Moving from a victim mindset when it comes to constraints
Part 2 of a multi-part series on making constraints beautiful.
Last week I made the argument that limitations might not be causes for discouragement or even circumstances to overcome. Instead, constraints might be sparks for our imaginations. (Some people and organizations impose impediments on themselves for this very reason.) To get to that creative space, though, we have to be in right relationship to our constraints.
In A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business Adam Morgan and Mark Barden propose that there are three stages we move through when we butt up against a limitation:
Victim. “Well, I guess we can’t do what we had planned.”
Neutralizer. “Maybe there’s a workaround…”
Transformer. “What if there’s a whole new way of thinking about this that might be even better and bolder?”
In church life we are often stuck in one of the first two stages. In the victim stage we are deeply mired in scarcity thinking. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough people. We’ll just have to adjust our hopes for the future. (If our hopes are the fruit of discernment, giving up is spiritually dangerous business.) In the neutralizer stage we’re a little more scrappy. We find ways to “make it work.” Maybe we cancel the copier contract and go to online newsletters and projected bulletins only so that the copier money can fund something else. Maybe we give our pastor more time off instead of a cost of living raise. As neutralizers we don’t give up, but we also don’t drastically change our approach to limitations.
Transformers, though, go big. They consider what is causing a constraint to begin with. They question what others might see as givens. They aren’t afraid to experiment. So, for example, if my congregation wants to reach out to people who have been hurt by or in church, my members and I need to have some sense of and empathy for what that wound is about. We need to question whether it is necessary or even helpful for those who’ve been hurt to cross the threshold of our physical plant and whether in-person gatherings are the best means of connection. Then, powered by the Holy Spirit, we need to try a few faithful things and be willing for those attempts to fail until we find what works for the people we want to welcome.
I think we see all three stages reflected in the early Church. The disciples lock themselves away after the crucifixion, and even those who are brave enough to be out and about like the Jesus followers on the Emmaus Road (“We had hoped…”) are in the victim stage. In the transition time between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost, the disciples take on a neutralizer approach. (“Well, we’re down a disciple, so let’s pick a new one.”) But after the Holy Spirit lights a fire under them, the disciples are off and running, sharing the Gospel since Jesus is no longer physically present to do so, trying to figure out what the body of Christ looks like in this new reality, getting in trouble a lot with the establishment, changing their understandings of what is most important, and inviting in people they previously would not have considered neighbors, much less good religious matches. These first victim —> neutralizer —> transformer followers are the reason we have the Church today.
Luckily, Morgan and Barden note that all of us have the ability to move from victim to neutralizer to transformer. How we do that will be the subject of the next article on beautiful constraints.
This article is part 2 in a multi-part series. Read part 1 here.