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Appreciative Inquiry

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An approach to organizational transition

…[Looking] for what works in an organization. The tangible result of the inquiry process is a series of statements that describe where the organization wants to be, based on the high moments of where they have been. Because the statements are grounded in real experience and history, people know how to repeat their success.” (Sue Hammond, The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry. pgs 6-7)

AI asks, “What are your organization’s…?”

  1. STRENGTHS — Your organization’s best qualities, where you see results and effectiveness.
  2. RESOURCES – Much more than finances…individuals with expertise, material goods, networks of people, etc.
  3. PASSIONS — What “drives,” compels, or supremely motivates the group or organization?
    • In his book, The Power of Uniqueness, Arthur F. Miller states that passion, “goes beyond a mere inventory of talents.  It’s the lifeblood of a person [or organization], the song that his [or, their] heart longs to sing, the race that his [or, their] legs long to run.  It’s the fire in his [or, their] belly.  It’s his [or, their] reason for being…so any time you tap into it, you hit a nerve that runs right to the core of the individual [or, organization]”  (pg.39).
    • BTW, Sometimes we allow competency to masquerade as passion.
    • Getting in touch with our holy passions leads us toward a vision to live for God’s greatness.
  4. TARGET GROUP: Who do we want to reach or serve? (To think about it differently, ask, “Who is our ‘customer?’ ”)
    • A Primary customer: the person whose life is changed through the organization’s work.
    • Supporting customers: others who must be satisfied for the organization to perform and achieve results.
  5. CONTEXT — Your organization’s size, membership, location, history, and connections.
  6. GLOCAL MISSIONAL EXPERIENCE — Your history in missions – both locally and globally.

FYI, David Cooperrider and colleagues at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, first developed the term Appreciative Inquiry in the mid-80’s.

Trinitarian Dance

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C.S. Lewis described the Trinity as a “dance” saying, “God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost…a kind of dance” (Mere Christianity, p 136).

Tim Keller elaborates on this concept in the Reason for God in Chapter 14 – The Dance of God (pgs 214-221):

I believe that Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual life stories and out of what we see in the world’s history. In the last six chapters I have been arguing that the Christian understanding of where we came from, what’s wrong with us, and how it can be fixed has greater power to explain what we see and experience than does any other competing account. It is time to draw together the various threads of the narrative we have been examining and view the story line of Christianity as a whole. The Bible has often been summed up as a drama in four acts – creation, fall, redemption and restoration.

The divine dance
Christianity, alone among the world faiths, teaches that God is triune. The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational.

The Gospel writer John describes the Son as living from all eternity in the ‘bosom of the Father’ (John 1:18), an ancient metaphor for love and intimacy. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus, the Son, describes the Spirit as living to ‘glorify’ him (John 16:14). In turn, the Son glorifies the Father (17:4) and the Father, the Son (17:5). This has been going on for all eternity (17:5b).

What does the term ‘glorify’ mean? To glorify something or someone is to praise, enjoy and delight in them. When something is useful you are attracted to it for what it can bring you or do for you. But if it is beautiful, then you enjoy it simply for what it is. Just being in its presence is its own reward. To glorify someone is also to serve or defer to him or her. Instead of sacrificing their interests to make yourself happy, you sacrifice your interests to make them happy. Why? Your ultimate joy is to see them in joy.

What does it mean, then, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit glorify one another? If we think of it graphically, we could say that self-centeredness is to be stationary, static. In self-centeredness we demand that others orbit around us. We will do things and give affection to others, as long as it helps us meet our personal goals and fulfils us.

The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different. The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we centre on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us. Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this – perichoresis. Notice the root of our word ‘choreography’ within it. It means literally to ‘dance or flow around’.

The Father…Son…and Holy Spirit glorify each other…At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to one another… When early Greek Christians spoke of perichoresis in God they meant that each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant movement of overture and acceptance each person envelops and encircles the others. (In The Reason For God, Keller quotes from Cornelius Plantinga – Engaging God”s World, from which the above paragraph is taken.)

In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. . . . [The] pattern of this three-personal life is . . . the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality.

The doctrine of the Trinity overloads our mental circuits. Despite its cognitive difficulty, however, this astonishing, dynamic conception of the triune God is bristling with profound, wonderful, life-shaping, world-changing implications.

The dance of love
If there is no God, then everything in and about us is the product of blind impersonal forces. The experience of love may feel significant, but evolutionary naturalists tell us that it is merely a biochemical state in the brain.

But what if there is a God? Does love fare any better? It depends on who you think God is. If God is unipersonal, then until God created other beings there was no love, since love is something that one person has for another. This means that a unipersonal God was power, sovereignty and greatness from all eternity, but not love. Love then is not of the essence of God, nor is it at the heart of the universe. Power is primary.

However, if God is triune, then loving relationships in community are the ‘great fountain…at the center of reality’.

When people say, ‘God is love,’ I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in the Christian conception, God really has love as his essence. If he was just one person he couldn’t have been loving for all eternity. If he was only the impersonal all-soul of Eastern thought, he couldn’t have been loving, for love is something persons do. Eastern religions believe the individual personality is an illusion, and therefore love is, too. Chesterton wrote, ‘For the Buddhist…personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea.’ It is the purpose of God because he is essentially, eternally, interpersonal love…

The dance of creation
Jonathan Edwards on reflecting on the interior life of the triune God, concluded that God is infinitely happy. Within God is a community of persons pouring glorifying, joyful love into one another…

Returning to the dance
…When Jesus died for you he was, as it were, inviting you into the dance…when we discern Jesus moving toward us and encircling us with infinite, self-giving love, we are invited to put our lives on a whole new foundation…

BTW, you can find an excellent unpublished essay on the Trinity by Edwards here.

Thoughts From a Dad

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I was both saddened and excited by her email. Our daughter was away at college and as part of an assignment asked me to list the top five qualities that I would encourage her to look for in a spouse. My sadness stemmed from wishing we’d had this conversation sooner so that she didn’t even have to ask the question. Our kids could lead more secure and focused lives by having a clear response to this question firmly planted in their hearts as they transition from adolescence into adulthood. It didn’t take me long to respond. As the father of four children, I had intended to initiate this discussion many times, yet I never seemed to find the right moment – mostly because I was afraid that my thoughts might be perceived as manipulation. What excited me most about her email was knowing that my daughter is taking the time to cultivate her own criterion for relationships that are both healthy and holy.

Here’s my response:
1. That he share your love and passion for God. There must be a core values match in this area for a marriage partnership to flourish. My experience in ministry has taught me that couples can be unequally yoked even with other believers who do not share a parallel passion for pursuing God’s heart and ways.

2. That he be absolutely, totally, and utterly abandoned in his love and passion for you. Because you deserve it.

3. That he be able to support and even steer you toward the fulfillment of your divine destiny. To accomplish this he will need to appreciate your unique (albeit emerging) calling and spiritual gift-mix. This reflects the foundational purpose for our existence. In addition to the extraordinary opportunity for a growing friendship with God, we are invited to allow God to shape us and send us to serve humanity with wisdom, resolve, and anointing — which increases exponentially through regular affirmation and encouragement.

4. That, when he makes a mistake, it’s by giving, not by withholding. The old adage, “you can’t out-give God” is true. And remember, we don’t give to get — we give to get to give again.

5. That he would actively pursue mutually accountable relationships with other men. Most of the growth I have enjoyed has come through proactively pursuing mentoring and accountability. We all need people in our lives whom we have invited to ask us soul-searching questions – usually it’s about motives, money, and morality.

I love my children.  I may have learned more from them then they from me…