulty component or adjust the outputs of the components relative to one another.
Black boxes really do work-- for numbers, data and things-- at least within reasonable tolerances.
Many of our approaches to thinking about congregations since at least the 19th century have believed there is a black box, that the congregation is that black box, and that the programs of the congregation-- its small groups, its caring ministries, its servant ministries, its worship services, and its classes-- are the components. There's no particular explanation of how it is that these things are supposed to generate discipleship, but it is surely believed that they do. The awareness is also that one has to keep cycling through the various components of this black box over time before one expects a lot of measurable outcomes. The iterative nature of the system (weekly public worship, weekly small group meetings, regular schedules of classes, organized training and servant ministries over time) strongly suggests that few expect that one-time experiences with any part of the system will lead to dramatic change that endures. At the same time, there is openness to the possibility of "quantum experiences"-- dramatic encounters or movements of the Holy Spirit in our lives-- where sudden, major leaps forward can and do occur, though on a fairly unpredictable basis.
We have believed that if you have those components in place, and you are doing them the "right way," (whether defined in terms of procedure, doctrine or "relevance"), and you're doing them where people actually are, then you should have an increasing number of inputs (in this case, people) entering your black box (congregation) and a correspondingly increasing number of outputs (people becoming and maturing as disciples of Jesus Christ) as people continue to interact with the various components of the congregation over time.
A corollary is that if the result is not measurably improved discipleship, the best way to address that is either to replace or fix a faulty component (maybe a dysfunctional small group, or a worship service that has become less "relevant") or tweak the arrangement of the components just right (change schedules or places or the amount of time when particular groups or services happen). Do that right, we think, and you'll get back to producing the expected outcomes again.
We do believe in the black box version of congregational mission, structure and vitality. We teach this. And we build or seek to plant, transform, revitalize or redevelop congregations on the basis of this.
Yet the Reveal study says there is no black box like this.
Well, of course the black box does exist. Reveal's point is it does not actually work as we may keep believing and advertising it does. There's no question that the black box (the congregation) influences people, and sometimes profoundly. So do many other kinds of organizations with which people may be involved over a period of years. If we want to equate that kind of influence with actual discipleship to Jesus, then we might say the congregational black box does work. But if we want to equate discipleship with discipleship-- Reveal says the black box approach does not work.
At least not well.
As Hawkins goes on to note, what Reveal shows is that the congregational black box can be pretty good at helping people have an initial encounter with Christ, and even at fostering a "falling in love experience." But it generally doesn't move people very far in terms of maturing, much less maturity. As the Wesleys might have put it, it can help them encounter Christ and even decide they want to follow him (prevenient and justifying grace), but it does little to help them learn actually how to follow Christ or come to "have the mind of Christ" (sanctification moving on to perfection/maturity).
Going Beyond Unexamined Faith in the Black Box
So if Willow Creek's conclusions in the Reveal study are true, and they've been out there now for nearly six years (for Willow Creek itself) and over three years (with further work with over 20,000 other people in hundreds of other churches), why would United Methodists or others still try to proceed as if the black box actually can produce disciples of Jesus, or (which I think may be more of our situation), that maybe the problem really is a matter of optimization-- updating or repairing or rethinking or adding more instances of the same parts or retuning the components of the black box-- and not a problem of far more basic engineering... namely, that the black box itself does not generate the desired outcome well, and maybe never has?
I think we all have ideas about possible answers to that question.
But being able to list why something doesn't work isn't the same thing as being part of designing and implementing something that does.
And there's something more at stake here. What Reveal also shows is that the more people had matured and become Christ centered, the more likely they were actually to leave the congregation altogether!
That is, the black box actually has the opposite effect of what it claims. Instead of making Christ-centered disciples, it often tends to get rid of them!
And there's something more at stake here. What Reveal also shows is that the more people had matured and become Christ centered, the more likely they were actually to leave the congregation altogether!
That is, the black box actually has the opposite effect of what it claims. Instead of making Christ-centered disciples, it often tends to get rid of them!
That's why before we leap to conclusions about what to do instead-- and thereby perhaps actually substitute one black box approach for another-- we need to spend some time first in examining and naming all the ways where we still apply "black box" thinking to our lives as disciples of Jesus and our work of discipling others in his way.
A fearless, searching inventory.
And then confession.
