Revising our Constructs

Our congregation is undergoing some change right now. Our minister of the past fifteen years has left, and last Sunday we welcomed our new interim minister. This change has been upsetting to some, unsettling to most, and welcomed by a few. I think that is pretty much par for the course with any big change, some of us loath it, most of us approach it warily, and a few always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence until we get there and are looking over the next fence. A recent post by Jamie at Trivium has caused me to look at my own perception of change and my view of worship.

One good thing about change is that it causes us to question our constructs and revise them. I am a fan of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory. Kelly viewed the individual as a scientist who continually creates constructs that facilitate anticipation of events. The constructs allow us to form hypotheses that are then tested in our world. The results of these “experiments” often cause us to revise our constructs. Constructs have poles or opposites allowing that which we observe to be placed somewhere on the continuum between them. For example, one may have the construct of hot and cold. We only have this construct of temperature because of the variability. If everything around us and within us was a constant 98.6, we wouldn’t notice temperature at all. It is only our need to anticipate events that causes us to create the construct. Ice cubes and snow are cold. The stove is hot. If I touch the stove burner, I anticipate pain. If I put ice on the burn, I anticipate soothing relief. Winter is cold, summer is hot and spring and fall are somewhere in between. Using this construct, I can anticipate needing a warm coat in winter and shorts in summer, planting flowers in spring and skiing in winter. If I move to the equator, these constructs and their relationship may need to be revised because they will no longer be relevant to the events I need to anticipate. Kelly saw most of our psychological problems as a failure of our construct system. Problems result when we fail to adjust our constructs to the results of our experiments. They may also be caused by a construct system that doesn’t have enough constructs to allow us to make accurate predictions. That is a really short and inadequate summary of what it took Kelly two big volumes to explain.

Applying Kelly’s theory to the congregation’s current situation, the change is upsetting because it challenges our constructs. So what are the constructs I have with regard to our worship service?

Obviously one of the constructs Jamie has is sacred. I guess I have a sacred construct too, and if I do, it has to have another pole. (constructs are personal remember) What is the opposite of sacred for me? I guess for me it is unloving. Love is sacred and being unloving, unloved or withholding love is the opposite. When I am in a sacred space I feel loved and feel loving. I come to our service to get that feeling back when I have lost it and to magnify it when it has dimmed. Being in nature is sacred space for me because I feel loved by and at one with the universal force, the Great Spirit, the Tao.

Challenging is another construct I have and comforting is probably its opposite. I like a service that challenges me to grow as opposed encouraging me to remain in my comfort zone. I like to have my constructs challenged by the sermons and readings even though it is a bit unnerving at times. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy a service that gives me some validation for my constructs on occasion, but I don’t want so much support that I grow stuck in my ways. Being the age I am, there is enough push in that direction already.

Emotional is also a construct that is important for me in worship. On the Myers Briggs Type Indicator I come out as a T, thinking as opposed to F feeling. I am rational to a fault. So, emotional vs. rational is another construct I have. I come to worship to find and free my emotional self, that part of me that I often keep hidden even from myself. I need a place where I can be vulnerable and open myself up to that. That includes the full range of emotions from a good belly laugh to a good cry and everything in between. That doesn’t mean that I need to express them during worship (though sometimes that’s a good thing), but I need to allow myself to feel them and deal with them. A good worship experience has often helped me do that.

Connected is another construct that is important to me. I want to feel connected with others instead of separate. I am looking for unity instead of division. That doesn’t mean that I want to ignore or minimize our differences. I am looking for a way to celebrate them instead of allowing them to divide us. I want to draw a circle big enough to include everyone, a beautiful rainbow circle that allows us to empathize with each other’s need for different worship experiences. I hope we will work together to help everyone in our congregation get what they need from our worship as well as getting our own needs met.

Those are some of the constructs I seem to have regarding worship. I wonder what constructs others in our congregation may use when anticipating worship.