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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Archie Poulos: The Minister Imposter Syndrome
Pastors facing up to our imposter syndrome - navigating the noise that leads us to make bad decisions.
As Pastors, we feel the pressure to have the right answers to people’s questions.
We want to be able to navigate the complexities of life and church and land everyone safely at the other end.
People share with us and the hardest parts of their lives, they trust us with their most private issues, and time and their money.
And they trust us that we will handle the most complex relationship difficulties with wisdom.
We end up feeling like imposters. Who am I to lead the people of God? And how can I have wisdom here?
Archie Poulos from Sydney’s Moore Theological College has found the secular book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment helpful as he has addressed these issues.
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pastors facing up to our imposter syndrome, navigating the noise that leads us to make bad decisions. It is the pastor's heart and dominic steel. Archie poulos is our guest now. As pastors, we feel the pressure to have the right answers to people's questions, all sorts of questions. We want to be able to navigate the complexities of life and church and then land everyone safely at the other end. People share with us the hardest parts of their lives. They trust us with their resources, their most private issues, their time, their money, and they trust us that we'll be able to handle the most complex relationship difficulties with wisdom.
Speaker 1:And you know what? We end up feeling like imposters. Who am I to lead the people of God and how can I have wisdom here? Old friend Archie Poulos is with us from Sydney's Moore Theological College. And look, I picked up this imposter idea with Gary Miller a few weeks ago when we talked to him about his Both and ministry book. But even before we had Gary on the Pastors Heart, archie, you had said to me this idea that as pastors we feel like imposters.
Speaker 2:Of course we do, and there's all sorts of reasons. Dominic, it's great to be here with you today, and with everybody else too. We feel like imposters. I think it's more intense even for us in ministry, because we know the importance of what we're doing. This isn't just about making money or anything like this. This is people's eternal souls, and also we know that God is at work. So the person we're working with, we're working alongside God in what he is doing and who's up to the task, to quote the Apostle Paul. And so we do feel like imposters, because our congregations keep assuming that we will know what to do, we'll be able to lead them well, and we keep thinking well, I should be like that. And, of course, so often we don't measure up to what we expect, what other people expect and the outcomes that we get. Where do we?
Speaker 1:particularly get it wrong.
Speaker 2:I think the book that I want to talk about says that we don't really think so often about the best solution to the problems that we've got, and so what we need to do is we need to look at what's going on, we need to interpret what's going on, and then we need to enact something, implement something that tries and fixes or maintains or enhances the good things that are going on, and I think at each of those places we can get it wrong, and so the book I wanted to talk about is yeah, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:It's the book Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, a secular book, but you're saying it's been a super helpful book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's helpful. I read these books because God, in his kindness, gives wisdom everywhere and what we need to do is see what others are writing, filter it through the lens of God's great revelation for there's nothing better than that and see what we can learn from it. So, one of the authors there, cunnaman, daniel Cunnaman I've spoken about him before. Some of you will know his other work, particularly Fast and Slow Thinking. It says it's sold over a million copies and in that what he wants to do is he talks about bias there, the way that in our decision-making, that is, we get data but we actually don't read the data well, because we're biased in our decision-making.
Speaker 1:Now there are some jobs where we really assume in that particular role. They're going to be objective. They're the radiographer reading the cancer scan, or the judge in the court case, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if only that were the case.
Speaker 2:And you're saying those people are frail and yeah, well, that's not so much the bias one. That's the next thing that this book is about. With biases, he talks about things I don't know if people remember the movie Moneyball, but what we do in we naturally have two pathways that we can think about with ways of thinking. One is what he calls fast thinking, the other one he calls slow thinking. We always default to fast thinking.
Speaker 2:You've got to train yourself to slow thinking, and what fast thinking does is it sees a situation and our brain looks for the closest thing that we've experienced to that, and then we say this is what's going on here. And so he uses the example, in bias, of you see a young person, an 18-year-old, playing basketball and you say he looks like Michael Jordan. Therefore, he is the next Michael Jordan, and you don't do what he calls slow thinking, and that is how high can he jump? How often does he make baskets, those sorts of things? And so you are biased because you go for the thing that is closest to what you've experienced before you can normally.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you said that, I thought I'm talking to somebody about a marriage problem and I immediately think where's the problem that I've had that's been similar to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because that's what we naturally do and you need to function that way. If you're flying a fighter jet and something happens, you think what's the closest thing that's going on here that I can get out of this problem? For it's a natural way of thinking. So that's bias. What this book is about is a different thing, which he calls noise, and he says noise is something which we can't easily measure, don't usually recognize and is very, very significant. So, to use his example, he says bias is, if you can imagine shooting an arrow at a target. Bias is the way that your 10 arrows are all going underneath the target, so you're biased down. What he says, the way he describes noise, is that you shoot at the target and it's all around, but you know you would think oh well, it's roughly the target because there's one above, one below, one to the side, one to the other side. That's noise and it's hard to see because it's just, it's random. And he says noise causes us problems and it affects our decision-making.
