Moving Forward: The Law of Assumed Constraints

Lisa Allgood, Executive Presbyter

“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” – John 5:44

The Law of Assumed Constraints: more powerful than the law of gravity. Faster than the speed of light.  Able to leap over the strongest of rational thoughts.

And able to stop, in its tracks, the most innovative new ways of doing things that could move us forward.

Here’s the classic illustration of the Law of Assumed Constraints: two monkeys are in a cage – with blankets, toys, water, plenty of food. They are well cared for, well loved.  The experimenter adds a rope to that goes up to the top of the cage with a banana tied to the top of the rope.  Now, since no monkey, no matter how well fed, can resist a banana, both monkeys try to climb the rope – and everytime they do, the experimenter sprays them with a mist of water.  Monkeys don’t like that.  So over time, the monkeys learn that Rope is Bad – and no longer try to climb the rope to get to that delicious-looking, remarkably good-smelling banana. Next, the experimenter replaces one of the original monkeys with a new monkey, who has never seen the rope or the banana before.  And as soon as this new monkey excitedly tries to climb the rope to get to that amazing free banana up there – the original monkey in the cage stops him. No mist of water, no experimenter intervening. Why?  Because Rope is Bad. And original monkey will teach new monkey that Rope is Bad.

So ultimately the banana goes uneaten. And the experimenter has two very sad, very confused monkeys.

This is also known as The Law of the Irrrelevant Sacred Cow.

At a recent Synod meeting, we talked about how the Law of Assumed Constraints – the guardrails we ourselves put up – can hamper our ministry. I’m sure you can come up with you own list, but here’s a few we thought of:

• The mostly-empty building takes up more than 35% of our budget but we refuse to leave
• Worship is at 10 am on a Sunday. Period.
• Only a pastor can grow our congregation and bring in young families (who will then do all the work)
• A new sign will fix everything
• Kids will fix everything
• Worship requires an organ and a choir in robes and hymnals

What holds us back is that we focus on the wrong things. We focus on outward-focused things, other people, to do the hard work that Jesus commissioned us to do – to leave everything behind (including our false “traditions”), follow Him, and make disciples. What holds us back is that we are looking backwards at “success” (or, in the case of the monkeys, “safety”) and not forward to how to redefine ministry in a new day and age.

In other words, “tradition” becomes the mist of water that holds us back from moving forward to grow the Kingdom.

When we spray our ministry – our congregation – our pastor – with that virtual spray of mist, here’s what happens:

• Spending increasing amounts of budget on building maintenance, in a building built to hold post WWII growth, that we no longer need, is no longer in the most visible place, is increasingly empty – holds back vibrant ministry and mission
• Putting together a new/different kind of worship/Bible study/small group on a  week day/evening is just too hard and takes too much effort/money/people – holds back creating growth and attracting new people, perhaps even younger families
• Inviting others to worship with us is just too hard/we haven’t been trained/we’re not comfortable enough in our own faith (and besides, new people might disrupt us) – even though 86% of congregational growth comes from the congregation (not the pastor, not the programs)
• The correlate to the bullet above is “stuff” – signs, kids programs, cool mission projects – will be the catalyst for growth  – ditto the growth data above
• This is what makes me comfortable. I don’t want to be uncomfortable by worshipping differently/in a storefront/with different music/with a challenging message/by being asked to do anything more – holds back our reinventing ourselves, in the name of Jesus, for a new generation. I don’t want screens or electronic signs.  Why do we need a website, annyway? Stuffing mailboxes with invitations worked in the good old days (hint – they really didn’t) – holds us in the past instead of moving with the Spirit into the future.

We look to the past and think (probably with some degree of exaggeration) of how big and generous and loving our congregations used to be, and we think of that as “missional success”. So we spray ourselves with the mist of belief that if we could only do that again it would all be OK, and we could sit back and enjoy our successful ministry the way it’s always been.

All the while leaving out the movement of the Spirit in this time and place, what brings God glory, which is the ultimate purpose of worship. And so our “church” gradually becomes more about protecting what we had – safety – and we become an increasingly empty church with a hungry soul.

Madeline L’Engle has always been, since I was alittle girl, one of my favorite authors.  Her faith was critical to her and to her art.  So, to end – one of my favorite quotes of hers:

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

What constraints are holding you back?