Making Decisions About Decisions

The past 18 months have given ministers and leaders ample – if unwanted – experience in making difficult decisions. In your world, those decisions might have involved stopping something that you’d like to have kept doing, starting something that you weren’t sure would succeed, or eliminating a position that you could no longer afford but that was held by someone you love.

Unfortunately, these decisions are more challenging right now, because we not only have people ready and willing to criticize our decisions, but social media platforms also allow others to easily broadcast those critiques. Taken together, these realities can easily make us hesitate to finalize our hard decisions – and then doubt ourselves once we’ve done so.

So what are some principles that can help us in these moments?

It would be impossible to offer specific advice that would apply neatly to all the various ministry contexts out there. But I do think that there are principles here that might be able to help us: one from Scripture, and one from a contemporary thinker.

First, when we look at Scripture, we see plenty of examples of individuals making difficult decisions. And a common theme in many of those stories is an awareness of the reality of God’s presence with the decision-maker. Three little words – “Here I am” – repeatedly appear in the Bible as a response to God’s calling. It’s what Samuel says in 1 Sam. 3, what Ananias says in Acts 9, and perhaps most famously what Abraham says in Genesis 22 when God calls him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Those three little words communicated a readiness to do what God would have them do. They inherently acknowledge the reality of God’s call – and the reality of the one who is calling.

We see this readiness again in Luke 1, in the response that Mary gives to the angel Gabriel’s announcement of her impending pregnancy. Her words are different, but the spirit is the same. She says that she is the servant, the handmaid, of the Lord, and she welcomes things happening according to God’s word and will. Perhaps there were some second thoughts, and surely there was a lot of worry; but Mary’s response showed she was ready to do what God called her to do.

This acknowledgement of God’s presence, along with a readiness to respond, indicates a fundamental heart-posture of humility. That same humility helps us to follow another important principle: a willingness to rethink our decisions and practices. In his recent book, Think Again, organizational psychologist Adam Grant discusses how crucial – and difficult! – it can be to rethink, to reconsider, and then to take action. If we are too confident in our own abilities, our own competence, and our own prior choices, then we might think there is no reason to reconsider. But if we are not confident enough in those areas, then we might doubt our ability to make wise decisions in our current crises. If we can find the balance of confident humility, which is often bolstered by experience, then we might be able and willing to rethink and thus move into a new future. [1]

So what does this look like on the ground? Here in the Siburt Institute, we had multiple events planned for this fall. Of course, had we known how rampant the delta variant of the current coronavirus would be, we likely would have planned our fall quite differently. Yet as delta made its presence known, and we examined our fall plans, we ended up making different decisions for different events based on the circumstances surrounding each one: size, purpose, location, length, etc. We called one off, continued with three others, delayed scheduling another, and all the while continued to offer online gatherings! I imagine that you’ve been having to make similar kinds of choices – and that, like us, you’ve wondered whether you made the right calls.

In our case, I am confident that our decision-making process drew on our team’s long experience with planning big events, whether for academic, civic, or ministry audiences. That experience gave us confidence in our decision to rethink our plans. And, as always, we hope that we were listening to God’s call and direction, seeking to equip and serve churches and church leaders, but also to care for them as best we can.

What about you? What decisions are you facing right now? May you have a clear sense of God’s presence with you, the willingness to step forward in faith, and the confident humility to walk forward, one day and one decision at a time.

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[1] Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (New York: Viking, 2021).