Speaker 1:It affects our decision-making as a radiographer or as a judge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or as a pastor. Well, actually we'll pick all three of them. It's interesting that in these days there's a whole new industry in reading x-rays, because they've worked out that AI can do it as well or better, because there's noise and sometimes bias, but mainly noise Like always with judges what they do in their book.
Speaker 2:They are all good researchers and so they've got a whole lot of evidence behind this, but they looked at the way judges' decisions are made in the United States and they discovered a few things. One is that judges gave more lenient sentences after they'd had lunch than before lunch. Right, so they were hangry, you know, they were hungry.
Speaker 1:Whereas I would always think I want to be first on the court list, then I won't be kept waiting all day. I'm better off to wait all day and then get done at 3pm in court and get off.
Speaker 2:So that's a noise thing that they discover. They also discover, too, the judges, if their football team or whatever sporting code they play, if their team won on the weekends, they're more likely to be leaning on the Monday than if their team had lost on the weekend. And so that's the sort of thing. So that's the world of noise in the secular world For us. As pastors, we do the same sort of thing all the time. Let's think of some examples. It might be individuals.
Speaker 2:We preach the gospel to a congregation, but a congregation is made up of individuals and different people hear different things and respond differently. And what noise is going on there? So one person embraces what you say and takes it even further, so they are more black and white than you are. Another person says, oh, what would he have to know about this? He doesn't understand my situation, so he ignores you, and so there's a whole lot of noise around what you're saying. That's an example of how we do it. Likewise, our small groups can be like that too. How effective is my small group? You could say well, this small group has seen more people grow than that small group. That's a bias issue. But within a small group, again, you can have this noise. Some people are growing really well, some people are not growing at all those sorts of things, and so how do you measure that type of noise or even our congregational life?
Speaker 2:Who is it that we think we are wanting to reach? And who is it that we think we are wanting to reach? And who is it that we are reaching? I'm sure in your congregation, in my congregation, there's noise around that Some people are saying we are just reaching people just like me, because I look around here and I see people who are just like me. Others are saying, oh, I look around the congregation and there are all of these people of whatever ethnic background. So this is who we are reaching, and so there's noise around even the people we're trying to reach and what we are trying to do in this particular place, in our churches.
Speaker 1:So you're using noise in a few different ways. That word I think I mean At one level it's what's going on with me in the decision that I'm making, and what's the other way.
Speaker 2:Well, that's one. The way I make decisions. There is noise that are going on for me, because in my head I am not just a blank slate trying to work out what's going on in front of me. I'm the product of things that have gone on in the past and so it affects my decision making. The other way that I'm using noise, I think, is corporately, that the way people are responding is noisy and it and it's not biased gen, sorry sometimes and I should expect there to be noise in their lives you know well, there there is noise, and so is the noise something that you can try and diminish.
Speaker 2:This is what their argument is that if you can measure noise, you can actually then try and diminish it. So you can try and diminish. This is what their argument is that if you can measure noise, you can actually then try and diminish it so you can get closer to the centre of the target. So, rather than having huge distances away from the target that the arrows are hitting, you can say this is what we want to hit and these are things that are getting in the way of us hitting it. So let's try and minimise those so we get closer to what we're striving to do, which, of course, is what our task as pastors is is to use the resources God gives us.
Speaker 1:So let me give you my little takeaway of how this I think applies to me, and then you can broaden it out. Tuesday afternoon, the pastor's heart, and I find Tuesdays stressful.
Speaker 2:I'm stressful enough sitting here with you.
Speaker 1:But if I think about Sunday, it's people, people, people all day and I've had deadlines to get the sermon together. And then Monday I have one-on-one meetings, staff meetings, and then almost always a committee meeting Monday night. I've got to get up to prepare for this early in the morning, and then I have no people on Wednesdays. But I find at the end of this on Tuesday afternoon I'm just about ready to bite someone's head off. You know you should not have a pastoral conversation with me at 5 o'clock on.
Speaker 1:Friday, tuesday 5 o'clock on Tuesday and in fact we've ended up with a community group on Tuesday night at our place, so I've got to go home at 3 o'clock and not talk to anyone for a few hours because there's too much noise in my head. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a great example, dominic and uh, of what noise is in our sort of setting. But the other thing too is good on you for being able to see that, because the sorts of comments that you are likely to make, the sorts of assumptions about yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll be assumptions really bad at 5 pm tuesday and so it's in.
