Musings on Spiritual Matters

Often congregations look for feedback on church issues.  This seems to be a healthy practice.  You cannot understand the people unless you communicate with them.  But once this process takes place, people will provide feedback.  But mostly a feedback situation is provided to air negative thoughts.  Rarely do people go searching for positive thoughts, and probably an elder has never started a campaign to connect with the congregation when all seemed good.  Since the foundation of the feedback is negative, people provide what the leadership is looking for.  The basic question is, “What do you dislike about the congregation?”  And people will provide answers.  The problem is that these answers are not give a scale.  For an example, I like my house, but yes if you were to ask me to list some things about it I would like to change, I could provide some.  But no matter what I said, the reality of the issue is that I am not moving.  Of course there are somethings that if I could I would change, but overall it is not that big a deal to me.  So in a church setting, when we ask people what needs to be changed, of course there are some elements that could be improved, but what is the level of dissatisfaction with them.  Are the complains a 8 or of 10, or a 2 out of 10.  Often in church we take dissatisfaction as a 10 or of 10.  We are worried that people are upset, but the reality is that really it is not that big of deal, but since you asked, yea, if this could be changed, then good.  If we asked people in the church about my preaching, of course there would be some elements that needed to be improved, people would say, I wished he read the verses better, but this weakness is not going to cause someone to change congregations, it is just a wish he could.  When church leaders hear feedback, it is important for them to understand the level of dissatisfaction.  If not, we can become anxious over little stuff.  This will cause us concern in which there is really little worry.  But if we treat all criticism on the same level we will get wrapped up in the little things instead of focusing on the big stuff.  Sister Mary is worried about the lighting, and brother Bob is worried about the carpet while teenage Frank is struggling with drugs.  Frank is taking a path to deeper sin, and Mary and Bob would just like to see a little renovation, but in reality Mary and Bob are going no where, while Frank is struggling to maintain his faith.  These issues are not all equal, and should not be treated as such.  All feedback to be judged on the level of dissatisfaction, and should not be treated as equal.

Related posts:

1. Level of Community
2. The Level of Implicit Instruction
3. Review of “Taking Your Church to the Next Level”
4. The Feedback Loop

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This entry was posted by Matthew on Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.