Appreciative Inquiry in the House of God

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another––John 13:34.

No one is counting yet, but dozens of AI projects are taking place in religious communities in the United States and Canada. Gregorio Banaga’s doctoral dissertation addressing AI and congregational strategic planning has helped generate considerable Catholic interest.²¹ The work of Robert Voyle, an Episcopal priest and psychologist, and Helen Spector, an AI master practitioner who has worked with half a dozen Christian judicatory bodies, is particularly exciting. Appreciative methodology is making inroads in Fuller Seminary’s curriculum,²² and doctoral degrees in AI from Benedictine University are seeding the work in Catholic groups across the country, as documented in Susan Star Paddock’s Appreciative Inquiry in the Catholic Church.²³ Still, at this writing appreciative inquiry in the house of God remains largely new territory waiting to be explored.

Appreciative work in congregations, as anywhere else, begins with reflections, then questions, and then sharing the questions. What are your best images and associations with your congregation? In what ways are people engaged, clearly committed, and happy to participate? What do members most appreciate and value about their faith, this faith family, and their engagement? What kind of opportunities do people have to really share each other’s stories? When people are treated really well in your community—and in its ministry—what is it like?

Another good introduction might be utilizing the five processes Mohr and Watkins identify and taking to heart the appreciative values and reframed perspective we’ve been discussing. Identifying and reflecting on what is most life giving and meaningful to a faith family, giving members a safe place to talk about faith and values, and learning to discover, enjoy, and gain from everyone’s engagement is a good starting place. Both clergy and lay leaders can look to what enlivens their communities and characterizes them at their best and begin to extrapolate. "Appreciative" possibilities in the context of a faith family are endless. One that has been particularly meaningful to me relates to corporate prayer.

A few months prior to meeting David Cooperrider in 1996, I held a part-time interim pastorate in a small rural congregation that some said was nearing death and needed a dignified funeral. Instead it bounced back and is thriving today. During an 18-month interim we approached the prayers of the people in a new way. Following the Sunday sermon, I took paper and pen and walked into the middle of the congregation, barely a dozen those first few months. I invited them to reflect on the past week and share things they were thankful for and things that concerned them. People poured out their hearts. Following what were sometimes 15-minute discussions, I would lead them in prayer, mentioning all the thanksgiving and all the petitions, and together we concluded with the Lord’s Prayer.

A year later the coffee-hour conversations were all about answered prayer. It didn’t dawn on me until three years later, after taking an appreciative inquiry intensive, that we had developed an appreciative approach to the prayers of the people in that small church. We heard each other talk about what was important enough to be thankful for and important enough to share with God as a concern. As the year progressed, the subject of answered prayers came up again and again, to continued thanks.

Similar explorations await every aspect of congregational life. Voyle divides his time between interim ministries and appreciative training and coaching. He is full of examples about the difference AI makes in his ministries.

For years he has led clergy trainings on sexual abuse in the church—a tough, important subject full of unhappy, fearful issues. After being introduced to AI, he began similar trainings by asking people to share, one-on-one, stories of experiences in which they felt incredibly respected. What made being respected so important? And what might we learn about generating quality respect for everyone? The tough issues still must be addressed if we want congregations safe from predators and abuse. But reframed, the energy can change. We learn the joys of exemplary, gracious behavior as a context for creating safety and accountability. As a golfer noted, "Telling me not to hit it into the trap just about guarantees I’ll hit the trap!"

So at Voyle’s workshops now, the emphasis shifts away from negative expectations and images, away from "Why?!" and a judgmental attitude, moving instead toward asking, "What do we know about genuinely safe, respectful, involved relationships, particularly when some are laity and some clergy? And how can we best create these kinds of relationship in our life together?

I stumbled into an appreciative approach to prayer; more consciously all the elements of liturgy might be revisited and reinvigorated through an appreciative perspective, particularly when artists and their work are included. Rereading scripture from an appreciative viewpoint is illuminating. The familiar passages used in this chapter jump out and empower me in new ways these days.

Spiritual formation (at both personal and corporate levels), homiletics, pastoral care,²⁴ and congregational dynamics, including conflict resolution,²⁵ can all be richly rewarded using appreciative approaches and protocols.

A host of hermeneutical and theological issues await discussion. Here at the starting gate we might note that AI is a treasury of applied epistemology, and that ontology is nowhere to be found except implicitly and potentially, embodied only when an actual community makes a commitment to know itself in new ways and asks its first appreciative question. Juxtaposing applied systems of knowing and implied systems of being, thereby sidestepping any specific cosmological or ontological truth claims, may be the empowering factor in AI’s success in hundreds of different kinds of environments. Put simply, AI can help all of us ask better questions, including those of us in faith families.