Speaker 2:It's important to think about noise. Uh, the other thing I liked about the book some of which we can appropriate and some of it we shouldn't is that they talk about ways to overcome noise, and there's two things I want to pick up in it. Some of them I don't think are particularly Christian. One of the ways that they say you minimise noise is what they call algorithms, and by that they mean just good practices that we know generally work, and I think often in our ministry. We want to leave a mark in ministry, which is not a bad thing at all. We do want the Lord Jesus glorified through what we do, so we want to leave a mark in our ministry. So therefore, we want to shape the ministry the way I want it to be, and what they say is that generally is more noisy than having good evidence of other things about how to function properly. And so in our own setting here in Sydney, we have the Centre for Ministry Development that I'm involved in. We have partners in ministry, we have REACH, all of which have done research and say here is a good way of doing different things, of developing people, of welcoming all of those sorts of things. That is what they would call algorithms. So what they've done… Patterns of ministry.
Speaker 1:Patterns, yeah, processes, pathways.
Speaker 2:Because if you're just doing something once, it's very easy to have a lot of noise around that If you've looked at a thousand different times, it's been done. What you can do is minimise the noise. And yet so often we think, oh, I can't just take this thing off the shelf.
Speaker 2:I want to say that's a really good place to start Taking the thing off the shelf Off the shelf yeah, because they tell us they've done the research and it says here is a good way of doing things, a good way of achieving things. I think that's really helpful. I'd want to take it a little bit further and say and what is it that's peculiar and particular about your situation that you would nuance it? Sometimes you'll say, well, there's nothing particular and unusual, so therefore let's do it. Other times you'll say, yeah, our situation is different for this reason, but then you've justified it and so you've minimised the noise of doing something a little bit differently. So I want to say let's keep looking at what good looks like. Other people have done good work for us in it, so let's take that on board.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing that they say that is helpful. The second one is something which I've spoken to you about before here on the Pastor's Heart, and that is they say get trusted experts to come and have a look at what's going on in your setting so that they can help you to see the noise. And the reason for that is that we can't see the noise. The argument of the book is noise is invisible almost all the time, and so if we try to say where is the noise? Where am I making bad decisions? You know it on Tuesday night, but it probably took you a while to work that out.
Speaker 2:So you need to have the trusted expert, somebody who understands your situation, whom you trust and can look as a third party and so, therefore, in conversation with you, it can reduce the noise.
Speaker 1:I don't think we do that very well, I was just remembering one of my friends who was a senior manager at McDonald's Australia. He talked about store blindness, that in their McDonald's stores across the country, in their McDonald's stores across the country, the local manager or local owner something would have happened and they just wouldn't even be able to see that it was there, that there was a mess, there was a thing left in the corner and it had been sitting there for months and I remember thinking that's so helpful and that you can walk into our building at church and we have a store blindness. You know, there are things that we've got a couple of tabletops sitting in our auditorium just off on the far left-hand side that have been sitting there for six months, that should have been put in a store room but you don't notice it. But we've got store blindness about them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but you don't notice it, but we've got store blindness about them. Yeah yeah, I did some research a few years ago on the topic of whether churches were welcoming for outsiders, and one of the things that I did was I asked members of congregations whether you think you're welcoming for outsiders and universally they said we are the friendliest church that we know. And of course they're the friendliest church because you go in and catch up with your friends. But if you go in and catch up with your friends, you're not paying attention to the newcomer, are you? So they're actually not particularly welcoming. The more friendly they were, the less welcoming they were for the outsider. So that's the sort of thing of noise Now that consultation.
Speaker 1:You were talking about that external input. Do we resist that? Is it pride? Is it fear? Territorial?
Speaker 2:I think there's a whole lot of things. I think it's those personal things that in the denomination that I'm in we have rectors. Rectors are kings and so it's my domain, and so I don't want somebody telling me what to do in my domain. And likewise, the person who's next door feels like what an intrusion it is for me to go in and say to the other person how about we talk about, how about I have a look at what you're doing? Because it looks like I'm being superior. So we don't do that very well.
Speaker 2:So I think we have a siloing of our ministries. I want to protect myself as the rector. The other person who is willing to engage with me thinks what right do I have to speak into this? And so I'd want us to be saying let's compact with each other in the same geographical area perhaps In our setting we have mission areas and say can I take a video of what's going on in our church this Sunday and share it with our group, and you can tell me what noisy things I cannot see, and next week you can do it as well and we'll work on it together. It takes a great deal of trust. We generally trust each other as long as we're not challenged. I think, and I think it's actually one of the big things that we need to keep working on.
