Navigating my Ford Ranger to an unfamiliar destination for the first time, I discovered that the directions hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, maybe on the back of an envelope, were either not accurate or not legible. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure where I was. Didn’t know what the intended destination looked like. And I had no idea how to get there. Reaching for the radio, my first instinct was to twist the nob and turn down the music. Lowering the volume doesn’t reveal my route, so why is that such an automatic response?
Neuroscientists tell us our brains prioritize sensory inputs—like music on the radio. If it’s on, we can’t help but give it attention. This draws mental resources away from more relevant tasks such as processing visual and spatial cues, accessing memories from the conversation where the directions were initially conveyed, or planning a route back to the last familiar landmark. The pleasant music in the background, once providing an enjoyable atmosphere, becomes an untenable distraction when the circumstances change. My new circumstance was the uncomfortable discovery that I was lost. I was no longer following a map; I was now creating it.
In Canoeing the Mountains, Tod Bolsinger masterfully alerts us to a similar moment of discovery for congregational leaders. If you are providing any sort of leadership in a faith community, you know that circumstances have changed dramatically in both our culture and in our congregations. The crumpled directions gripped in our nervous pastoral hands are utterly inadequate. Our maps for congregational programming seem quaintly outdated. The indigenous culture sees us as an odd curiosity at best, a pernicious, intrusive threat at worst. We feel lost.
So, like the Corps of Discovery realizing that their hopes for a river route across north America to the Pacific were a bust and their canoes would not deliver them anywhere close to their intended destination, indeed, that those canoes were now fatal distractions, we are left to either leave behind the certainty of the familiar and embrace the vast unknown wilderness, or undertake the absurdity of canoeing a mountain range.
Extending the metaphor a bit further, Lewis and Clark ceased to be map-following river-men and became map-making mountaineers.
The terrain that we navigate as congregational leaders requires that we endure a similar transformation, becoming exploratory cartographers in our own right. Not relying on the skills we brought with us to ministry, beholding new, frightening terrain, the specter of failure always present. It strikes me that cartographers in fresh wilderness are constantly lost. Lost in the sense that I was lost during my drive that day, not recognizing where we are and not knowing what the destination looks like. And when we are lost we can turn down the music.
Turning down the music frees up the mental and spiritual resources we need to navigate the unknown. Reducing distractions helps us focus on managing the challenge.
Murray Bowen’s Family System Theory (BFST) might be helpful for recognizing some particular, interior kinds of distractions that may be worth turning down:
- Wishful thinking — If I try harder at something that no longer works, it will work.
- Anger — Who is to blame for everything being different?!
- Self Doubt– Inner voices from the past and self-talk that tell me that I am not up to the challenge of getting un-stuck, un-lost.
- Helplessness– if I don’t know everything to do, I don’t know anything to do.
- Worry– about what others think of me, what the future will bring, if I will be ok.
All these tunes represent a kind of personal experience (that may seem very real!), but not necessarily factual reality. BFST suggests that we can to some degree learn to distinguish and choose between our subjective emotional experiences and more factual objective realities. Subjective emotions play an important part in our lives, bringing energy and motivation and valuable perceptions. However, like too-loud music on the radio siphoning my attention from important tasks when I am lost, emotionally driven subjectivity may not serve us well when we are trying to find our way as leaders in a new geography.
