The Problem with Quick Fixes

I often use words such as “process,” “dialogue,” and “conversation.”

Yet, if I’m honest, I feel like a failure every time I don’t have quick solutions and easy answers.

As I look back on the past six months, I see all the times I was tempted to switch into fix-it mode—and all the ways something beautiful unfolded when I didn’t.

About six months ago we sensed something wasn’t working with our children’s ministry. Maybe we should use a different curriculum? Or change our Sunday morning programming?

I got that uneasy feeling. You know that one: when you see a problem, or hear a question, and you don’t know the resolution.

In conversations with parents and meetings with staff and elders, I got that uneasy feeling. You know that one: when you see a problem, or hear a question, and you don’t know the resolution. It makes you feel small, inadequate, and unprofessional and you just want it to go away. You feel like you should present a solution to the problem in the same meeting that the problem was identified. Most of the lay leaders we partner with work in fields where they are expected to produce measurable results on a particular timeline. It’s only natural that they would bring those expectations to church work too. Which only adds to the expectations we put on ourselves.

The problem behind the problem

When these questions about children’s ministry were raised, we were tempted to find a quick fix. Instead, we started a series of conversations with families about children’s ministry.

In these conversations, families were honest about the challenges of raising faithful kids and the loneliness of parenting. Over the course of these conversations, we discovered this was not really about Sunday morning curriculum or programming. It was about what was happening between Sundays. It was about parents needing community.

So the conversation shifted. It became about supporting parents and marriages and families. This was no longer about teaching kids in Sunday school but about helping parents and families feel like they were part of something in their daily lives.

The questions about Sunday school had made me want to find a quick fix. But new questions had surfaced. How do we support parents when they’re too busy or tired to attend an event? How do we get families involved in each other’s lives when they don’t live near each other? How do we meet the needs of single parents and empty nest parents? How can we be sensitive to the different schedules of at-home and career moms? How do we support marriages at many different stages?

The marriage question then opened the conversation further: Is this just about people with kids or does this also touch on the needs that all married couples have, including those without kids? And what about the needs of people who are dating? Or who wish they were married or dating?

At this point I was overwhelmed. The conversation had become very personal and vulnerable. Each question had brought up five new questions. I saw the deep need and pain of people longing for community. And I had no quick fix, no program or event, to offer. I felt like a failure, unprofessional for not sweeping in with the solution.

As I sat in the pain with busy, lonely people, I came to see that this conversation, which began with Sunday school and became about family ministry, was even broader still. The question was not only how to raise faithful kids or how to support families in their raising of faithful kids. The question now was how the church should be family.

I began to see how many ways a culture driven by success, consumerism, individuality, and hyper-mobility undermines our ability to be together. What used to emerge naturally when people stayed in the same community their whole lives now had to be created intentionally. I asked questions like: We long for security but what if opening ourselves to community makes us feel vulnerable? What if it costs us something? What if we chose to commit to something even if it’s with people we may not choose to be with? What if we stopped wondering if the grass was greener somewhere else? What if we stuck with something even when it got messy or painful or confusing? What if community won’t arrive fully formed? What if we will have to patiently create it together?

"Multiply Picnics"

In preparation for a sermon, which would raise some of these questions, I flipped through Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D Putnam. This dense work, filled with statistics and charts, ends in a surprising way. In the very last paragraph, Putnam quotes Henry Ward Beecher’s advice to “multiply picnics.”

Multiply picnics. So we planned some picnics. It felt so small and unprofessional and domestic, so unlike the big solution I’d like to offer. But I emailed a few folks and within a day I had a list of six dates and locations for picnics. So, that Sunday, as I wrapped up my sermon, I invited people to choose a picnic to attend and I wondered, “What if by getting together to talk about what community could be, we’re actually already doing community?”

Today, a month later, one of the picnic hosts approached me and said, “I just wanted to tell you I’ve decided to start a Bible study with some women. In these conversations I’ve heard a common theme of a need for this and thought it’s something I could do to help.” As she listed the names of people who would be part of the Bible study, I almost felt a physical weight lift. They were the names of the people who seemed to be the most lonely or longing most for community, the ones who had first raised the questions about children’s ministry.

As that weight lifted I thought back on the way this six-month process had unfolded. I remembered the moments I had been tempted to buy a curriculum or transplant someone else’s program. If I had found a quick fix to the first question about children’s ministry, we wouldn’t have had a chance to explore together what Christian community can be. If I had plopped a program into place, the conversations that took place and the relationships that began to develop at those picnics would not have happened. If I had tried to fix this, we would have missed the opportunity to watch how the community could create community.

Although this approach feels weak, the saying often attributed to management guru, Peter Drucker, encourages me: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The process of engaging in conversation as staff and with the congregation has helped us shape culture, help us name the decisions we want to avoid, and the recognize signs of a way forward. They’ve helped us define who we are, even if we’re still working on what we do about it.

And, even more, I’m encouraged by the example of Jesus with the woman at the well. She wanted a quick, easy, and permanent solution to her immediate problem, something that would mean she wouldn’t have the inconvenience of returning to refill her water jar everyday. The way she first understood Jesus’ promise of living water gave her hope she would never again find herself in that uneasy place of lacking something, of feeling her own need.

Jesus wanted to give her something more satisfying but also more mystifying. His invitation to us is the same. When we are thirsty for answers, when we don’t have what we need, it’s tempting to look for instant gratification, hoping it will keep us from ever having to feel our need again. But, instead, he invites us into something mystifying and along the way we discover the riches of his community and his provision.

Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.