I had to pay for this book, and I’m glad I did. It’s not a church book but a book about human psychology, especially how to motivate people. And, therefore, it’s required reading for church leaders. After all, what’s harder for church leaders than motivating the members?
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
The major premise of the book is that it helps to think of our minds as elephants with a rider. The elephant is the emotional part of us, and when our emotions are fully engaged, like an elephant, people can be unstoppable. Indeed, people can be stampeded into all sorts of things.
The rider is the more rational, analytical part of us, and the elephant is normally controlled by the rider. But when the elephant takes over, the rider can only hope to barely hang of for dear life. And if the elephant isn’t motivated, there’s just not that much that the rider can do to make the elephant move!
Therefore, to motivate change, we have to appeal to both the emotional and the rational side of people. In church life, especially in Churches of Christ, we tend to so focus on the rational side that we fail to move the elephant. We have a bunch of riders whipping their elephants, and the elephants ignoring the whip. After all, elephants are too big to be motivated by a mere whip.
We see this in our failure to evangelize as we should, our failure to love each other as we should, and our failure to be transformed into the image of Jesus as we should. Our emotional side just refuses to change, notwithstanding all the books, the blog posts, the sermons, and the Bible classes. Motivating the rider usually does nothing to motivate the elephant.
What’s the solution? Well, for long-term analytical types such as myself and most Church of Christ leaders, it’s re-training on how to teach and speak and act. We have to learn to motivate the emotional side of our flocks — which is rather like learning a foreign language for us old guys.
The best of our preachers have mastered this. They use stories and visual aids. They get beyond the syllogisms to the heart. But the rest of us have never studied motivation. Indeed, some of us wonder what the point of the stories even is!
I’ll offer one example from among many. In the chapter “Grow Your People,” the authors describe the efforts of an environmentalist to rescue a breed of parrot — the St. Lucia parrot — from extinction on the Caribbean island nation.
The people of the country had no zeal for environmentalism or for the parrot species. Had the papers announced that the parrot had become extinct, the citizens would not have cared. And therefore laws against poaching and export were unenforced.
The environmentalist, realizing that laws, no matter how strict, wouldn’t protect the parrot, began a campaign to change attitudes. He created events to instill the idea that St. Lucians are the kind of people who protect their own. The campaign emphasized that the parrot is ours. No one else has this parrot. We need to cherish it and protect it.
He hosted parrot puppet shows, gave away T shirts with the parrot on it, printed bumper stickers, and even printed a poster showing how much prettier the parrot is than the American bald eagle.
Soon, the citizens embraced the parrot as symbolic of their national identity — even assuming that they’d always thought that way! And poaching entirely stopped. Indeed, it became unthinkable.
He motivated the elephant by associating the parrot with national pride and identity. Indeed, the parrot helped fill a void, giving the people something to be proud of.
It’s exactly the kind of campaign that the hyper-rational among us would find pointless — and exactly the kind of campaign that works.
It’s a easy, enjoyable read — and highly instructive on the peculiarities of human nature.
I am reminded of an observation made with regard to David and how Nathan dealt with the blatant sin of his king. He told a story the engaged David’s emotion rather than confront David’s failure rationally. Once David became rightfully outraged at the audacity of the rich man’s theft of the poor man’s lamb to feed a guest, Nathan was able to speak the rational word, and David’s heart was pierced with the reality of his sin. God, through Nathan, was able to get through to David by first getting through to his emotion.
Good point Mike. Jesus taught in parables as well. Engaging the everyday experience before making an eternal point.
Amazon just chalked up another book sale.
Jay:
You might also be interested in an earlier book by the Heaths: “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” from 2007. (Link: http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287) The book develops what the Heaths describe as six principles of “sticky” ideas that survive: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. I bought my copy when it came out, when I was recalled to active duty (long since retired from the reserves); have tried to apply it to my cases at trials/hearings.
– Bob
Interesting how human knowledge cycles as different interpretations, even of the same data, swing back and forth, in and out of current acceptance based on a “who said what” momentum. (We don’t do that with scripture interpretation, do we?) Psychologists are returning to the old David Hume model of dualism in human behavior, which is remarkable similar in a qualitative way to Paul’s spirit vs flesh discourse in Romans 7.
Of course, the idea that emotions make the decisions from experience and the reason justifies the decision already made is an old one. The analogy with elephant and rider is interesting; Jonathan Haidt also used this same analogy in his book, “The Happiness Hypothesis” several years ago, and more recently in “The Righteous Mind – Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” which I am in the process of reviewing to help identify humanistic thinking in the church.
This current idea of human moral decision-making — with emotion/experience being first for the decision and then reason second to justify the decision — explains a lot of thinking in the church over doctrine, as illustrated by many of the threads of circular comments about posts on this OneInJesus site. It also shows where the “New Atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, have missed it, when they claim to be so smart in contrast to those emotional religious people, because they are all about “reason.” What they have done is back themselves into a corner which Paul had already marked out for them in 1 Cor. 1:18-25.
