On Criticism

I found myself, though no fault of my own, watching Strictly and Xfactor last night. It was horrid.

One observation. The panels of judges in both programmes know something about the subject they are critiquing. Why, in both cases, are they so hated if they offer suggestions for improvement? Most of the acts nod in acknowledgement. Why do the audience boo?

When Craig Revel Horwood enjoys a routine but suggests some correction of posture or hand positioning he is booed. When Gary Barlow applauds a singer but points out pitching issues in verse 1 (I like 'pitching issues' for what we would call 'out of tune') the audience goes mad at him.

We seem to want our developing stars to be fully formed and unmentored. Even the babies. How do you learn without comments?

I suppose the good cop bad cop routine and falling-out-judges makes for good tele but I can't help feeling that giving the impression that every piece of advice that is not encouraging is somehow wrong is, well, wrong.

We used to run a summer camp and each day would review the performance of everyone at everything the day before. One sign of growth as a Christian leader was the ability to sit in the meeting and hear feedback on your talk/music/game-leading/cooking. Those who listened and learned were the best; those who got all defensive were in for a life of under-development. It was also good to learn to give feedback, positive and negative.

Criticism is good. Anyway the TV was all too loud for me. Went to bed with quiet music. Getting old.

Change

Three weeks ago, in a large meeting, I made the assertion that all change arises from dissatisfaction of some sort. I gave some examples. In the specific context of wondering if we might change the way we do our small group work at church, my colleagues and I shared that we were dissatisfied with our church's outreach. We wanted to have a conversation (and we have a had a really good one with about 120 people involved) about whether or not our home groups might be the solution to this problem.

In the midst of this I wondered if anyone could think of any examples of change that did not arise from dissatisfaction and I tried to prove them wrong. This too was a fascinating discussion. Most of the examples suggested were too easy to knock down and after a while I stopped bothering, but I did feel the original assertion wasn't tight enough. Some extracts:

Maybe better to say all growth begins with change.

Of course all change begins with dissatisfaction. If we were satisfied why would we change? Why make a mountain out of a truism?

So I posed another question. I said, 'No-one has yet given me an example of change that does not arise out of dissatisfaction - but the dissatisfaction may be about the future.'

I received a number of replies concerning things such as adolescence or plants changing with the seasons. In terms of philosophical posturing they are correct. My axiom is not a catch all for the non-human world. Adolescence is, of course, not a change but a development, a distinction lost on many of my contributors. To some extent this is true of the plant world too but I was not happy yet.

Some more comments:

I fear that you're using 'dissatisfaction' in a catch-all way...my hope that 'maybe if I change this/that I'll see an improvement' might indicate dissatisfaction or it might illustrate anticipation or hope.

Lost you on this Steve, your definition of dissatisfaction and change needed.

Sales Training 101: You cannot sell to anyone who is in a satisfied state. They have no needs and so you cannot supply anything to meet them. The only people to whom you can sell are those who have a problem they need solving (70%) and those who see an opportunity they wish to grasp (30%.) I would argue that both those states show a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What's true for selling and buying is true for the rest of life.

I've never been convinced by the 'needs' based humanistic approach to human activity. I know it's popular in some areas of management/marketing, but my own research suggests that people's activity is generally far to complex to fit with one decision making mode.  ...you've created dissatisfaction as an umbrella term and can now quite satisfactorily fit any eventuality under it.

Can I ask if using your dissatisfaction motif helps you to act in ways that brings about the change you aspire to? If it does, don't worry about being wrong, instigating and supporting healthy change is surely the goal?

So let's say a few things in response to this. Firstly a big yah boo sucks to anyone who says social networking lacks depth. Over 40 contributions to this discussion and many of a very high quality. Secondly, can we recall for a moment that I only posed a couple of questions. I haven't arrived anywhere yet (I'm about to though).

Thirdly, and finally, I think I would now want to say that no-one will invest time and energy in making a change to their pattern of behaviour unless there is some element of dissatisfaction with the current pattern. This way we exclude those who have unwanted change forced upon them - it was their bosses/leaders who were dissatisfied and made them change. If we want to change together we need to agree on the dissatisfaction we are moving away from. Thus meetings and conversations.

I think this can be summarised as 'All human planned change arises out of dissatisfaction.'