Religious education opportunities are a universe to themselves. AI assumes that lifelong learning and development are as important to institutions as to individuals. Much of this territory is already being explored in a variety of institutional environments. One of the 21 principles of the United Religions Initiative Charter, for instance, states, "We are committed to organizational learning and adaptation."

Ultimately, issues of mission, enrollment, and vision deserve a full appreciative exploration. First, I suspect, will come hard questions about appreciative ethics, morality, justice, and peace;²⁶ these tough issues may be the most illuminating and transforming of all. Perhaps in tackling them appreciatively the Armageddon scenarios tempting literalists from all sorts of traditions will fade like a bad dream, and the joyful work of providing spiritually grounded respect and an opportunity for a good life to every person on the planet can proceed.

We must remember that this new discipline comes from people preoccupied with organizational dynamics, and church administration, so barren an arena in some churches, can also be revitalized appreciatively. Clergy evaluation, for instance, is one of the toughest issues in the ecclesiastical portfolio, as attested to by books, courses, training, and continuing bad experiences. An appreciative approach shifts the focus toward mutual valuation exercises that foster growth and improvement and a shared sense of collaboration.²⁷

Pursuing any of this systematically is impossible, however, without a transformed frame of reference.²⁸ Voyle says a conversion is required, by which he means "a profound reorientation in the way you look at the world, yourself, and God."²⁹ It means developing one’s perceptions and valuation to discern and pay attention to what is most life-giving, most valuable, rather than focusing on cause and blame when difficulties arise.

It means attending more to the abundance of God’s love than to the drama of human sinfulness, or, as Voyle says, "Did Jesus come to stop us sinning or to make us loving?" He thinks that until love is the actual focus of relationship, God has little room to participate. His first sermon at a new interim post is always titled, "What in God’s Name Is Going on Here?" As long as God is part of the story, he is interested, he says. But if it’s last year’s gossip, he just doesn’t have the time. Rather than exorcise demons, he seeks to create a safe, sacred space where the community can identify and attend to what is most important about its life now and in the future.

Helen Spector, as far as I know, is the first AI practitioner to do a full-blown 4-D appreciative inquiry with large judicatory bodies and denominational leadership groups. A strong-willed, controversial bishop had retired, and the new bishop invited Helen to help design a transition process and event. A large two-day gathering was planned. First, all judicatory congregations and organizations organized one-on-one appreciative interviews focused on their most life-giving experiences of ministry; stories from the reports helped shape the coming event.

Seven hundred participated, including representatives from all judicatory congregations and organizations, 110 youth, and 30 trained as facilitators. After one-on-one interactions, small groups self-organized around five denominational vows (with individuals selecting the group focused on the vow they found most compelling) to envision the work of the people of the diocese over the next 10 years. Later, groups were organized geographically so that people would be working with neighbors as they dreamed and made specific plans about the future of their church.

The bishop made it clear that the days of dicta from the top were over. "Tell me where your heart is leading you, the work you want to embrace," he said. "That is what we will support." Many were skeptical, but those who believed made serious commitments and went to work, and the energy and goodwill generated by the end of the second day exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Spector points out that it could not have happened without the courage of the bishop "not to have the answer." She believes this willingness is the toughest appreciative issue for clergy. "From a leadership standpoint, to be able to hold the space for your people, to not give them the answer, to encourage and believe in their capacity even when they don’t know they have it in them. The answer lies within them if they listen." And that, she says, is what the appreciative interview is all about.

"Courage comes from leaders believing that it’s in the people—that the ‘story’ and the capacity to be faithful is there in them—and holding the space by not telling them the answer. That is hard. There is always somebody with ‘the answer.’"³⁰ Spector’s experience is that the power of the story told and listened to by every member represents the real treasury. If handled with care and respect in an expanding circle, these storytellers, their faith journeys, and their talents represent the necessary resources to renew and transform the community and its members.

Another of Spector’s projects, involving 50 leaders of a major denomination, led one executive to report, "Appreciative inquiry has enhanced our functioning, our ability to serve congregations. And our work has become energy giving instead of energy draining." Asked about her own most important learning, she said it was "the ability to frame questions appreciatively."³¹

Susan Paddock’s Appreciative Inquiry in the Catholic Church is a short but splendid first book about Christian community and AI. Appreciative theory is clearly summarized in six quick pages. Then Paddock, a family psychotherapist and convert to Catholicism, devotes her second chapter to the congruence of AI with Catholic social teaching, Pope Paul VI’s teaching on dialogue, and themes from Vatican II. Throughout the text, scripture is used to underline appreciative notions, and the final pages are an invitation to start using AI in your own community.

