The eCrozier

In The Art of Choosing, author Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University, tells a story that happened to her in a Japanese café in Kyoto. She ordered green tea and then asked for some sugar to put in it. The waiter was perplexed. Why would she choose to add sugar to her green tea? Sugar was not meant for green tea. So, the waiter told her that he was sorry, but the café had no sugar. Later she ordered a cup of coffee. The same waiter brought her the coffee with two packs of sugar on the side. In Japan, green tea was never drunk with sugar while coffee was.

Iyengar said as an American she was offended that she was not given the choice to add sugar to her green tea, if she chose to do so. Who were these people who limited her choice and had the audacity to determine for her what she was able to choose? But after some reflection, she realized the waiter was merely trying to prevent her from making a serious cultural mistake: adding sugar to green tea. He could not let it be known that his café encouraged such a thing. In Japan, it just wasn’t done.

This Ecrozier is not about the cultural complexities around the nature of choice, although that certainly is a fascinating subject (maybe another time). What I want us to reflect upon is our own culture’s understanding of choice, not to critique its merit or demerit, but to recognize its reality. We Americans like the power to choose for ourselves and we like that power to be as limitless as possible. If you doubt that, walk up and down the breakfast cereal aisle of your local grocery store. Or, consider Coca Cola. When I was growing up there was just Coca Cola. Now we have Diet Coke, Caffeine-free Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, etc. We like our choices.

What does this have to do with the leadership of our congregations? Well, we should lead in a culturally sensitive way. If we lead in a top-down way where we as leader tell the people what they should do and we alone determine what the vision of the congregation should be, then we should not be surprised if we get some serious push back and maybe even the attempted sabotage of our leadership. That might work in Japan, but not in America. Because of the culture in which we live and lead, we need to place the discernment of the way ahead in the hands of the lay leadership helping them to discern from a number of faithful choices what the future mission of the congregation should be. To be sure, such faithful choices are not infinite. They are limited by realities such as resources, location, and history as well as our Gospel mandates. Nevertheless, as leaders we must be adaptive enough so we can help offer as many faithful choices as possible and then trust the Holy Spirit to guide the discernment of the lay leadership.

+Scott