OMG It's Happened

Today is Friday and my regular day free from clerical duties. I finished work last night at 7.30 p.m. for an evening out with Mrs WWA so this morning feels relaxed. I started, as I often do, by knocking off a short piece of writing. Earning £50 extra before breakfast is good (but I breakfast late these days).

Anyway, and this is the point, as I was finishing my article my mind wandered to breakfast and of what it might consist. This is why I am not a good proof reader and why I put written pieces down for a few hours before submitting them.

I recalled that there were left over rolls and tomatoes from a lunch yesterday and that I owned some bacon.

As I walked into the kitchen my inner dialogue went, 'And lo, it came to pass that he discovered bacon in the fridge and...' Stop.

Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Stop.

Nativity speak has begun. I never asked for that to happen. Why? It is November. I am not putting a tea towel on my head for at least a fortnight.

Haiku

Apologies but, inspired by Harry Baker, I have had an outbreak of appalling haiku puns. Here they are so far:

The mountain ruler
Removed by people power
It was a high coup

Remember Miss Stark?
Prince Andrew entered the room
And he said 'Hi Koo.'

Many people wait
I arrive to join them all
And so I queue

Noise like a pigeon
I can do that sound quite well
It is when I coo

I wanted a walk

She suggested a long one

But I said 'Hike, oo.'

 

Latter day prophet

I think you are quite bonkers

You David Icke you

 

Geordie snooker star

Gives reasons for his talent

That is why aye cue

Show em yer warts

Lovely time round the lunch table yesterday with some nice people:

My Curate colleague, her husband and little boy
A couple from Trendlewood church we have got to know
A couple we met at the pub (he) and then when I married them
A couple we met through Alpha then a baptism contact and their little girl

But I think this may be odd behaviour for round here, with some notable exceptions.

A few year's ago a Christian course was published called 'Friendship Evangelism.' I recall remarking at the time that if the only bunch of people who had a specific brief to build relationships with outsiders had to have a course on how to make friends wasn't that a bit of an indictment about how well we were doing after 2,000 years? Maybe it was because I had lived in the Midlands or the north all my life, a dining room table constantly surrounded by people and a kitchen permanently inhabited by someone who had dropped by for tea and a chat.

A fellow church employee, who I supervised, asked me a few years ago, 'Steve, are we friends?' I found it a difficult question. Firstly, if he had to ask, clearly there was some doubt in his mind. Secondly because I operate without a category 'friend' in my head most of the time. I meet people, I behave in a friendly way towards them, I build a relationship. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but until they screw me over I continue to trust them and want to get the relationship better.

I have three or four really close friends and a nice family. Thereafter I don't use the friend word very much.

Regardless of what you mean by 'friend' it has been much harder than I ever thought here in the south-west to gently encourage this attitude of building relationships with outsiders. It simply doesn't come naturally to most people. No-one is unfriendly, but few are lowering the drawbridge.

Is it fear? A couple once told me they would invite me round for a meal when the ensuite bathroom was finished. What a terrible, all-consuming fear it is that people might see us in a state of less than perfection, even in a room there was no chance of my ever going in.

If you want to make friends you have to show everyone your blemishes, make your mistakes in public. When people come round for a meal here sometimes they get asked to peel stuff, stir pans or serve the drinks. They certainly see the last minute cooking panic since the kitchen and dining room are open plan. Clearing up is often a communal event. No-one minds.

I have heard someone describe having guests for a meal as 'outside my comfort zone.' I have been in lounges I think no one else has ever been in. It doesn't even have to be a meal you cooked. 'Let's share a take-away.'

People of Nailsea. Next time you meet the neighbour in the drive why not say 'Would you and Mr(s) neighbour like to come round for a drink and a chat next (name)day?'

For goodness sake, what's the worst that could happen? And I have seen those Dr Pepper ads.

Dream dream dream

I may have shared my recurring dream before. The backdrop varies but the situation is always that I need to be somewhere or do something and things are conspiring to distract me, block my way, or hinder progress.

I have almost reached the point where I can break into my own dream, without waking up, and announce to myself that I am dreaming.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this tells me I am frustrated by the slow progress of my work.

Parish life isn't hard like log-chopping is, or tedious like a table-top manufacturing job might be, but it is all about the technique of lining things up in the same direction so the whole thing will move. It can be incredibly slow.

