Optimum versus Ideal

We recently implemented at work our new Organization Optimization plan after completing a downsizing. First you downsize, then you roll out the optimum organization. Of course, about two and a half years ago we did an even larger downsizing after which we rolled out the Ideal Organization. It was so ideal that some folks never did quite figure out what their job was. So now we are un-doing the Ideal in favor of the Optimum. We have also done several other ideal organization plans over the past several years. The ideal never seems to remain ideal for very long. I expect that the Optimum Organization will fare similarly.



'Optimize' is an interesting concept and is much like 'utopia' only more technical. In the engineering world, where a response variable may be expected to follow a response curve across a range of conditions like varying temperature or pressure or concentration, it makes some sense. In that technical case, the curve may indeed have an 'optimum' point where it is best to operate a unit operation. Of course, even these technical 'optima' often only exist on paper: in the real world we are usually happy to have an 'operating window' as a range of conditions within which we get good commercial results. This is because almost every commercial process has many things varying all the time to some degree: raw materials vary, wear and tear of the equipment, temporary malfunctions, operator skill, and so on all vary at once, so the optimum conditions are rarely seen. And in reality, all products can be made better and all processes can be improved so today's 'optimum' is tomorrow's 'obsolete'. So while the concept has some value in identifying the response curve so you can avoid really bad places to operate, truly 'optimized' processes don't really exist.



Once you start talking about humans, there is truly no 'optimum'. There is no more an optimum organization than there is an optimum economy or optimum marriage. That is one of the great flaws in the current universal health care proposal: it assumes the government can do centrally for a huge economic system what communism was unable to do centrally for any portion of an economy. It is an attempt at utopia in one large area of the economy by means of centralized planning and control. Some areas (like Europe) claim to be doing this successfully for health care, but I see them as free-loaders, sponging off the American system where the vast majority of new drugs and treatments are funded and developed. If America loses the economic incentive to create new drugs and methods, no one will have that incentive and they will cease. That would certainly not be optimum. As with our Ideal Organization, however, it would take time for this to be clearly seen. It took a long time for communism to fail, too.

Prayer as Punishment

On Monday morning this week as we discussed discipleship in our men's group we spent a few minutes on the concept of confession to each other for support and prayers as well as confession to God. I asked those in the group who had grown up in the Catholic church how they felt about the rite of confession. There were different takes on it but one of the men mentioned how the habit of the priests assigning a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys to say after confession had created in him the impression that saying prayers was a form of punishment for having sinned and gone to confession. I don't know that everyone reacts that way, but I suspect a good many do. I thought it was a good insight on how we can create impressions of punishment or legalism very easily in the way we practice the faith. In a little book being passed around in our couples small group at church, A Man's Helper by Wilfred Grenfell, MD (published in 1910; he was superintendent of the Labrador Medical Mission) he has a chapter on prayer and mentions some other types of 'prayer obstacles' that includes long winded prayers, fancy words, and some others . Here are some of my personal prayer obstacles, which overlap his to some degree:

• Prayer as information to God: droning on at length to tell God what He already knows, which is generally more to tell others listening what you think they need to know. For the most part they don't need to know.
• Prayer as sermon: praying in public as a disguised form of preaching is still preaching just the same, not prayer.
• Written prayers read without feeling or fervor: written prayers may be just fine, especially when sung. That is what the Psalms are, after all, and song is a fine way to express praise, worship and thanksgiving. But a monotonous reading or mindless repetition of a written prayer is much like 'prayer as punishment'.
• Prayer as punishment: not only when assigned after confession, but what are we conveying when we 'make' kids 'say their prayers' at night? I suspect that it varies with different children, but sometimes it is punishment.
• Prayer as King James vocabulary exercise: for some this is just habit, to others it is a performance.
• Prayer as laziness: praying for what you need to get up and do. Some things can only be done by prayer, some can only be done by work. Some require both.May we have the wisdom to know the difference!

The worst prayer, of course, is no prayer at all. That is the one that is most common of all.

Back to School, Back to Discipleship

I have commented before regarding my concern about the lack of discipleship in the local church and how I have wondered why it seems easier to for ministries centered on discipleship (like the Navigators and Campus Crusade) to thrive on a college campus than in a local church. As we continue to read and discuss Transforming Discipleship in our men's group, today the chapter for discussion focused on 'reproducing disciples' and made reference to the relationship of the Apostle Paul with Timothy and with Barnabas as well as the author's experience. While this was not in the book, it seems to me that one key element of what Paul did in his church planting and development of leaders as well as what Jesus did with the 12, is that they moved on after a short time. Paul might stay for a couple of years at most, but he then moved on. That of course forced the local followers to 'step up' and take on the leadership role(s) that Paul left vacant. That was also true for Barnabas, and Jesus left the entire fate of Christianity in the hands of the 12 after only 3.5 years!

This is also true of ministry on college campuses: the seniors graduate every year and the underclassmen have to 'step up'. There is a new freshman class every year, and if they are not reached then the ministry will be gone in 4 years. This makes for a dynamic of student leaders and new disciples both knowing that the leaders will leave and that the younger folks will of necessity take over. There is no option other than the ministry folding. I am wondering if this is indeed an important part of discipleship ministry. While one can ask new members up front for a 'commitment' to start another discipleship group themselves, this is not the same as a situation like graduation where it is clear that is an absolute necessity. My experience in the local church is that very few will make that kind of commitment: and when there is no driving necessity, as there is in a campus ministry, why should they?