This idea has been taught in the field of sales for years. People(all of us) buy on emotion and rationalize it with logic. No emotion involved = no sale.
Good blog and good comments. The emotions generated by “We have the truth and no one else does” is one thing that propelled the Churches of Christ to become the fastest growing denomination in America for several decades. For some, this idea of exclusivism trumps all other ideas in their belief system. I would say this explains the fact that when the very conservative of CofC leave the CofC, they leave all organized Christianity. They have placed all their emotional stock in the church rather than in Jesus.
I may be the nay sayer here but I have been in numerous shrinking churches over the years where the minister tried to motivate the congregation with clever stories, creative illustrations, power point presentations, 3 point sermons, keys to success, free donuts, free coffee, themes for the month or year, and many other humanistic gimmicks. The preacher would have a theme for the sermon with a few scriptures sprinkled in but he would rarely ask the members to turn to the passage and read along. Essentially the church was being driven by a humanistic leader who merely referred to the Bible but did not need the Bible to make his points. I currently now go to a nondenominational church that systematically teaches through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The preachers oratory talent is not the focus. The word of God is the focus. We cover a couple of chapters a week and we simply dive into the word in an expositional style. The members learn new things every week they have never seen before. The church is learning “The whole counsel of God”. The church is growing very rapidly because everyone is hungry for the word. We are over 3000 in attendance and just had 4800 for Easter. The word of God is motivation enough and the rapid growth is our proof. CoC ministers need to quit trying to drive the church through the force of their personality. They need to step back and let the word change hearts. Look how the word was preached in the 1st Century.
Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God is flawless”
Acts 6:7 “So the word of God spread”
Acts 12:24 “But the word of God continued to increase and spread”
Acts 18:11 “So Paul stayed for a year and a half teaching them the word of God”
Good point, Monty – and so sermons can turn into manipulative speeches as well (which they ought not be).
Alexander
Skip wrote:
Amen!
God has provided plenty of motivational narratives in the scriptures. It’s true that our own modern day experiences of how God has changed us are also motivational, and helpful for building one another up. But nothing can substitute for the words of God.
As a preacher what is required is a combination of solid meaty substance packaged in a way that attracts attention and holds it. Absolutely brillaint Bible scholars with deep spiritual roots can fail to motivate because they don’t know how to communicate what is relevant to them to the lives of others. Amazing communicators can fail because there is simply nothing real behind the stories and flashy presentation. The best thing I have personally done is get my sermon material out to the small groups a week in advance and then open up after the sermon for comments and questions. This has really helped me see how best to communicate some difficult to accept teachings (We are in the Sermon on the Mount) so folks can apply them to their daily lives.
Here’s a pithy quote from Switch:
Reversing the decline of churches of Christ requires change on a big scale. That requires motivating the elephant. Churches of Christ traditionally have not been very good at motivation. Their whole method of operation has been to direct the rider with facts and logic.
Motivation and manipulation are very close cousins. In fact, one may separate them as follows:
“Motivation is my attempt to get you to take the path which I believe is the right one.”
“Manipulation is the attempt by someone I don’t trust to get you to take the path which he believes is the right one.”
Why is it that stimulating a person’s emotions in an effort to influence him is suspect, but stimulating his intellect for the same reason is not suspect? Neither is of the Spirit.
The elephant/rider analogy does not work for the believer due to the absence of the spirit in the picture. It is a bit of a rational snobbery which I do find altogether too much in the church. The more rational a believer is, we think, the more dependable his words. The more emotional a believer is, the less dependable. Methinks this view was promulgated by just one side.
To the believer who submits to emotion, his rational brother is a dead commentary. To the believer who submits to the rational, his emotional brother is a dancing ninny. To the spiritual man, neither view impresses, as neither has enough substance upon which to base anything that is real or eternal. Trying to bring these two lesser and entirely natural aspects into some sort of cooperative balance is a pointless exercise. Trying to give one control of the other is even worse.
Charles,
Manipulation is just as often done through the Rider as through the Elephant. The difference in manipulation and legitimate persuasion is that manipulation uses deception and half-truths — not that one uses emotions and the other doesn’t.
Emotions are not illegitimate targets for motivation. Jesus motivated us with hope, with fear, with love… all of which target the emotions.
You may already know this but the Heath brothers were raised in churches of Christ. I was at Texas A&M with Heath and I worked at Round Rock (TX) CofC where his father was a member. But sadly, they have left the faith.
All,
You’ll recall, I’m sure, that Jesus taught largely through stories. Even when not speaking in parables, he routinely spoke in metaphor. Why? Because stories and metaphor can be much more motivating than the bare propositional truths.
We’re far more moved by the Parable of the Prodigal Son than the proposition: God is quick to forgive. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant seizes our hearts and consciences much more than the command: Forgive your brother.
Study the Prophets, who also taught in metaphor — and whose words fill our hymnals and devotional materials. The Psalms provide spiritual sustenance because of their imagery.
We should learn to communicate from the Creator who knows us better than anyone else.