Speaker 1:We generally trust each other as long as we're not challenged.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is. Everybody has the same convictions as the person next door. That's why we're in ministry. We want to see the Lord Jesus glorified in every part of the world. So that's why we trust each other. We share the same convictions. But if you challenge me, it's not just so that the kingdom of God might grow, it's I am shown not to be as good as what I could be, and there's this imposter syndrome thing that we started with. Being a minister has got to be for a whole lot of reasons, the hardest thing in the world to do. One of them is you are your ministry. We don't speak like this and we don't want it to be the case, but it's like being a concert pianist. The concert pianist's very identity is how well they performed in playing the piano tonight at the concert.
Speaker 2:I am an extension of what I do, and in our ministry that is what happens for us as well, and so what we need to do then, for our own self-image and identity's sake, is protect it. And so I'm happy for people to say, oh yeah, I want to see the Lord Jesus glorified. It encourages me to want to see the Lord Jesus glorified. But when they come and say I want to see the Lord Jesus glorified, it encourages me to want to see the Lord Jesus glorified. But when they come and say I want to see the Lord Jesus glorified, you're doing a great job over there, but have you thought that this could be improved? It is so easy to hear that, as you're an imposter, you're second rate. You should have seen this and you should have done something about it. Rather than saying thank you for that insight Now, can you help me to work out what we should do?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're saying that we're not good at having those conversations, we're not good at challenging, we're not good at sharpening each other and we're not good at listening. Yeah, when have you seen that done well, and I mean how can I do those conversations better?
Speaker 2:I'll spruik you a little bit. You have you're doing a united youth ministry with the Next Door Parish, yeah, and I assume that they did some things really well in their youth ministry. You did some things really well in your youth ministry. You did some things really well in your youth ministry. As you both get together, I assume that the noise issues those things that neither of you did well, or one did well and the other one didn't do well. You're actually able to get closer to the mark. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was about how to end it. Well, I mean, what drove us to do that, to run a combined youth minute? Neither of us felt me and David O'Mara down the road. Neither of us felt that we were quite getting what's the word.
Speaker 1:We just didn't have a quorum, you know, didn't have the sufficient quorum to just make it feel viable for the number of high schoolers that we wanted. And, in the kindness of God, over time it's taken us four years of working together but over time we're definitely well, we're probably quadruple what, well, certainly what we were, quadruple what they were. So it's doubled over the four or five years and now there's actually a viable quorum. Do I think that they've particularly well? Probably there would have been areas we might have brought more strategic thinking to the table and they might have brought some other skills to the table. Yeah, yeah, I think that probably has happened. I'm sure that has happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's definitely happened. Yeah, I think that's the sort of thing that we don't see the noise because you don't see noise. Somebody else who's outside of the system actually can see some of the noisy things that are going on, like the table that you just mentioned, at the back corner of your church.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I want to say that noise is serious. Canam and his mates here are saying it really affects the decision-making that you do, because we have blindness around it and because it's not like bias that you can see there's something that's not quite right and so we've got to correct that. Because it's all over the place, you tend to ignore it and tend to not see it.
Speaker 1:If I could just go back to something you said earlier, you spoke about, I've got to make a decision. I tend to go to the algorithm or the system of what I've seen before. What's the other way of doing it?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a slow thinking is to take the data. And really this is so, kahneman, it's an extension of Kahneman's early work. So, thinking fast and thinking slow, he said, what you do is, rather than just going to the thing that is closer to what you've experienced, you go and look at the data, look at the evidence that is closer to what you've experienced. You go and look at the data, look at the evidence and see what is the truth of what's going on. And so he gives the example of the Israeli Air Force. He and his mate, aaron Vertsky, were.
Speaker 2:When the Seven Day War came on, they went back to Israel and signed up and he said that he saw the Israeli military and air force are brilliant, their pilots are brilliant and they were doing a training run and one of the pilots didn't perform as well as he could and when they landed, the man in charge of the group just tore him to shreds in front of everybody. And Kahneman said why did you do that? And he said well, when I do this, they do better next time. That's fast thinking. Kahneman said do you think that they were all really good pilots? And he just made a mistake this time and what you saw next time was a reversion to the norm, him going back to being really good. So that's the slow thinking that Kahneman speaks of. And that's slow thinking is look at the evidence, look more widely than just what you immediately think. Where he goes now with the noise, one is to say now let's think of what else is confusing things that might be causing us not to see what's really going on.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure, it's great to see you again, Don.
Speaker 1:Great to see you and everyone else Archie Poulos has been my guest. The book we've been chatting about is Noise, a Flaw in Human Judgment by Kahneman, siboney and Sunstein and I mean the Sunday Times says monumental, gripping book outstanding. Noise may be the most important book I've read in more than a decade. A genuinely new idea so exceedingly important. You'll immediately put it into practice. That's Angela Duckworth. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
