{"id":632,"date":"2013-10-17T13:19:02","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T13:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=632"},"modified":"2014-08-13T22:03:48","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T22:03:48","slug":"exiting-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/exiting-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Exiting the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of things I love about my D.Min program is the wide variety of books I get to read.\u00a0 Many of the books assigned to us I wouldn\u2019t naturally choose. This week\u2019s book, Exit, Voice and Loyalty<\/em> by Albert O. Hirschman is one of those books.\u00a0 Fortunately, my inclination to read or not read a book has nothing to do with the quality of it, because this was a great little book.<\/p>\n

Hirschman writes about the various responses that customers\/members have with regards to declining \u2018product quality\u2019 from an organization, be it a business or a political party.\u00a0\u00a0 Basically, they can choose to express their frustration by exiting an organization or by voicing discontent. Each of those two options has its own benefits and drawbacks. An important factor that helps influence whether someone uses exit or voice is Hirschman\u2019s third idea of \u2018loyalty.\u2019 He writes, \u201cthe presence of loyalty makes exit less likely, but does it, by the same token, give more scope to voice?\u201d (pg77).<\/p>\n

The more I\u2019ve thought about this idea of exit, voice, and loyalty, the more I think it applies to the church at large and my church in particular.\u00a0 My church (Second Baptist) is a downtown church and our membership is scattered. \u00a0We draw folks from over 5 cities and several counties. If someone comes to Second, it\u2019s because they want to be there. They\u2019ll, more than likely, drive pass 20 other Baptist churches to get to ours, and they\u2019ll do it several times a week.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot of time, energy and money.<\/p>\n

That begs the question, what\u2019s created that loyalty? Most people would say it\u2019s because of the type of Baptist we are. We don\u2019t preach fire and brimstone. We\u2019re known more for what we stand for than what we\u2019re against. We believe that anything God can call and man for, he can call a women for.\u00a0 For Arkansas, we are a RARE breed of Baptist.<\/p>\n

While I agree with that assessment, I think that view is somewhat limited. Yes, all of those things I said are true but I think we often forget the people who came before us, who made incredibly courageous decisions that could have easily shut the doors of our church (for instance our church made a courageous stand<\/a> in the desegregation of LR Central High School,\u00a0where we lost almost 1\/3 of our membership).\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

To me that stand illustrates Hirschman\u2019s \u2018Exit, Voice and Loyalty.\u201d Some exited because the quality of our product (all white church) suffered.\u00a0 Some voiced dismay that our church would make that decision yet did not leave the church (and of course eventually had a change of heart). Those who stayed exhibited an extraordinary amount of loyalty.<\/p>\n

So what about today? How do exit, voice and loyalty play a roll in our church and what\u2019s the major take away?<\/p>\n

1.)\u00a0 I get frustrated at times with people who are always so vocal about what they don\u2019t like about the church.\u00a0 I need to shift my attitude a bit here. Yes, that voice can be annoying and yes that voice can be wrong. But, the fact they are actually voicing their thoughts can be a good sign. It means that they are loyal enough to say something rather than just exit. How can we create the best venue for people to have their voices heard and responded to? Is that enough to keep people from exiting? On the other side of the spectrum, how can we make sure this isn\u2019t a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease and therefore encouraging needless\u00a0criticism and time and energy dealing with it?<\/p>\n

2.)\u00a0 \u00a0Since our church isn\u2019t an easy church to be part of (because we\u2019re downtown), what can we do to help create a loyalty to the church community? How can we draw people further into the community? Increasing loyalty will hopefully decrease an exit. Yes, creating loyalty to the institution would be one way, but what about increasing loyalty to the actual people we are in a community with?\u00a0 The thought of leaving relationships is probably much more troubling then leaving the actual institution itself.<\/p>\n

3.)\u00a0 How does exit, voice and loyalty relate to the millennium generation? A generation that by all accounts is skeptical about institutions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of things I love about my D.Min program is the wide variety of books I get to read.\u00a0 Many of the books assigned to us I wouldn\u2019t naturally choose. This week\u2019s book, Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman is one of those books.\u00a0 Fortunately, my inclination to read or not read a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[2,251],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-hirschman","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1964,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/1964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}