We don’t need to become better at doing what we are doing, we need to be ready to play a whole new game.

I’m really enjoying this oasis of time in my life. It really feels like a moment to be able to step back, process the last 20 years and prepare for the next 20.

One of the things I have been thinking about is just how normal it is to think your assumptions about life are true.

One of my favourite quotes is by Albert Einstein:

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Einstein introduces the idea that it’s not what you are thinking about that is the problem, it is the level you are able to think about it.

He also said:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

One of the sadnesses for me, is often how dysfunctional and out of touch we Christians seem to be when we engage with the world. It can sometimes look a little bit like we are stuck in an outdated way of seeing the world.

I came across a business book that takes scientific principles and applies them to Student Affairs Practice. One chapter deals with paradigms.

A paradigm is a system of assumptions about the nature of reality that is integrated, pervasive, holistic, and internally consistent. A paradigm establishes the ground rules for explaining on the broadest level the nature of the world and the place of human beings. It is the filter through which all human beings interpret the world around them. It is from within a paradigm that human beings understand what is real, what is false, what is possible, and to what they should pay attention. Because one’s thinking is so embedded in a paradigm, it is difficult to step outside of it and grasp its outlines.
Paradigms are seen most easily when examining other times or other civilizations. One becomes aware of different ways of viewing the world when, for example, one is immersed in cultures of the Eastern world, which see the world in very different ways. Paradigms also become more visible when the paradigm of one’s own civilization is changing. The beginning of the twenty-first century is a time of such paradigm change, or what Kuhn (1970) named “paradigm shift.”

I actually don’t think we need to be scared of paradigm shifts. Paradigm shifts like the reformation and even the place of small groups have helped the church become more of what we were meant to be. The church has often been at the forefront of leading paradigm shift in the world, whether it be about education, slavery, democracy or ending communism. The word of God seems to speak in revolutionary ways to successive generations.

Paradigm shift though, confronts our institutions.

The book says:

“Each of us lives and works in organizations designed from Newtonian images of the universe. We manage by separating things into parts, we believe that influence occurs as a direct result of force exerted from one person to another, we engage in complex planning for a world we keep expecting to be predictable, and we search continuously for better methods of objectively measuring and perceiving the world”

As I read this statement about organizational structure, it didn’t take much imagination to also imagine a similar kind of phrase written about the Christian Church.

We don’t need to become better at doing what we are doing, we need to be ready to play a whole new game.