Early in the book the author (Greg Ogden) had asked rhetorically what would happen if pastors new that they only had 3 or 4 years to establish a church and then they had to move on and leave it with the lay people? That is what Jesus did, and while Paul kept in touch by his letters to some degree, it is what he did too. How would that change the church? It is a good question. I am not suggesting that there is no need for ordained clergy. However, the dynamic of knowing that we are accountable to pass on the faith seems to me to be vitally important. I am not sure how to duplicate the sense of necessity that is clear on the campus, but it seems to be a good thing.

The Nature of Words, the Nature of Prayer

In Phillip Yancey's book Finding God in Unexpected Places he recounts from Augustine's Confessions the history of how St. Ambrose had learned to read silently without moving his lips, and how Augustine and his friends would gather round to watch this incredible thing, amazed that Ambrose could understand and retain the unspoken words. This was a very unusual and groundbreaking feat, and turned out to be a somewhat controversial one as folks debated whether this was a good thing to do or not since words were clearly intended to be spoken. It was also a feat inaccessible to most people at that time since very few could read and write. As a result, reading was normally a group event and was done aloud. This remained the case until well after the arrival of the printing press. Interestingly, when reading silently became common, personal prayer also became more common. Until then, prayer was also normally a group event, done aloud.



This was not entirely consistent with Biblical practice, however, though it may shed some light on why the 12 Disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. It may well be that public prayers were their main experience with prayer prior to Jesus. Prayer aloud was indeed very common. Jesus, however, apparently did not limit Himself to prayer aloud or at least not to prayer in public. In Matthew14:23 we are told that he went up to a mountain by Himself to pray after feeding the 5000; Luke 5:16 says that He often slipped away to the wilderness to pray; Luke 6:12, Luke 9:28, and John 6:15 are other instances of His going off to pray alone. It seems to have been His custom. I don't know whether He spoke his prayers aloud or not when He was alone, but He may have. That may be how we we have the record of his prayer in John 17 and in Gethsemane. However, when He instructs the disciples in Matt 6 he tells them not to pray as the hypocrites do in public, but to go to an inner room, shut the door and pray in secret.



There is something about words that demand to spoken, and writing becomes a surrogate form of speech. It is understandable that prayer would at times be aloud and in groups due to that, especially among those who cannot read. And yet, Jesus clearly set the example for personal, private prayer, whether sp0ken aloud or not. It is interesting that His example did not seem to become the norm in the early church, however. As with other areas in life like education, it seems to be easier for us to talk about subjects of importance and depth in public, like in a classroom, than at home or in one on one conversation. How easily we relegate the matters of ultimate importance only to formal settings and do not attempt to deal with them with our children at home or our neighbors in daily conversation. I think for a similar reason personal, private prayer may also be harder than public prayer. Private prayer is too easily confined to our list of needs and wants. This is not to say that public worship is always deep and deals with ultimate issues; the public practice of our faith can also become trite if we allow it. But it often happens that we want the church or school to deal with the hard stuff.



This reminds me of the need for both the formal and the informal, the private and intimate as well as the public. The public can remind us of the hard topics that we otherwise avoid, the private challenges us to get beyond the merely public.

Health Care and Education

In the debate over universal health care it seems to me that a number of things have not been included in the debate. I have seen articles and blogs that talk about whether health care is a right, some saying it is while others compare it to housing or other purchases that may in some cases be subsidized but are not rights. As I have written some months ago in this blog, health care is not a right but it is something that we all care about and would like to make available to as many people as possible. Because it is a service and not property, it seems to me that in many ways it is like education.



Education is also not a right, though most of us would agree that it is a good thing and critical to having citizens informed enough to exercise the right to vote as well as to effectively participate in the economy. It is an important thing, but not a right. Life, liberty, property, justice in the courts, voting: these are all rights. Having housing, clothing, food, and education are not rights, they are responsibilities for us to provide for ourselves, but they are important and in some cases we provide a safety net for those unable or only partially able to provide them for themselves.



In the case of education, public education is made available everywhere, though the local citizens have a say at the polls about how much is spent (by voting on tax levies and bond issues), have a say in how it is run by electing school boards, and put a cap on how much is provided 'free' to everyone by limiting free public education through high school only, not college. And many people want something better or different from the public schools, so private schools and home schools also are available. Beyond high school, all additional schooling is at the student's expense. The basic issue here is that everyone sees the value in basic education and are willing to pay for it--to a point.



It seems to me that many of these approaches should apply to public health care as well if it is to be done at all. It should be run locally; the local citizens should be able to control costs and management by voting on the funding and boards; it should cover basic health care, but not health care beyond a certain point; there should be options for private health care in addition to the public health care. These principles would make certain options, like a single payer system run by the government, off limits.



Public education was not intended to provide all the education needs of the country, just the basics, and that with accountability to voters on the results and the cost. It seems to me that health care should have the same kinds of accountability and limited scope.