A member of our church told me with some concern that there was a large amount of water pouring out of our air conditioner cooling tower. It was Sunday morning and folks were arriving for service and there was water pouring out all over the parking lot.
I knew from previous experience that the air conditioner tower did this from time to time. When I told the maintenance team about it, I learned that air conditioner towers need to do this from time to time. I could tell it was a complex dynamic. There was a reservoir that normally the water goes into, but sometimes it gets full or a valve gets stuck or something so the water pours out.
So essentially my response when somebody tells me that water is pouring out of the air conditioner tower is: "Move along. Nothing to see here. That's just what air conditioner towers do."
I think everything is OK and it's normal for water to pour out. I'm sure everything is fine with our air conditioner tower. Probably. Not the point anyway.
People expect you as a leader in discipleship to be able to explain things. Complex things of faith and interpersonal relationships and air conditioner towers are opportunities not to just assuage concerns and allay fears: they are opportunities to establish and affirm trust and to connect with people.
I often get caught up in assuaging and allaying and don't do nearly enough connecting. I want to have the answers. The right answers. I want to anticipate what can happen (especially what can go wrong) and be there to take care of things. I want to do my job well.
I can, in fact, gather and distribute proper knowledge and correct information so well that I fail to do the real work of ministry.
We need to understand things and we need to be able to explain things and make things accessible. Always of course without falling to that greatest of all temptations in such scenarios...the dreaded dumbing done effect.
The limiting factor isn't information. You can google why water pours out of cooling towers and understand the dynamics easily enough if you spend the time to do so.
The bottleneck is realizing that just because you understand something doesn't mean that someone else is going to.
That's assuming we can somehow bust down the barrier of thinking that people ask about water pouring out of air conditioner towers because they want to bring a problem to your attention.
People ask about water pouring out of the air conditioner towers or what your budget is for global missions or why God seems to be so angry sometimes but what they are really asking you for is for you to "hear my story and understand me".
And that is really, really complex.
Why does such a large amount of desire pour out of us sometimes?
2 comments:
I think about this topic a lot, Forrest. I call it transactions vs. transcendence.
Our daily life, our ordinary life, is full of transactions. Busyness.
And our spiritual life naturally becomes this too, because it's what we do.
However, what we want and expect from a "spiritual life" is transcendence. And, when we don't experience transcendence, we question God.
A transactional life becomes a burn-out life. Yet, an all-consuming pursuit of transcendence can detach us from the "real world" of transactions (where everyone exists day-to-day).
It seems we are to pursue transcendence through our transactions, which is exactly what I think you are proposing here.
It's not a balance thing. It's a tension thing. We are to live somewhere among the tensions of transactions and transcendence.
Nice post! I've never heard the phrase "dumbing done effect". Write a post on that one day.
Awareness is a component that might come into play with living well in the tension of transaction vs. transcendence.
We chop wood and carry the wood, but once we understand ourselves and the deeper purposes of chopping the wood and carrying the water, we chop wood and carry water differently.
Though: we are still chopping wood and carrying water.
As far as dumbing done, I get the feeling when I declare that I'm not dumbing down, the dumbing damage has been done. It sets up some sort of hierarchy of understanding or status.
Healthy tension. Still getting a concept for it.
Post a Comment