WORKING DRAFT

Building a Just World, Soul by Soul

The economy is changing in fundamental ways and creative action is required to bring forth a just and loving alternative. Churches have a pivotal role to play in supporting new ways of being in the world and creating alternatives to injustice. We are offering to train transformational leaders in an Inquiry process designed to support churches wanting to help create an economy that works for everyone.

The economy is broken. It works well for the wealthiest 5% but poorly for the rest of us. Why don’t we have the economy we say we want? One that pays fair wages; one that cares for everyone; one that celebrates diverse perspectives; one that rewards creativity; one that rewards contributions to the common good; one that has just enough inequality to motivate us?

While there are as many perspectives on this question as there are economists, there does seem to be broad consensus that the economy is in for fundamental change. What might that change look like? I believe, as Christians, we want the economy to look more just, compassionate and sustainable. Our project is to offer a process that churches can use to help bring forth just such an economy. We’re not talking about a big, world-shaking program, but a process of deep spiritual change at the personal and community levels.

An important premise of this work is that churches can play a pivotal role in bringing forth a more just, compassionate and sustainable economy by using the role given us by Western culture. We, more than any other institution, have been given permission to shape the perceptions, values and actions of individuals. While we have surrendered much of that authority to business and marketing, we can still reclaim it. We must reclaim it. Despite the decline of the church over the last half century, we still “own” the great stories that provide a context for our individual meaning-making stories. Western concepts of justice, fairness, morality and honesty have been articulated through the Christian lens. But the Christian sway over these basic categories of thought is diminishing rapidly. Science, secular humanism and market capitalism are rapidly usurping the church’s authority. Still, the church possess aclout these more secular perspectives lack: call it discernment, wisdom, spirituality, or whatever you like. Spiritual/religious institutions have social permission to challenge people at their deepest levels. Churches can ask people to delve into inner parts of themselves as no other institution can. In return we are expected to offer appropriate support. It’s time we put our power to use to help bring forth a more loving economy.

The process we are offering is humble and long term. Yet we believe it has the potential to yield benefits a hundredfold. One way of contextualizing this project comes from David Korten. He suggests three approaches to bringing forth the economy we want: 1) change the rules (e.g., use government regulation to change how the economic game is played); 2) direct action (e.g., create institutions, businesses, and markets that operate differently in the world); and 3) change the story (e.g., change our culture’s idea of success, prosperity, fairness, etc.). Our project is a subset of the third strategy, change the story. We are not suggesting particular changes in the economy, nor are we redefining the Christian narrative. Our process is based on the ancient process of Inquiry. Inquiry is integral to the contemplative traditions in all the world’s religions. We use a contemporary form of Inquiry advanced by Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. The process helps individuals and groups delve into the invisible assumptions they hold that prevent them from making the changes that would help bring forth the economy they say they want to have.

To say this differently: each of us lives a story of our lives. This story tells us what is important in our lives, what is good or bad, whether we are worthy or unworthy, smart or dumb, beautiful or ugly. We write our personal meaning stories within the context of the larger culture’s meaning-making stories. Western culture’s meaning making stories have largely come from Christianity: the Ten Commandments tell us that theft, murder and adultery are bad; the Gospels tell us that mercy, generosity and kindness are good. We construct the personal stories of our lives from these larger cultural stories. The thing is, a lot of our story is constructed unconsciously. We don’t get to choose our culture and we make lots of assumptions long before we have the capacity to decide which parts will serve us and which ones won’t. In other words, we live through a hidden architecture of meaning-making that filters what we see, hear and feel, how we should react, what is good or bad, etc. long before it enters our conscious awareness. (As Paul said, “now I see through a glass darkly”, or “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”) These assumptions are largely invisible to us because we don’t see them, we see through them. These invisible assumptions about the world (and the self-protective actions they inspire) often undermine our most noble commitments for change, not because we are bad, but because we are complex.

