Friends—enjoy this three part series from Krish Kandiah, an author and the Executive Director of Churches in Mission at the UK Evangelical Alliance. Besides lecturing in Evangelism at Regents Park College, Oxford University, Krish is a Doctoral supervisor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. He neatly describes a vision for discipling Christians whose faith is strengthened through the personal or cultural struggles that shake belief for many. Are you equipped to build "anti-fragile" into the lives of your congregation? How resilient is your own relationship with God? – Paul
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to spend the day with one of my childhood sports heroes. (As you can imagine, I had been looking forward to this particular day at work!) I had spent a good portion of my teenage years watching him on television, both on the sports field and as a post-sport television celebrity. Once when I was a student he wowed me as he spoke at an evangelistic event to a packed room with an infectious passion for Jesus. But as the cameraman repositioned between the shots of the short film we were making together, I asked him about his faith—and he disclosed that it had all but gone. I appreciated his honesty, but left totally deflated.
Fragile faith
My hero's story was very similar to that of many former churchgoers I have met. As a young convert, he was nurtured by a form of Christianity that came as a complete package—with black-and-white theological (and political) positions on nearly every subject under the sun. When he began to question one of those positions, he was not just destabilized in that one area—his whole fragile faith came crashing down. We've all heard this before, I'm sure, echoed in the lives of friends and acquaintances.
One of the most perplexing paradoxes of Christian leadership is that the more securely we seek to ground people in their faith, the more fragile and vulnerable they may end up in the long run.
One of the most perplexing paradoxes of Christian leadership is that the more securely we seek to ground people in their faith, the more fragile and vulnerable they may end up in the long run. So how do we ensure that our disciplemaking opens up minds and hearts to both the depth and the breadth of the gospel?
What if the problem with our leadership, teaching ministries, and discipleship programs is not just that we foster faith that is too shallow, but that we develop faith that is too narrow? How can we prepare the people we serve without making them fragile believers, whose faith folds when they encounter that one experience that we didn't foresee?
Flying with the black swans
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an economist-essayist-mathematician describes how governments and economists face a similar problem as they make decisions in the face of potentially huge fluctuations in stock markets. He calls these paradigm-shifting occurrences "Black Swan" events (because no one believed black swans could exist until they were found in Australia, shifting paradigms). These kinds of events—like 9/11, the social impact of the internet, or the recent global economic crisis—are usually unpredictable. It is only after they have occurred that we realize we should have seen them coming.
In Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Taleb later coined the phrase "anti-fragile" to talk about resilient economic systems. If built properly, anti-fragile systems won't just withstand unforeseeable events, but actually become stronger through them.
Could we do the same thing with our discipleship? What would it take for our church members to not just develop resilience, or "sticky" faith, but an anti-fragile faith, which thrives when it encounters struggle, tragedy, or difficult questions?
Faith is fragile when it can't withstand the struggles of real life.
Faith is fragile when it can't withstand the struggles of real life. If we ignore the paradoxes of our faith, or send unspoken messages that the church isn't a place for those questions, we're setting disciples up for failure.
We need to tackle the paradoxes and tough questions head on. But how? There are 2 key questions: Are we open-minded when facing challenges and complexity, and do we know what's really important?
Dr. Krish Kandiah is the Executive Director of Churches in Mission at the UK Evangelical Alliance. He lectures in Evangelism at Regents Park College, Oxford University and is a Doctoral supervisor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. His latest book is Paradoxology: Why Christianity was never meant to be simple.
