Ritual practices are intentions made material or concrete. Our ritual practices matter because they don’t just represent the commitments we openly acknowledge or declare. Habits reflect our implicit intentions as well. Policies are the material expressions of our core values. Budgets are a way to externalize priorities using the unit that this culture seems to […]
Appreciative inquiry and honoring what’s present
I’ve reached that stage in life where I sometimes look for things I already have: the glasses I’m looking at the world through, the cell phone I’m making a call with, the car keys in my pocket. It’s hilarious. And it’s instructive, mostly because it has little to do with age and lots to do […]
Hunt: Stones for bread
There’s a line in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus asks his audience, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7:9-10) He then explains that even if a parent might answer their children’s needs with […]
The ways we participate
One of my favorite extended analogies in the Christian scriptures is Church as Body. It’s an analogy that represents a collective as a dynamic organism rather than as a mechanical device. It assumes that there are many roles to play, not just one for all, and that each role well-played advances the well-being of the whole. […]
Coalitions and jigsaw puzzles
The body is not made up of one part, but of many. Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.” —Paul, 1 Corinthian 12 Chett Pritchett, past executive director of Methodist Federation for Social […]
Power beyond the org chart
An organizational chart is somewhat like a designer’s blueprint: it tells you how leaders expect information, authority, and people to flow. It doesn’t tell you how information, authority, or people actually do move around the system. An organizational chart also focuses on the personnel who keep a system running day-to-day. It doesn’t include the people in […]
