Is Dilbert on Your Board?
A New York Times bestseller may explain why church leadership is so tough.
I don’t understand. My lay leaders work in the corporate world and daily deal with technology and change, yet our board just voted down a request for new software and tabled a recommendation to improve Sunday school.
If you identify with this statement, you may need to read The Dilbert Principle: a cubicle’s-eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads, & other workplace afflictions (HarperCollins, $20, 335 pages) by Scott Adams. This humorous book will do more than make you laugh
Scott Adams has created Dilbert, the title character in a syndicated cartoon strip and a runaway bestseller book. This fictitious cartoon character symbolizes pain in the work place. Even Newsweek featured Dilbert on its cover with the headline “Work Is Hell.” The issues addressed by Adams are the anger and frustration of white-collar workers, many of whom show up in church on Sunday
For seventeen years, Adams worked in an office cubicle similar to the one Dilbert occupies and deeply resents. The confining cubicle is one major symbol of the dehumanization in the corporate world. Adams makes a strong case that the corporate way of life is destructive for the employee and counterproductive for the corporation. In an interview with Newsweek, Adams says of his years in the corporate world, “I never once did anything that helped a customer.”
Gallows humor
Most of Adams’s humor is directed at upper-level managers who establish policy without thinking about what it does to the employee. In the chapter, “Great Lies of Management,” Adams lists thirteen that managers tell their employees, including: (1) Employees are our most valuable asset, (2) I have an open-door policy, (3) You could earn more money under the new plan, (4) We’re reorganizing to better serve our customers, and (5) The future is bright
In one cartoon, the manager in a staff meeting is telling three employees, “I have been saying for years that employees are our most valuable asset.” In the next frame the manager continues, “It turns out that I was wrong. Money is our most valuable asset. Employees are ninth.” In the third frame, a balding, nerdy type character with horn-rimmed glasses says, “I’m afraid to ask what came in eighth.” The manager’s dead-pan response is: “Carbon paper.
One of the more provocative chapters, and the source of some good cartoons, is the subject of change. In a telling paragraph, Adams writes, “People hate change and with good reason. Change makes us stupider, relatively speaking. Change adds new information to the universe; information that we don’t know. Our knowledge-as percentage of all the things that can be known-goes down a tick every time something changes.” Change is portrayed as an attempt by those in authority to manipulate and deceive
Recently I asked three friends, who serve in middle management of downsizing corporations, if the cynical attitude of Dilbert reflects their workplace. Each said that cynicism has become the way of emotionally handling the uncertainty of job security. One perceptive fellow said, “Cynicism is gallows humor for those waiting for their careers to be executed. The only energy left in our office comes from anger.
Dilbert at church
What happens when Dilbert goes to church? Our white-collar, corporate cowboys may ride the angry, cynical beast into worship services, Bible studies, and church board meetings. When they attend board and committee meetings all day at work, then hear some of the same vocabulary that evening at church, how do they respond
This could explain why some people are so resistant to change in church. As one frustrated layman told me when his pastor suggested adding a third Sunday school, “I need some place in my life that is not being reorganized.
As church leaders, we may need to look at the culture in which people work before we paint them as enemies of our program. Perhaps we should take seriously charges that sweat shops for the soul and mind do exist, and factor this into the culture of our local church
We are seeing a renewed interest in faith and the work place. At least two religious publishers are promoting faith-in-the-work-place materials. Two secular prophets of career excellence, Stephen Covey and Tom Peters, call people in the work place to establish the “why” before they seek to demand improvement in the “how.” Although certainly not Adams’s purpose, his humor has made me aware that I have not addressed the issue of the call of life in my preaching. There’s more to life than work
Generational cynicism
There is also a generational issue that Adams misses that may have significance for church
Dilbert is obviously a baby boomer, taught to challenge authority. In some ways Dilbert is similar to the humor of the formerly popular television program “M*A*S*H.” In that series the fictional Hawkeye Pierce was always challenging authority, and writers made sure those in authority were painted as self-centered buffoons. The generation Adams represents is the same generation that made “M*A*S*H” one of the most popular sitcoms in television history
It may be that cynicism is more generational than work-related. The rebels of the sixties are now in their late forties and early fifties-the ages of many church board members. Read The Dilbert Principle, and you may meet some of your well-intentioned dragons
Gary Fenton Dawson Memorial Baptist Church Birmingham, Alabama
Portable Seminar
Three new videos from pollster George Barna train leaders about money, vision, and youth.
This meeting is out of hand, thought Pastor Max, leader of a harried knot of elders. We can’t figure out what the youth really want. And now we’re arguing about how to pay for these questionable ideas.
Money was more than tight at Cornerstone Community Church, it was squeezed into non-existence. To make matters worse, anger over money propelled the discussion to the church’s overall vision-or lack thereof
Max could have found solace in knowing other church leaders are asking the same matrix of questions. Three new videos by George Barna, president of Barna Research Group, and author of many books on trends in society and church, can help solve Max’s dilemma
Understanding Today’s Teens (Gospel Light, $19.99) focuses attention on what teens say about themselves rather than how the church views them. Using his standard polling and diagnostic tools, Barna displays how the worldview of today’s teen is almost incomprehensible to his or her baby boomer parents. For example, Barna discovered that most teens rank ‘doing well at school’ as a high priority for their lives. Lest parents gloat over that, he adds, “They value high scholastic attainment because it is the only way they will receive love and acceptance from parents.
Unfortunately, he then leaves the viewer to figure out how to respond to that sobering thought
How to Increase Giving in the Church (Gospel Light, $19.99) assumes the viewer is familiar with biblical mandates about money and focuses on the pragmatics of giving trends, tithing, and corporate accountability. Barna points out that Americans give $100 billion per year to charities, and therefore, the church should be concerned where that money is going. He devotes a good portion of the video to analyzing types of givers and how to disciple some of them to new patterns of giving
For example, Barna labels one group of givers as Misers: people who give small amounts, infrequently. Barna says, “To these people, the widow’s offering of two lepta is their role model.” He prescribes a healthy dose of fellowship to help the Miser: “Deeper relationships will help the Miser feel more a part of the ministry.” He then outlines similar prescriptions for Altruists, Investors, and others
The third video, Turning Vision into Action (Gospel Light, $19.99), lays a track for a pastor to “rip people out of their comfort zones.” Barna observes that “visionaries are irritants. . . . [T]his is why they are not initially received very well, but loved later.
Barna captures the essential mandate of visionary leadership with two observations
—A visionary leader must accept that he may be only one step in a larger vision for the church, much of which he will not initiate
—A visionary leader stresses the need to build partnerships with other visionaries of like synergy, whether in the congregation or in the broader Christian realm
Of the three videos, Turning Vision into Action outlines the clearest path to the future, taking the viewer from statistics to starting points to strategy
The three videos are part of a larger series by Gospel Light called “The Leading Edge Church Leadership Series” and will work well for leadership training situations. But be prepared for a “talking head” lecture with no frills (though Barna’s use of statistics helps maintain interest)
These videos will give Pastor “Mad” Max the direction he needs to lead his elders into the future
Michael Phillips Riverside Alliance Church Kalispell, Montana
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