Today I am frustrated that something has gone wrong only I can fix and it is taking my mind off important things.

We all want the gospel to be effective but we stay where we are because we can't agree precisely how. Clinging mud; can't walk forwards.

Thank you I feel a bit better now.

Trapped between two silences

If it came to it, and you knew you were going to be remembered in public, would you want a minute's silence or a minute's applause?

Our culture is changing.

I did a quick Bible study on silence this week, in preparation for a thought for the day at a men's breakfast this morning.

Obviously there is no noise in a vacuum, so when the earth was without form and void it would have been quiet. Genesis 1 tells us God spoke into this silence. There then follows a hubbub, a cacophony as the created order finds its place and seemingly, in the process, loses its God.

Only with the onset of the ministry of prophets do we have the poignant thought that God is not in the earthquake, wind or fire (where his people might have expected him after a few skirmishes on mountains) but a still small voice. When the earth was formless he could speak quietly. Why raise his volume now?

In the wisdom tradition Job's best comfort comes from friends sitting in silence; when they speak they screw up. Proverbs tell us that a fool seems wise when he remains silent. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.

Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would be silent like a sheep before its shearers. Six centuries later, before the High Priest, Mark tells us the Messiah stood and said nothing.

After the resurrection the noise is of proclamation with accompanying special effect tongues of fire and wind. Now there can be shouting. The rest of the New Testament is all talk.

At the end of all things Revelation tells us only of silence in heaven for half an hour.

On Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday we fall silent for two minutes in memory of those who fell silent for ever. We are currently the people in between, a poppy for comfort.

You may applaud me when I'm gone if you wish. But silence reminds the senders of the sent. It takes one to make a noise; it takes everyone to make a silence.

A Questioning Post

A colleague of mine used to say that discussion groups after a talk were a good opportunity for people to 'burp'. He drew the analogy of a baby being fed - after a while the infant needs to be winded and then some more food can be inserted into the gap. Without being winded a small child will feel full before it is.

It said a lot about that teaching style. The speaker has the food and people need feeding; almost force-feeding.

I have always been a great enthusiast for teaching in a dialogue.  I am not anti-input. I do have some resources, training and skills which equip me with stuff to pass on. But the assumption about dialogue (Greek: dia logos = through word(s)) is that I will be as helped by the listener as the listener by me.

In passing let us note that the wonderful thing about a Twitter #hashtag at the beginning of a broadcast is that it then becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.

For me a crucial skill in promoting dialogue is to allow others to speak once a question has been asked. I heard the brilliant John Sergeant at a literary festival a few years back. When he took questions he took all the questions then spoke a bit more on the most common themes raised.

So if a speaker says 'Any questions' I think they should resist at all costs the desire to answer the first one. Doing that suggests that the first questioner has captured the mood of the meeting. Often the answer to the first question is so long it precludes further questions being asked. Major fail. Answering questions is over-rated anyway. Telling people their question is helpful and allowing it to inform the rest of the gathering is better, much better, than feeling it is just a need to burp which can be dealt with and more input inserted.

Last night Declan, the RC Bishop of Clifton told a group of us that the ecumenical community has today begun to use the expression 'receptive ecumenism'; we approach other Christian communities as gifted people who might inform us. It is a dreadful expression - one of my major problems with the ecumenical community is that its language, in striving for common ground, becomes more and more uncommon - but a good point is hiding in it.

Let us live with each other's questions, appreciate each other's giftedness and accept that every time we answer a question too quickly we betray our agenda that these are no more than burps.

Mick's Metaphor of the Week

BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning at about 8.50 a.m.

Greece has already gone down the plughole and Italy is on its way down and somehow the countries on the rim are being prised away by the gravitational pull.

That's a hell of a plughole. Some sort of white hole perhaps, although who is doing the prising in such a difficult environment?

Push push shove shove

When people start a blog post 'This is not a complaint about anyone' they are rarely believed. But this is not a complaint about anyone. It's a conversation starter.

There was a joke told to me about thirty years ago, and I guess it had been around for a while before that. It concerned a vicar.

Every morning he was seen walking out of the house and along to the railway line. He stood on the bridge looking along the track. As the first train of the day passed beneath the bridge he did a little leap of joy and danced his way back to his house.

More on that later.

