Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

Sara, Craig, and Stephanie call attention to the difficulty of convincing people in organizations or communities to step out of their “comfort zones” and embrace dramatic changes. I'm not sure I agree with Susan and Andrew, however, that there are no practical lessons to be learned from how Sara won and built support for her food pantires. The social psychologist William Bridges, in his volumes Transitions and Managing Transitions, presents an argument that I have found to be full of wisdom and that sheds light on Sara's success. We should not be too quick, he argues, to assume that people “always” oppose change. What appears to be opposition to specific changes (or to change in general) is often fear of the transitions we experience when we are asked to abandon a familiar way of doing things without knowing for certain what changes a new way of doing things will require us to make. I know how to work successfully under the “old” set of rules; I don’t know what will be expected of me under the new rules that are yet to be defined, much less whether I will be competent to meet them. Sara’s story of how she built support for her network of food pantries illustrates at least four ways of dealing with this fear of transition: she took small steps (or, at least, limited ones) that could in theory be reversed; she confronted others’ arguments but did so respectfully, focusing on the need she wanted to address rather than on others’ motives for opposing her; she did not waste a lot of time preaching to the parishioners of St. Gregory's about what they "ought" to do, but concentrated instead on addressing all the little things that worried them and that could sabotage her efforts; and she was as willing to be confronted and held accountable as she was to confront and hold others to account. It is not cynical to say that it is easier to challenge others than to accept being challenged ourselves. That’s what people in healthy organizations and communities do for one another. But if our challenges are respectful of others’ fears and reservations, and not dismissive of their motives, we have a better chance of building bridges than burning them.

You're right, Andrew, there is no guidance here on a practical level about how to do this. I wonder if it could be any other way? Like, if you worry about "how" aren't you like the disciples who, when Jesus called them said, "but, but, I have to do this, I have to do that, I have to bury my father …" Jesus basically says, "Do, or do not." You have to get in there and do it and figure it out as you go along.

And yes, there will be practicalities of size and scale and possibility and I think you are right all non-profits face this, at least the ones that are fully engaged in bringing about change. Again, we figure it out as we go along and we do it together, prayerfully. There will always be the pull between vision and making it work 'on the ground,' but so often that becomes a split - vision happens in one place (usually controlled church on Sunday morning) and 'on the ground' is a different world, too often unconnected. Sara puts them together. That is our call as well. It does not have to mean a food pantry but it will be something tangible and challenging.

There is something both impressive and alarming about the desire for Christian inclusiveness with which Sara undertakes her food pantry efforts in this chapter.  She realizes that there are too many people for the church or the neighborhood to handle, and that this is causing tensions within the church as well as among the people served.  Various strategies for limiting the number of pantry visitors are suggested: carding people to make sure they aren't "double dipping" at other local pantries, only serving people from the local area code, etc.  But her answer is always that Jesus wouldn't exclude in that way.

I join Craig and Stephanie in admiring this kind of fidelity to the Christian vision... But what to do about real-world logistical limitations and practicalities?  This is something all non-profits face (right Susan?).  But I'm not sure that, so far at least, Sara's story really gives us any guidance in this regard.  Can she, can we, just keep insisting that we follow the gospel vision and hope that the details take care of themselves?

 Reading chapter 11, I, too, was struck by the seeming disconnect between what the members of the congregation professed on Sunday and how they responded to the proposal for the food pantry.  There are very few people who willingly step outside of their comfort zones; this happens in every organization I've ever witnessed, church being only one example.  Like Sara, though, I feel that church is exactly the place where we should be stepping out of that comfort zone.  

Sara had some very important conversations with certain members of the congregation - like the Vietnam vet who had organized outreach to a village in Laos, the parish secretary who wondered aloud "What the f* would Jesus do?", one of the priests, and others who were sympathetic to the cause.  Perhaps she was less than charitable to the opposition, but it didn't sound like she was getting an offer of middle ground either.  Although despite the bickering, permission was granted and the congregation, at least in part, supported the effort in a variety of ways.

I loved the comparison she makes between church and food pantries: "how it asked me to leave the certainties of the past behind, tangled me up with people I didn't particularly want to know, and frightened me with its demand for more than I was ready to give."  It has been a while since I have been so challenged in church and I miss that.  It also challenges me to become that change agent myself.