In 2005 we moved to Spain with our 1 year old daughter and a team of 4 Americans, 1 Mexican, and 1 Spaniard to do campus ministry.\u00a0 We were sent as Short Term Internationals, even though we were planning on staying long term.\u00a0 The idea was to go for two years as short termers, try out life and ministry in Spain, and then return as long term missionaries.\u00a0 In Cru, short term teams are sent out to get things done, and do as much as they can within a year or two time frame, hoping to get ministry and movements up and running in a rapid period of time.\u00a0 This strategy has actually worked well in certain contexts and normally with young singles carrying the load.\u00a0 Unfortunately for us, Spain is not a good context for this strategy, nor was it a good situation for us a family leading a multi-cultural, multi-generational team.\u00a0 Three weeks after we touched down in Spain, and having not yet even moved into an apartment, we were expected to start ministry.\u00a0 Our first year in Spain was a spiritual, mental, marital, and team nightmare.\u00a0 We kept up a peripatetic pace trying to engage with students, maintain our team, learn language and culture, and set a strategic course for accomplishing our ministry goals.<\/p>\n
Daniel Patrick Forrester in his excellent tome on pausing to think, Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization<\/em>, speaks of the human proclivity towards \u201caction bias.\u201d\u00a0 Action bias is basically a tendency to do and act, rather than sit back and reflect or think through a problem.\u00a0 Evangelicalism typically has a strong action bias. We have been doers, and through the Protestant work ethic, and a typically fearful stance towards more contemplative (read Catholic) spirituality (echoes of Taylor and Weber here), we tend to attack problems and challenges by stepping out in faith, rolling up our sleeves, and taking action.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t always bad, and probably has led to some tremendous movements, growth, and societal change.\u00a0 Action bias isn\u2019t always wrong.\u00a0 However, Forrester points out that action that is always separated from solid thinking that understanding of context and meaning can be destructive.\u00a0 Moreover, living in a global, connected, technological world of rapid pace and speed where emails and messages should be answered in just minutes, \u201caction bias now manifests itself in impulsive and instantaneous responsiveness to every request\u2026 the trade-off is easy to make: we gain speed, immediate connection, and reactions while giving up richer contexts that emerge only when we take time to think (loc 337).\u201d<\/p>\n This can be seen in our short term experience in Spain.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have time to reflect or think about the culture, about what would work best to communicate the gospel, or even how to best live incarnationally\u2026 we just had to do.\u00a0 Most missions organizations want new missionaries to go through a period of adaptation, learning language and culture and spending adequate time thinking about their future ministry in this context.\u00a0 Actually, once we became long-term we were afforded this time to process, and we are allowed to sit back and learn from the first two years of working in Spain.\u00a0 This allowed us the time to think through with ourselves and other long term staff, strategies and tools for connecting with the culture, and even process in real time, instead of running around trying whatever.\u00a0 Moreover, we have seen the productivity and fruitfulness of ministry grow over time as we have had the time to learn and think through how best to do life and ministry in Spain.\u00a0 Now we are at a pace where we can actually work faster, more competently, and focused on many tasks.\u00a0 But, all of this took time to think through and process, maybe even more so because it is a cross-cultural experience.<\/p>\n Forrester explains that as leaders mired in a connected world of constantly having too much to do, and constant media distraction, to avoid organizational and personal disaster it is imperative that we take formal, structured time to think and reflect.\u00a0 Otherwise, we can become so consumed by action bias that we will miss the key changes, decisions, and innovations that will truly grow an organization.\u00a0 In a sense, \u201cin our culture of immediacy, we can easily solve the wrong problems with great speed (loc 554).\u201d\u00a0 This is how my first two years in Spain felt: \u201cCoupled with our culture\u2019s bias towards action and exacerbated by constant distraction, it can be nearly impossible for today\u2019s leaders to consistently pose and then answer the right questions while employing sound judgment (loc 801).\u201d\u00a0 It was only when we had time to gather the big picture of Spain and ministry there, that we could process it and begin to move forward with confidence tackling the correct issues before us.<\/p>\n Forrester thus encourages leaders to make time to think and reflect, even in hectic and overly busy schedules.\u00a0 The mind needs time alone, its own space, to focus completely un-distracted on the issues, challenges, and opportunities before the leader.\u00a0 Otherwise, the leader will simply make knee-jerk decisions that may or may not be helpful.\u00a0 Moreover, Forrester explains that thinking time must be reflective in that it must be able to question perceived data, the status quo, and group think.\u00a0 In a sense, good leaders schedule time to think!\u00a0 And they do serious, heavy lifting thinking.\u00a0 This means closing down email and setting the phone on silent, and engaging in serious focused thinking.\u00a0 Forrester also encourages leaders to create time for everyone in the organization to think, and to create a \u201creflective culture.\u201d\u00a0 That is a culture \u201cthat makes it possible for people to constantly challenge things without fear of retaliation (loc 1511).\u201d\u00a0 This allows for ideas, innovations, and checks of bad decisions or practice to arise within the organization. \u00a0Issues like group think and terminal niceness (saying yes to bad ideas) are thus avoided. \u00a0Forrester points out that many successful companies like Google insist that their employees have time to think and also reflectively challenge company assumptions.<\/p>\n Returning to my experience in Cru, I believe that as Christians we need to find a good balance between thinking and action.\u00a0 Too much thinking can become negative and paralyzing, but action without attention to thinking can lead to waste and even disaster.\u00a0 So it is essential that we build in structured time within our organizations for thinking and reflection.\u00a0 As my responsibilities and roles in Spain continue to ramp up, I need to make a more and more concerted effort to spend time alone, just thinking.<\/p>\n In short, if you want to be a good leader, make time to think, and help others also think and express their ideas.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2005 we moved to Spain with our 1 year old daughter and a team of 4 Americans, 1 Mexican, and 1 Spaniard to do campus ministry.\u00a0 We were sent as Short Term Internationals, even though we were planning on staying long term.\u00a0 The idea was to go for two years as short termers, try 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