Our response to decline is to blame someone or something for it. But changing our institutions is far more challenging.
My entire life, people have complained about decline.
Each time, it is presented as something new. And personal. We must have done something. Or else There must be something we can do.
And yet decline persists as the norm. For the church and for the local community.
The counterfactual is always the examples of those people and places that seem to be thriving. But even that data is mixed. Decline is ultimately universal at the moment. To differentiate people is not between decline and growth, but between speed and scope of decline.
The problem of growing up in an era of universal institutional decline is that it seems to lead to a natural decision matrix. Either we focus on the local, where we feel we can do something or we focus on the whole, where we recognize the problem is universal.
It is easy to see why the former is preferable. We’d rather take control of what we can and at least feel useful. After decades of this approach, I find the search for something to blame so that we can find the perfect antidote a mind-numbingly bad way to live.
Individualistic, private research to find millions of personal antidotes won’t save a us from a half-century pandemic that has utterly destabilized the lives of whole continents of people long before COVID.
The insidious need to blame
A favorite professor of mine, back in the mid-‘00s told me that we need to stop talking about decline.
I heavily disagreed. Without knowing about a problem, how are we supposed to change? I reasoned.
His response was that our incessant talk of decline never really motivates. In fact, it usually does the opposite: it demotivates. It has a kind of nihilistic chilling effect. Like, if there’s nothing we can do, then why even bother?
Since then, I’ve seen this in action. But not entirely as I saw his argument in the moment. It has since taken on a different color.
For sure, I’ve seen how catastrophizing never motivates people. But I’ve also seen an uncompromising pressure toward relentless positivity.
In institutions that value their survival, there is a mutuality toward sharing only success to prove that we’re successful so that people can happily participate in their successful institution.
These institutions also value this vision of success as essential to evangelism and growth. Happy, successful people gravitating toward happy, successful institutions.
But when we can’t offer success, or when we offer a budget deficit, that placid image of success begins to falter. All success all of the time must be preserved. If not, heads must roll.
Enter the scapegoat.
In sports, this is usually the coach or the star player.
My favorite example is in football, the most famously team sport in which analysts suggest that the quarterback is worth 99% of the team. Except when the coach is.
Beyond Success
It’s hard to be honest about the institution when our relationship to it is mostly based on a rollercoaster of happiness and scapegoating.
What my professor was actually telling me was not to avoid talking about decline because it is upsetting. But to instead look for the grace that is always present and engage with that instead.
This advice is essential. But I still think there is room in the conversation for honest reflection of who we are. Just not to blame anyone or pressure anyone. But to sit with the reality and face it for what it is.
We struggle to see that decline is a common reality shared by many. And any individual response or attempt to save any one institution are bound to fall for the same trap.
Better to find the others around us who are experiencing the same things and work with them to change the institution’s behavior from the ground up.