Control freak or chaos freak?
Seth Godin, marketing guru and generally creative dude, posted this blog recently….
Sitting behind the pilot on a tiny plane today, I was reminded how important, difficult and tedious this job is.
Pilots have to get it right every time. They have to follow a myriad of procedures. They must be calm and focused and consistent, and yes, boring. No one wants to notice the pilot.
Good pilots probably do very well in job interviews–and not just for pilot jobs. They have many of the traits that hiring managers look for. They follow instructions with an eye on detail. They don’t fail (if they did, they probably wouldn’t be at the interview). They show up on time.
I’m grateful there are pilots. I’m also glad I’m not one.
Here’s the thing: I think (outside of the airline business, of course) that our need for pilots is diminishing, and rapidly. I think the value add of a person who carefully follows instructions and procedures keeps going down. I think the fact that pilots would do well in a job interview at your organization means your organization probably should change the way interviews get done.
We don’t need pilots. We need instigators and navigators, rabble rousers and innovators. People who can’t follow a checklist to save their life, but invent the future every day.(here is the link)
Now here is an apt comment for the church of our day if ever there was one. For far too long we have tried to over-legislate, control, stifle chaos, predict outcomes, steer decisions, etc. Church history is quite simply full of the activity of passive aggresive clerical engineers (popes, canons, rule books, denominational heavies, inquisitions, etc) and control freaks. Little wonder missional creativity and genuine innovation in modes of ecclesia have gone out the window.
It is time for the chaos freak to arise. Take your place instigators, rabble rowsers, innovators, holy rebels. This is your time to shine.
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Amen.
Just be prepared for the clerical engineers to snuff out your light as soon as you unleash it.
Chaosfreak reporting for duty, Sir!
Since God made all people the way that He did, then it stands to reason that all types are required to make life whole. I think that the “hiers” at the top of the hierarchy, feeling uneasy around the chaos freaks, found an effective way to keep them out of the party, and invite only the conformers. We have to re-architect the whole body (by just going out and DOING IT) in a way that we all have an ‘instrument to play’, and find that balance between playing ‘in concert’ and ‘jazz solos’.
wow…there is hope for me yet…
I think the chaos-freaks should now organize and form a union. What do you think about that?
Pilots get paid the most, get esteemed the most and have the most to lose and most passengers care more for the pilot than any of the other crew! Therefore the pilots in our current church structures will not step down easily. We must therefore stop looking for their endorsements and approval and that of the passengers that still want to travel with them!
i’m not convinced that “pilot” is a good illustration for church leaders - there is a very good reason that “passengers care more for the pilot than any of the other crew” - passengers lives are in the pilots hands… other crew members don’t and generally can’t fly the plane!
sticking with the analogy though would suggest you’re right angryandshallow “the pilots in our current church structures will not step down easily” i’m not convinced that being critical of pilots, without confronting the passengers with their complicity, is fair either. if there were not sufficient passengers agreeing to pay to go on the route the pilot is taking, then that journey would not be deemed to be viable! the pilot is an easy target - the passengers are equally responsible!
my question then is why do the passengers choose to get on the plane? if there is no opportunity to contribute or to change the direction, there must be other reasons…
might i suggest that once you’ve put your money in to buy your ticket…
you can stow your baggage - at least for the length of your journey with this pilot.
even though the food is not the best it’s delivered to you with monotonous regularity in processed, easily digestible bite size amounts.
the entertainment is much like that you would get in the local cinema or on cable tv at home and you can personalise it to suit yourself.
someone else does all the thinking and stressing and you still get to your destination in style.
if you earn more you can pay extra and receive better treatment suited to your better class
you can sit high above all the world’s problems and theorise, theologise and discuss without ever being required to actually get your hands dirty
all of these are ways in which passengers are complicit with pilots in retaining the existing routes… the pilot has no role without compliant passengers and perhaps pilots will only ask real questions once their passengers have chosen no longer to travel their way…
if you’re convinced that “the pilots in our current church structures will not step down easily” i’d suggest you begin discussing travel requirements with other passengers, and choose another form of travel for your journey. rather than just be critical of the current mode of travel, we need to examine ways to provide positive impetus for change for passengers…
we need to provide authentic adventure that has integrity instead of aircraft dinners and canned laughter. instead of just being critical of pilots why not lead an expedition that works its way through the jungle rather than comfortably flying over it.
choose to get from A to B by the bus or the train, car pool, ride a bicycle or walk… take a boat… possibly consider a fishing boat, where you can do the work of a fisherman while you journey.
hang a sign on the aicraft door… “gone fishin’”
slainte
a celtic son
good thoughts celtic son
I think that if anyones gonna be flying a plane, then it should be a pilot. After all, i know i’d try a loop-the-loop just for the hell of it if i was sat in the seat! But, as non-chaos-freaks, they might forget that the journey can often be more important than the destination.
Chris, it does take all kinds to make a world. Pilot style leaders are nice and neccesary…in times of stability and predictability. But what we need now is a balance in the force because the times demand agility and adaptibility of us. The chaos-freak is the one who can take us there…not the pilot.
