It was one of my first denominational ministerial classes. We were nervous, uncertain, and in a healthy fear of what our ministerial journey will take us. The course was pastoral administration. A very well seasoned scholar and pastor was sharing with us what we should expect if we were ever assigned to a pastorate. As the question and answer session came around our teacher was asked the question what is the biggest expectation that we should have upon arrival from a new congregation. His answer was eight deadly words; \u201cwe have never done it like this before.\u201d<\/p>\n
These famous words are synonymous with a fixed mindset, one of two methodologies Carol Dweck unpacks in her book Mindset. Dweck, a professor of Psychology at Stanford University, is considered a premier researcher on mindset and motivation. She suggests fixed mindsets are attached to fear and avoidance while a growth mindset embraces challenges as an opportunity for learning, and the return on investment includes resilience and success. People with a growth mindset don\u2019t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. [1]<\/p>\n
One analogy that resonated with me was Dweck\u2019s analysis of college basketball coaches Bobby Knight and John Wooden. Knight was a great coach but emotionally erratic and was known more for his explosive outbursts than X\u2019s and O\u2019s. While he attained much success throughout his coaching career, it was marred by the criticism that he turned away many because of a failed mindset. Wooden, on the contrary, was able to have greater success, but much was attributed to his positive mindset\u2014getting maximum results from his athletes.<\/p>\n
I can relate to this analogy on a personal level because throughout my basketball career, there were great coaches who I could not reach a level of excellence or comfort because of their approach, which was not just detrimental to myself but our team as a whole. While they remain steadfast in their coaching style, despite having a talented team we never excelled past mediocrity simply because he failed to adapt his coaching style. A fixed mindset was the culprit. Dweck was spot on because she uncovered some common misconceptions concerning the growth mindset. She says:<\/p>\n
#1) The first important thing to remember here is that process includes more than just effort.[2] Effort is often assumed as the litmus for a new mindset but it is a false allusion. Dweck debunks this perspectives by underscoring effort is required but more is demanded. I can think of many instances of people, places and things who have made a genuine effort, but their efforts fell flat because they refused take the second step.<\/p>\n
#2) The importance of trying new strategies when the one they\u2019re using isn\u2019t working\u201d [3} It is important to know the difference between history and destiny. Even more is when it comes to the realization that there will be points in life where we come to the crossroads and must make the painful discovery. What got me here may not be the same thing to get me there. There is an old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting the same result.<\/p>\n
Recently, I heard this interesting fact at a summer retreat I attended for my chaplaincy as a leadership expert was facilitating a lecture\/ workshop. He said the two biggest institutions which are the most resistant to change are higher education and the church.<\/em> That hit home as I am entrenched in both my leadership capacities. How many institutions and churches have become stifled and stagnated simply because it refused to authentically embrace a correct growth mindset?<\/p>\n Climate, culture, and calamity in society have become the drivers for a growth mindset. We all were forced to make adaptive change and reuse of things simply because of COVID. Sadly, many individuals are patiently waiting and looking for a return to normalcy instead of embracing a new normal.<\/p>\n Mindset is a great follow-up to last week\u2019s reading, Leading through Disruption by Andrew Liveris. As Liveris a<\/em>nd his elite cohort looked at corporations and business models that were in existence, they reached two similar conclusions:<\/p>\n 1) The current economic model has been broken and can\u2019t be fixed. Liveris would go on to list a four-D Model, to sum up corporate responses (fixed mindset) to the disruption: denial, defiance, debate, and dialogue. [4]<\/p>\n My NPO is centered on the growing absence of young adults in inner-city churches in my city. As my research and workshops reveal, much of young adult apathy and absence is attributed to the fixed mindset of the church, congregation, and leadership.<\/p>\n While I found Dweck\u2019s writing highly credible, critics have countered that a growth mindset does not always translate into positive performance. While I don\u2019t believe any or all strategies have a 100% success rate, I can strongly lean into Dweck\u2019s perspective and apply it in my context.<\/p>\n Speaking of my context, do you remember those famous last 8 words I was warned of as a new pastor? True to form I encountered them. To my congregation\u2019s credit, they overcame their years of fears, prior pastoral hurt and lived theology and adapted to embrace a growth mindset. The results are tangible, and some are not. However, I can certainly commend them on the qualitative growth which sometimes is greater than the quantitative which has been a debatable fixed growth metric utilized in the church for far too long.<\/p>\n [1] Carol Dweck, Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential, (London: Robinson, 2017). 21<\/p>\n [2} Dweck, Mindset, 115.<\/p>\n {3} Dweck, Mindset, 115<\/p>\n [4] Andrew Liveris,. Leading through Disruption: A Changemaker\u2019s Guide to Twenty-First Century Leadership. (New York, NY: HarperCollins Leadership, 2023).164<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was one of my first denominational ministerial classes. We were nervous, uncertain, and in a healthy fear of what our ministerial journey will take us. The course was pastoral administration. A very well seasoned scholar and pastor was sharing with us what we should expect if we were ever assigned to a pastorate. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3354],"class_list":["post-39368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03-dweck","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39368"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39371,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39368\/revisions\/39371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2) A model that business should be motivated by profit is a method\u2013 that no longer works.<\/p>\n