Too Much Data?

Back again, after an extended summer break. My wife and I went to Boston and while there I picked up a copy of Edwin Friedman's book A Failure of Nerve which he was completing when he died in 1996.

Ed Friedman is one of those people I wish I had met. The rabbi and therapist, famous for applying family systems theory to institutions like churches and synagogues, is one of the most provocative and interesting thinkers of our times. In A Failure of Nerve, he argues that we live in an emotionally regressive culture that systematically undermines self-differentiated leadership and values safety over adventure. He develops his ideas about human communities being interdependent systems that have predictable ways of reacting to anxiety and change. Leaders are most effective when they refuse to become enmeshed in the anxious emotional processes of the system and learn to be self-differentiated.

But the part of the book that caught my eye, and that relates to what I've been trying to do with affiliates, is chapter 3, "Data Junkyards and Data Junkies: The Fallacy of Expertise." One of our culture's ways of dealing (or refusing to deal) with anxiety-provoking change is by multiplying the amount of data at our disposal. But it has gotten to the point where the sheer volume of information has become overwhelming. Data is now a form of "substance abuse" among those who use it as a substitute for wisdom and decisiveness. The multiplication of data in the information age reinforces many "learned superstitions."

I remember when I embarked on my project to understand affiliates better, clearly thinking, "Well, if I knew more about what they were thinking and feeling, I could respond more effectively." Hence, my survey. But I've found that simply gathering and assembling the data doesn't really produce anything. Simply knowing the reasons why affiliates don't attend church more often doesn't lead to change.

Those who have been following this blog know that I'm a terrible second-guesser, and my instinct is to discount the data. But I don't think that's what Friedman is saying. He's not advocating being ill-informed. He's just making the common sense observation that piling up data becomes counter-productive and inhibits action. The quest for more complete data simply postpones effective response indefinitely and actually serves to increase anxiety. Friedman argues that clarity about goals and decisiveness is actually a more important quality for leaders than being fully informed.

(I'm not doing justice to his ideas in these few sentences. You need to read the book!)

But here's what I think I'm learning. It's more important for churches and their leaders to be clear about who they are and what they need to be doing than to endlessly strive to figure out what people are thinking. I learned some helpful things about people who belong but don't attend through my survey. But that's only a preliminary, prepartory step to ministry. We need to be careful that we don't slip into thinking of our mission as mainly a marketing problem.

The data I've collected on affiliates have been really helpful to me in two ways. First, it reminds me that things in the church look different from the outside than they do from the inside. And second, it's shown me that there's no quick fix (another desire of an anxious system, according to Friedman.) There really is no single answer to the question "Why aren't those people coming to church and what can we do to change it?" I did ask those questions explicitly: "What are the main reasons that keep you away from church?" and "What, if anything, would motivate you to attend more often?" And the responses to those questions were among the least clear of the whole survey.

But after reading Friedman's book, I see that that's probably the most important lesson from the whole exercise. And that churches will be far more effective in ministering to their affiliates if they stop worrying about how to attract them and achieve greater clarity about who they are.