Taking the analogy (which I thought was limited initially!) a bit further…
The chaos-freak needs to engage some other passengers (identified perhaps by the apostolic genius tools)in the chaos business and then provide them with a new paradigm (in the form of a parachute)as they choose to step out of the safety, security and comfort of the plane!!
Their lack of experience will be a mixed blessing as the wind (of the Spirit?) directs them, without them choosing to control it, to different places all across the landscape… much like the effect of persecution did to the early church!!
As agents of CHAOS our intrepid apostilic genii need to avoid Maxwell Smart and agent 99, as they serve the orders of CONTROL!!
It’s time someone stopped me before I get too carried away… ooops too late… would you believe it?
a bemused celtic son
Perhaps we need pilots of the order of The Wright Brothers - who were seeking to discover how to fly, trying different ways of mastering a potential means of transport yet to be realised. Let’s not forget that there are pilots who constantly push the boundaries (remember Top Gun? or Apollo 13). Car drivers used to be known as “pilots” of their vehicle.
I am not sure that a dualistic approach is helpful. The future is much more organic, requiring the pilot, the navigator, the rabble rouser and the Kamikaze (now there’s a pilot!)
Perhaps the pilot we need is more like the tugboat pilot, who steers ships through turbulent and dangerous waters… but even that analogy breaks down.
It is high time we realize that the Holy Spirit can do a better job than we can. We don’t need man-controlled church leadership we need Holy Spirit led ministry.
We don’t need another man-thing…We must become desperate for a God-thing.
I asked the pastor, “Why can’t you just release your members to serve in the world where they are gifted and passionate to serve?” The pastor said, “We can’t do that because we wouldn’t be able to control how they represent us and further we wouldn’t get our own ministries in the church done.” The saddest part is that he was serious.
I asked him to pray about letting God take control of his control. I scored no points of endearment.
Hi Bob Carder…
I recognise that the role of “pastor” is not a simplistic one, but in some respects it’s meant to be simple… “Go, make disciples that will go and make disciples that will go and make disciples that will go…!” Pastoring ought to be about shepherding (caring for, encouraging, feeding, leading) people who are on this journey… which, by definition, means that a pastor needs to be on that journey themselves…
One of the challenges of leadership is helping (sometimes pushing) people “to serve in the world where they are gifted and passionate to serve.” It’s not a Christ-centred shepherd who seeks to control people and keep them… Trying to build one’s own kingdom at the expense of the Kingdom of the King of Kings… that’s a dangerous game to play… pastors like that need people like you praying for them…
slainte
a concerned celtic son
You know that pilots have to follow a small green line when they fly at night or else a small margin of error takes them way off course. 1 degree of error over a 3 hour flight flight means that they will be 90km’s off target which means that they won’t even be able to see the runway so they won’t be able to land safely and everyone will die. Leadership in missional church life involves PEOPLE and wreckless discussions that say that we no longer need pilots (and can’t see any of the good that they have done in the past) is dangerous and irresponsible.
To Dazza and all others that want to keep the ‘pilots’ around. I think you missed the point of the first entry. Yes, we do need pilots to fly airplanes (and keep us all alive), but this was just an analogy to those in Christian leadership that keep doing things in the ‘prescribed’ way, the way we’ve ‘always’ done it. Now it only takes about half of a brain to know that the transformational power and rapid expansion of the gospel that is described in the book “the acts of the apostles” is not what we see today, at least not in the U.S. So wanting to keep doing it the same way is crazy. It’s like we’re in a destructive co-dependent relationship with this ‘thing’ we call the church….and we keep trotting along the same boring road that leads nowhere. We need to re-think the container - the structure - the church architecture! If one adheres to the ‘pilot’ paradigm, then that one may be insulated in the warm church against the cold world — and likely will never impact that world in a way of great value for the kingdom.
Chaos Freak said, “Take your place instigators, rabble rousers, innovators, holy rebels.” In my many years in church leadership, the only harm I have ever seen done to people is by ‘pilots’ that demanded an adherence to the green line when others wanted the adventure of soaring over uncharted expanses.
It is a good point you make David (the hunter). Yes there has been too much damage caused by ‘pilots’ who forced people to stick to their plans. This is where the metaphor breaks down because many pilots have been damaged by the system also. So that is a both way arguement.
But just because something is new doesn’t mean that it works and is good either. You can’t just say it is better because it is new. There is a lot of talk (a veritable industry) around the emerging church and when it is all said and done much is yet unproven and (because people are involved) just as likey to cause harm with its propencity towards following gurus and a lack for formal accountabilities that you’d expect with other caring areas (nursing, counselling, psychology, teaching, etc).
So it is all very nice to bag those of us who don’t fully agree with everything you say but that is what free speech is all about. And before you write off the institutional church, remember that it has done quite a good job of raising rabble rousers and holy rebels… Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martin Luther-King, Tim Costello, Jim Wallace, Mother Thersea, John Smith, Dietrich Bonehoeffer for starters.