And part of that confession may need to be that we are powerless to overcome how habitual and entrenched black box thinking has become for us. Truly, Western Christianity may be so steeped in a black box enculturation of doing and being church, that we need something like an exorcism, cleansing by the Spirit and re-wiring of our synapses to set us free.
So... to begin that process, two questions.
1. Where do you find yourself or your worshiping community falling or falling back into black box thinking?
2. What will you do to confess that, and seek God's grace and power to repent and find a better way?
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
Photo credits: Black Box, by Ken Goldberg. Used by permission under a Creative Commons License.
8 comments:
Great thoughts and questions!
I look forward to the answers of others.
I think black box thinking is seductive because it involves things we can do. It creates activity. It assures us that we are doing all we can to make something happen.
But if it is deserved or required of God, it cannot be grace.
I think you are spot on when you talk about black box thinking. However, I wonder if we are interpretting the data correctly. The Hawkin's talk is taking too long to load right now, but is the **data** saying that "disciples develop in a variety of ways and we haven't been able to quantify those ways" or is it saying that "even when we have all these programs in place, we only seem to be growing a very few disciples"?
I suspect it is the second. And if it is, might there not be a second interpretation of this data?
Perhaps the issue isn't that these programs don't help to form disciples, but that disciples are incredibly hard to form? After all, out of all those thousands, Jesus only managed about 70 disciples and hardly any of them turned up at the cross...
Even the most successful disciple 'programs' in history had only very limited results: paul, early monasticism, the mendicant friars, the jesuits, the wesleys. None of these seem to have made disciples out of more than a small (tiny???) portion of the christian population of the time.
Maybe the problem is that we keep thinking we can do better than Jesus and Paul. Its not that small groups, good worship, etc don't work. Its that these sorts of things are the only things that do work, when they work at all????
Pax,
Doug
Doug,
Hawkins is saying the latter-- that even when you have all the black box components in place and optimize them just right, you don't see many disciples forming and staying around. In fact, you see more of them ready to ditch the whole thing.
I would agree that disciples are hard to form. And I think that early Christianity's adaptive response to that-- the development of the catechumenate-- recognized that fact and provided a way to address it that looked a lot more like actual disciple making (hands-on apprenticeship in the way) than running people through a black box with options to suit their preferences.
I also think that the Methodist requirement of participation in a weekly class meeting of 10-12 people to learn how to live the General Rules before one could be admitted to membership in the Methodist Society, and then ongoing participation in such as long as one wished to continue to be a Methodist was in continuity with that.
My sense is there's nothing more effective at making disciples than actually discipling people-- hands-on. No programmatic approach-- that is, no black box-- actually can do that as well as a real apprenticeship in the way from folks who know what they're doing, and where they don’t are honest about that and trust God, with you, to work it out.
All of the components in the typical congregational black box are at least one step removed from such a process.
It's not that anything is inherently wrong with any of them in principle. They're all good and even necessary. But they can't themselves-- or in any combination-- especially in a consumerist society-- deliver the outcome of discipleship to Jesus well.
So it's no wonder they can't duplicate what a something like the early catechumenate did. (I’d argue you can already see it in beginning stages of collapse in Chrysostom’s catechetical lectures).
Might one say that the catechumenate or the early Methodist societies were black boxes in their own right?
Maybe-- a little.
Except for one thing. Both of these actually required and provided the means for daily personal practice and daily face to face community.
Face to face community in Apostolic Tradition was ensured by daily participation in morning and/or evening prayer.
Face to face community in early Methodism was assured (though far less securely) through the requirements of the Rules themselves and the still relative physical closeness of people to one another in the cities of England.
In other words, these were immersive experiences-- a sort of proper prelude to baptism, as it were, in that sense. They affected every aspect of one's life. They were far more like the US Army's Basic Training-- a rigorous orientation to the way of life expected of a Christian, yet fully recognized as only an orientation, because there was far more to learn that one could not learn until having learned these life-ways.
The demands and the stretching of one's soul that these processes required, it seems to me, mean these weren't black boxes.
You were given no menu of options and asked to select the ones that suited your fancy best. The assumption in offering such a menu is that you are a consumer and your preferences drive the system. In short, it keeps you enslaved to whatever previously formed you.
The assumption in discipleship is that you are a novice, your preferences are unformed or badly formed, and you will learn from the master what really matters and how to live and move and breathe and speak in a world driven by that.