In one of the parishes in which I work there is a usual Sunday attendance of over 300 in four congregations across two worship centres. The electoral role is about 320 or so and those we might call our members (over 16 years of age) number about 340 or 350.

For some months now we have been talking about, and planning, how to improve outreach. The parish might be blessed with large numbers but this is more through residence than successful evangelism. Massive growth in numbers in the 1980s and 1990s corresponded with people moving into the area as it was allowed to grow under the North Somerset Development Plan.

As part of this we have suspended our small groups this month. We are holding a series of congregational meetings to discuss whether those small groups might be the key place to get this improvement to happen. We have invited all church members to these meetings, not just those currently in small groups (you might call them home groups but ours don't all meet in homes).

The first two meetings (one daytime, one evening) have been good. I am sure I should be grateful that a total of 110 people have wrestled with our opening session and asked great questions. There is clearly an underlying nervousness about change, something my personality type finds it very hard to understand but I try and listen. The opening few comments suggest that it is the support and care people value about their small groups and this has corresponded to a reluctance, over the years, to grow and multiply.

The end point of the conversation, for our small groups, has not been identified. You can't have a conversation if the end point is fixed. The end point of the conversation for the church has to be fixed. If we don't get real about outreach then we will do what a near neighbour church has done - grow old and be in danger of death.

Here's the conversation I want to start. If 110 out of 340 people came that is about a third. However radical the decision making of this holy bunch of the committed and concerned how should we communicate it to the two thirds who couldn't make it, didn't see the point or weren't bothered?

Those of us who try to lead the church are not trying to force anything through, despite the feelings of some more outspoken members. We are genuinely trying to have a conversation about improving evangelism and see our small groups as being at the heart of this.

But I fear that we will have a hard job on our hands convincing the two-thirds that any decision or policy change was genuinely arrived at through prayer and dialogue. As the 'nam vet says, 'You wouldn't know man; you weren't there.' Maybe that is simply what I should expect life to be like.

Asked why he got so excited about the train  the vicar in the joke (remember the joke) said, 'I get excited because it is fantastic to see something in this town that moves without being pushed.'

If I ever show signs of becoming a train-spotter please take me out the back and have a harsh word with blunt sticks. But I understand that vicar.

Good morning.

The Greatest Gift?

Those of us unfortunate enough to recall Ken Dodd's pop career will be able to humm a little ditty called Happiness. 'The greatest gift that I possess...' went the chorus which, annoyingly, I can still sing in full.

I've been pondering happiness recently. A survey, picked up by the Daily Mail but which started its life as the research from a drinks company, listed the top thirty things people said made them happy. These included eating cake, finding £10 in an old pair of jeans and having a quiet moment to yourself.

Since it is fairly clear that two cakes are better than one, £20 is preferable to £10 and two quiet moments are better than a singleton it is apparent that these results are to do with the transitory hit of well-being one can get from a specific event.

In other words, happiness is temporary and short-lived..

Last week Jeanette Winterson read from her biography Why be happy when you could be normal. The comedian Jon Richardson called his recent tour Don't happy be worry.

I was preaching yesterday on the passage in 2 Kings 4 where Elisha revives the dead son of a well-to-do Shunammite woman. In this passage the Hebrew word shalom appears a lot.

It is a fascinating passage, linguistically. Asked if there is anything that can be done to repay her hospitality the woman responds 'I have a home amongst my people.'

It seems to me that she is asked how she can be made happier and she responds that she is content. A home amongst her people is all she needs.

Probing further it turns out she is childless. Elisha prophesies that she will have a son within a year. She accuses him of being mean, 'Don't mislead your servant...'

But she does have a son, who dies after a few years. She heads off to the mountain where Elisha hangs out. Asked if everything is OK (shalom) she replies 'Everything is shalom.' Elisha sees through this and she gives him a right telling-off for taking her contentedness and making her happy only to make her unhappy again.

There is a happy ending. Great prophets don't become so by accident and Elisha does the resurrection thing on the lad.

But you see in a Hebrew sense everything was shalom even before that. The woman was back in exactly the same state she had been in when asked if she needed anything.

You wouldn't be able to imagine chocolate making you happy if you had never tasted chocolate. Once you have had some you need more.

Childlessness is hard to bear but having that ended and then returned to you so dramatically is appalling.

