Fostering a life-giving mindset | Growth and Stewardship
By Rev. Tori Mullin
As we plan for October 11, there can be a pressure to cram all our gratitude into one weekend. Pulling out prayers of thanksgiving, songs of praise and autumnal decorations, we can make quite a production out of the Thanksgiving holiday. Some communities of faith take the time to compose handwritten thank-you cards for staff and volunteers, to plan a specific financial ask, or to set-out specially designed offering envelopes for the worship service. Though Thanksgiving can be a wonderful reminder to practice gratitude, my hope is that this year inspires you to incorporate gratitude into the life of your community of faith more regularly.
As many communities of faith share their financial anxieties, it is all too easy to slip into a mentality of scarcity. This dangerous mindset is known to have adverse effects on our cognition and decision-making. Psychologist and professor Eldar Shafir, and co-author behavioural economist Sendhil Mullainathan, write in Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much how a feeling of unmet needs can create tunnel vision that deprives us of energy, critical thinking, and creativity. Addressing this mindset is not a one-size-fits-all answer. Scarcity mindset exists because of a perceived lack of enough, which may or may not be true.
Shafir and Mullainathan recommend keeping aware of your mentality, future planning, and avoiding over-focusing on what you lack as key to counteracting the scarcity mindset.
For communities of faith this could look like:
- Practicing naming aloud the abundance you are experiencing—in team meetings, worship services, small groups—counteracting the narrative of “not enough”.
- Paying attention to the stories you tell in your leadership meetings; stay attentive to the attitude of the room, do you confront opportunities and challenges with pessimism/optimism/pragmatism?
- Being proactive with future planning, including possible steps for ideal, likely and worst-case scenarios.
- Knowing your priorities as a community, this will allow leadership to triage resources for what is most important.
- Talking openly with your community about what you have, what you need, and what you would like to do; transparency encourages investment.
- Thank donors and volunteers for the gifts they offer each week which make your ministry possible.
As Aaron Perry says, “ministry is the work of all people because the people are essential to the church … you can’t have a local church without people.” (Lay Leadership for the Care of All Souls, p.19) In many of our worship places, it is the people that are our greatest resource!
In this season of harvest and gratitude, take some time to wonder:
In what ways has your community of faith already been fostering a theology of “enough”?
What other practices could help you combat a scarcity mindset?
If you’d like to explore further, reach out to your Growth Animator, Tori Mullin (they/them) at tmullin@united-church.ca.