I could do a whole other post about what Reveal got wrong. I'll just say here that it seems to me they got to a point of great insight in realizing the Black Box doesn't generate disciples well-- but then capitulated to the underlying consumerist and individualist assumptions of their model (or perhaps the wider culture?) in the application of this finding.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you say, Br Taylor. What we also, I'm sure, agree upon is that even the catechumenate and the cathedral prayer offices too easily become black boxes.
Also, as you point out, the catechumenate seems to fall apart fairly quickly (leading to the rise of monaticism???) and the constant exhortations to attend morning and evening prayer in the early centuries indicate how few actually participated.
So, in summary, we know:
1) that forming disciples happens when people are mentored (daily) by other disciples--in a monastery, a methodist class, in catechesis and mystagogy groups, at the feet of the rabbi;
2) that whatever we do, even with mentoring, there will be few disciples;
3) that it is very easy, therefore, to reach for a black box;
4) that sometimes the black box may even head in the right direction (small groups with a strong sense of mentoring come to mind); and
5) mentoring, itself, easily turns into a black box.
We surely have our work cut out for us!!! ;-)
Pax,
Br Doug
I like what Doug said--that disciples are incredibly hard to form and the numbers, in any setting will be few. As a pastor, I have to remind myself of this. It's something that's been unfolding for me over time. And for me this does not mean that the majority of people in the pews are not Christian. I just don't think that most church goers/most people have the time or the opportunity to be at the level of those who are drawn to a monastic/class/catechumenate way of life.
I also think it's interesting that once some people get to this place that they leave the church. This makes perfect sense to me. And is making more and more sense to me. The institutional church cannot foster a deep oneness with Christ. In fact, I think it hinders it. The Holy Spirit birthed communities of believers--but is this the same thing as "church?"
One more thing--the black box seems to be one of those quick fixes--do more, have more, to get more, and yet all this doing, all this having, all this striving--doesn't work.
I keep wondering if all this emphasis on "growing churches" is all about anxiety of the church at this time: anxiety about its future, anxiety about not having a job etc. etc. I wonder if we started to turn our churches really into houses of prayer and meditation and service and sacrament, rather than all this striving to make people more Biblically literate and propositional sound, what would happen?
Marcy,
Disciples are incredibly hard for CONGREGATIONS to form.
Like, "Toonces the Driving Cat" hard.
Yes, Toonces can drive. But not very well.
But they're not as hard to form-- for those who are truly interested in this journey-- through other forms of Christian community.
A good number of the folks leaving in the Reveal study were not just leaving Willow or "the institutional church." They were leaving Christianity in any recognizable form. I don't think that's an outcome any format of Christian community-- whether a congregation or a class meeting or an organic group-- would hope to foster. Yet that is what was happening.
Meanwhile, folks in Wesley's day were NOT leaving the congregations. Many of them actually ended up more connected to congregations than before, because being part of a congregation was one of the requirements of being a member in good standing in a Methodist society.
So what we see is not only that relying on congregations to form disciples well ends up forming some people who leave the faith entirely-- a very negative outcome-- a lose-lose. We also see that when other "formative" forms of Christian community do their thing, the result can be INCREASED participation in congregations as well. It's a win-win.
So why do we keep trying to make what has a strong track record of lose-lose (the congregation) the definitive locus for disciple making, when we know, in our own history, a powerful and effective win-win way?
Peace in Christ,
Taylor
In response to Taylor's question about why we keep doing the same thing over and over in an effort to make disciples through congregational means, I don't know. You and I have talked about this many, many times. And when I share this thinking with others, they really, really just don't get it. They still believe the church/congregation IS the disciple-making body, the disciple-making place. I guess you could say that this idea of congregations as THE place to make disciples is now so part of the church's DNA--that to overcome this thinking will take years and years. When I've talked to people about what we have discussed, some become even defensive. My in-laws for instance--who are smart people. They wonder why the small groups that have met in their church for years and years, why that doesn't count as disciple-making? They even find some of the ideas that we've talked about--that deeper formation happening outside the church--as quite elitist. Why should you have to go somewhere else to some special place that only a few people can perhaps take the time to do or have the money to do?
On another note, I do know of a pastor and his associate who did establish covenant discipleship groups in their church based on that text, Covenant-Discipleship Groups, something like that. But this pastor said again, that over time after about year, many of those groups disbanded for one reason or another. However, there could be one or two that are still going on--keeping with this idea that only a few will participate in serious Christian formation practices.
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