We don’t know what needs to change for an economy to become more just, compassionate and sustainable. But we trust that caring people creatively working together can create a more just economy if they are not tripped up by their personal and collective hidden assumptions; assumptions that can derail their most noble aspirations. Kegan and Lahey work from the premise that we are complex individuals capable, as Paul suggested, of doing both what we want to do and what we don’t want to do. Our highest aspirations are often, even regularly, undermined by an invisible immunity to change. Our inquiry process seeks to open individuals, groups and communities to creative possibilities they might not consider while confined to their hidden assumptions and invisible immunity to change.

Purpose

Our purpose is to train small teamsto lead transformational change within their churches. These transformational change agentswill help groups and individuals “not get in their own way” as they strive to bring forth an economy that works for everyone. They will facilitate the Immunity to Change process for groups working on programs to humanize the economy. Whether the programs are community dinners, poverty reduction, child welfare, or healthcare they are vulnerable to hidden assumptions and expectations received from our culture and personal histories. The Immunity to Change process helps surface and alter those assumptions so that building a more loving economy can progress. Along the way, individuals will deepen their spiritual connection through this powerful discernment process and churches will begin to reclaim their historic role as transformers of human consciousness.

Immunity to Change Overview

Investigating our Immunity to Change starts by inviting individuals to work on a personal issue to get a feel for the process and its power.

We open with complaints. They’re fun, we’re well practiced at them and complaints help to surface the issues that are most important to us because we wouldn’t complain if we didn’t stand for something. This early step can give individuals and communities an important insight: “we are not just whiners and complainers, we complain because we stand for something.”

Our next step is to look at the values and commitments revealed by our complaints, what we call our Noble Commitments. In the first step of this process we focus on what Kegan and Lahey call “adaptive” changes, in contrast to “technical” changes. Adaptive changes don’t just solve an immediate problem, they change the basic way we act in the world.

We then explore what we do or don’t do to prevent our adaptive changes from happening. Understanding our responsibility for not making the changes we desire is not about blame or resolutions to change; it is an avenue for deeper understanding. When we imagine doing something different, what anxiety does it provoke? And what are the self-protective commitments underlying our anxiety about acting differently? Finally, we follow those self-protective commitments into the architecture of our meaning-making system. That system is built upon Big Assumptions that are typically invisible to us.

Each step in this process naturally brings deep “aha’s” from participants. Each step is both healing and transformative on its own. But the larger point is to actually shift our Big Assumptions.

In their book Immunity to Change, Kegan and Lahey articulate an iterative process of safe tests, data collection and reflection that bring the validity of Big Assumptions into question. We add to that strategies developed in a church setting including role-playing, imagery, and other inquiry processes.

Training Process

Developing a team of transformational change agents in your church is a two-stage process.

Step One:

We begin by introducing your church community to the Immunity to Change process. During a two day workshop, interested members of your congregation will engage the process individually and collectively. You will explore important adaptive changes you would like to make, first at the individual level, then at the group level. We will explore the actions we all take to subvert the adaptive changes we most want to make. With the laughter of mutual understanding we will examine the self-protective commitments we all hold. And with awe and reverence, we will dive into our Big Assumptions, the ones we live through and seldom look at, much less change. In the spirit of knowing the truth that will set you free, our journey will give your communitya sense of the power of this process and its potential for deep transformative change.

The initial workshop does not allow time to begin the ongoing process of questioning and altering our core assumptions. The next step involves training a small group of transformational change agents within the church.

Step Two:

Once you’ve had time forcommunal discernment, we will return to train a small group in the Immunity to Change process. These individuals will work with the congregation to unearth their individual and collective immunities to change as they seek to bring forth a more just, caring and sustainable economy. Not only will they learn to lead individuals and groups into their BigAssumptions, they will teach strategies for challenging and altering those assumptions.

All of this will be supported by on-going, online training and collaboration among participants.

Conclusion

Churches, especially progressive churches, have a deep commitment to social justice. Most are clear that social justice is impossible without economic justice. Many churches have programs to help individuals and families suffering under economic distress, but larger, systemic changes are required. Churches can play an important role in this change, just as they did during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Part of helping create an economy that works for everyone is challenging the hidden fears and assumptions we all hold. Our job is to help you unearth and change those assumptions so you can be more effective change agents.