In this context, chapters are devoted to stories about Catholic congregations and agencies using AI for local and global community building, strategic planning and mission statements, enhancing pastoral transitions, and spiritual renewal. Considerable Episcopal interest and interfaith applications also receive a chapter. Along the way, dozen of appreciative projects are detailed, including Catholic Relief Services, a group of churches and schools in Garfield Heights, Ohio, the Diocese of Cleveland, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and more. In each story, Paddock emphasizes the specific questions used in the inquiry and the results. A quick read, this book immediately demonstrates the remarkable gift appreciative inquiry represents for any community of faith and practice.

If this summary seems a bit enthusiastic it’s because I’m still a beginner, hungry to discover better ways to nurture relationship and healthy collaboration, to revitalize and magnify the faith community’s generative power in a world badly in need of more help from faithful folk. David Cooperrider makes a point whenever he begins a new project, whatever the context, that he is not an expert. But he is a fellow inquirer who has paid considerable attention to how we learn and what we learn.

As such he and a growing number of colleagues are happy to help create appreciative questions, to introduce the notion of positive core, to share this novel social technology of powerful relationship and trust formation. They are happy to help design a venture’s learning/transformation process, focusing on what is most important to the venture’s purpose and its best possible outcomes. And the church and any congregation can become the beneficiaries of these processes. The appreciative congregation, if it emerges in force, will come from faith families everywhere, with the wit and wisdom to learn how to love each other—children of God each one—in new, appreciative, and creative ways.

As an activist in interfaith relationship development, I was asked to facilitate a public discussion including a Christian seminary president, a rabbi, and two Muslim community leaders. The discussion came two months after the September 11 tragedy, and it was tempting to wade into the problem from a hundred different directions.

Instead, I began by asking each participant, "What is it that makes your faith so precious to you?" Then I asked about the gifts—the wisdom and insights—that their extraordinary traditions have to offer us about peace, about comforting the afflicted, about justice, about living when there is no justice, and about relating to the stranger. More than 150 neighborhood folks representing a dozen different faiths came together in a local city hall that night.

After the initial hour, many went to the microphone to ask questions and make their own contributions. Fascinating information was presented and hard issues were raised, "mea culpa" was heard, and the tone of the talk, fully engaged, was consistently respectful. The evening concluded as it began, with prayer and goodwill, with seeds of a plan to come together across faith divisions on a regular basis to learn from each other, and to give the local community a new kind of religious voice. Two years later, a group meets regularly, provides interfaith programs, and keeps the dialogue going.

That community evening was hardly an AI intervention, yet we enjoyed a warm, provocative appreciative culture for a few hours, and the people came out of it energized, enthusiastic, and wanting more. It is the kind of environment and experience one hopes for not only between strangers but within families, including faith families. May it be so in yours.

In benediction, let me invite you to reconsider what the author of Ephesians meant when he wrote, "Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations…" (Ephesians 3:20).

21. The fruit of Gregorio Banaga’s work can be found in "A Spiritual Path to Organizational Renewal" in Lessons from the Field: Applying Appreciative Inquiry, edited by Sue Anise Hammond and Cathy Royal (Plano, TX: Thin Book Publishing Company, 1996), 261–271.
22. Mark Lau Branson, Homer L. Goddard Associate Professor of Ministry of the Laity at Fuller Theological Seminary, recently published Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2004).
23. Susan Starr Paddock, Appreciative Inquiry in the Catholic Church (Plano, TX: Thin Book Publishing Company, 2003).
24. Dozens of medical and therapeutic appreciative projects are surfacing, mentioned in AI listserve postings and publications, a number of which should interest pastors and counselors.
25. At the Interfaith Center at the Presidio in San Francisco and Pacific School of Religion, Peggy Green has developed a project titled "First Be Reconciled" for generating friendly, collaborative relationships between evangelical and gay and lesbian Christians.
26. Two weeks following the tragedies of September 11, 2001, 60 peacemakers gathered at American University in Washington, DC, for a three-day training in AI called "Positive Approaches to Peace–building: A Practitioners’ Exploration." The majority were on-the-ground peacemakers from Bosnia, Jerusalem, West Africa, and similarly conflicted areas of the world, along with the agencies serving them.
27. Protocol for an appreciative congregational valuation process can be found at www.ClergyLeadership.com.
28. The same point pertains to the business community. AI requires a CEO to look at a corporation with new eyes. Getting that to happen is one of the toughest steps in landing an organization development contract using AI in the business community.
29. Conversation, October 15, 2001.
30. Conversation, August 21, 2001.
31. Conversation, December 12, 2001.