To finish where I began there was a ghastly song we used to sing on houseparties in the 1970s:

If you want joy, real joy, wonderful joy
Let Jesus come into your heart

He won't make you happy but he may make you content. I still hate the song but I do understand it. Do not seek happiness; seek joy and contentedness. If you have a home amongst your people that is enough.

WWJD

Back in the 1980s David Jenkins, as Bishop of Durham, managed to become the story. It always dismays Christians when they want to point people to Jesus and find the press pointing at them.  The problem was that the press got wind of the idea that his views on the main features of Christianity were not conventional (they were, but they were academically nuanced). Eventually something he said 'the resurrection is not just a conjuring trick with bones - it's far more than that' began to circulate as the exact opposite 'Bishop says resurrection a conjuring trick with bones.'

I heard the original interview on the radio and know what he said.

But for a few months, in the pubs, clubs, homes and workplaces where I wandered it was easy to talk about Jesus. You started with 'What do you think about the Bishop of Durham' and then moved on to 'So what do you think happened at the resurrection?' Easy. Good chats ensued.

As a naive ordinand/student in 1982 or so I suggested to a group in the Common Room that 'What Would Jesus Do' was a good way to approach an ethical issue. A lecturer, who spent a lot of time in the Junior Common Room because we had a snooker table and the SCR didn't, overheard and said, 'I don't think it's a valid question.'

Since one of the reasons we spent time in the JCR was to get away from theological discussions with lecturers for a while, and given that he had placed his view diametrically opposite to mine rather than letting me tease out dissatisfaction with my own position (a much better way to argue), I didn't rise to the bait.

He was right though.

Five years ago, when being interviewed for the post I currently hold, my final question was, 'What one word would five people who know you well use to describe you?' I answered that the thing I appreciated about most of my friends was that their response in such circumstances would be unexpected. I then listed the sort of words I hoped my friends would use if I bought them enough beer and promised them more.

What Would Jesus Do was being debated on the radio yesterday. I heard nobody say that having read the gospels they would not like to hazard a guess at how this most unpredictable of holy men might respond. For every 'Let the one without sin cast the first stone' there is a 'Let's go somewhere else.' For each compassionate gut reaction, 'They were like sheep without a shepherd' there is a 'Wipe the dust from your feet if you are not welcomed.'

So outside St Paul's Cathedral my Jesus, my saviour, the one like whom there is no-one (English O level, grade 3, thanks Mr Parry) would just as likely tear down the tents, ask how many people there had any credit cards, admonish the cathedral staff for not welcoming the poor or ignore the crowds and go down the pub and speak to some others because that was why he came.

So WWJD? What Would Jesus Drink?

Obviously WWJD. White Wine or Jack Daniel's.

Good morning.

Autumn Colours

We are now in the period of the year where my dear partner leaves for work before dawn and returns after dark Monday to Friday. Can you get three for two on serotonin anywhere? I'm not particularly an outdoor junkie - why walk in the sun when you can see pictures of it on screen? - but I do understand that from time to time it is good for me.

What a privilege to be able to gaze out of my window by day on to a garden of gorgeous reds, browns and yellowy greens - and also to live with someone who can, with minimal effort, transform our conservatory so it mirrors those colours. Local guests who wish to dress to match the furniture (they do exist, really) need to move into the season of reds and purples.

Psychology News

Fascinating article in the Observer on Sunday in which Daniel Kahneman argues, in an extract from his  book Thinking, Fast and Slow, that the evidence clearly shows that successful traders in the money market cannot demonstrate that their success is down to anything but luck. In other words the luckiest ones are seen as the best and faith continues to be put in them on that basis.

He established his theories by trying to assess how well soldiers would do in leadership based on observing their performances in a series of tests. It turned out that there was virtually no correlation between someone taking charge of a log-dragging contest and actual leadership skills in the theatres of war or management. But no-one believed him and continued to run the sort of obstacle courses admired by management consultants the world over.

He explains how, once we see an illusion of skill - a cognitive illusion - we find it very hard to respond in any other way than as if it really is skill. Many of those we revere as successful have simply thrown several sixes in a row. Whilst there may be some advantage in being friends with someone who has just done that we need to be aware that runs of luck are runs of luck and no more.

So, who do you think is good at their job? And are they, or are they just lucky?