The five stages of organisational grief

I read this a few weeks back and saved it in Catch to read again later and perhaps blog about. Well, decided to go a head on the blogging front, mainly because I think that my interest in the way it may transfer to the churches in the West is still intriguing and perhaps insightful. In making the connection, I was minded of Mike Riddell's book a few years back
Threshold of the Future which pretty much started with the idea that the church in the West is undergoing the bereavement of Christendom. That's the idea that has stuck with me and so revisiting it through the prism of how political parties react who suffer major electoral setbacks such that they have to question their received wisdom, strategy and messages. In this article the reflection frame is the five stages of grief.

Caveat: the five stages of grief needs nuancing and careful handling; not applying like a rule to human lives so that it becomes a straight-jacket of emotional tyranny. So this is for musing and consideration only; it's not a fate or a procrustean bed.

The article was published shortly after Obama's re-election Now Republicans face the five stages of political grief | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian, and the author characterises the reactions of Republicans:

Think of it as the political equivalent of the five stages of grief. The ones that trigger the deepest anguish are the serial defeats and the beatings you didn't expect.

So he goes through the stages reading the evidence through the interpretive grid of the stages.

the first stage is denial. ... embodied by the electrifying sight of former Bush guru turned Fox pundit Karl Rove scolding Fox's own number-crunchers for calling the election for Barack Obama, desperately pretending two plus two did not, in fact, equal four.

Yes and we the churches of the West do similar things: we cling to the census returns showing high -but still declining- figures of at least nominal Christians (see here for a bit more info),  and we carry on trying to do church as if they were still holding hundreds rather than dozens.

Next comes anger, often manifested in lashing out and blaming others. ... When Candy Crowley – the CNN anchor who had moderated the second TV debate, arbitrating at one crucial point in Obama's favour – appeared on the giant TV screens, the Republicans in their suits and evening dresses began booing loudly. "It's your fault!" they howled,

I think that this is what a lot of all that stuff with Christian groups protesting at perceived sleights and imagining that they are being treated less favourably than others: it's anger borne of a sense of loss of a previous influence and standing and power.

The third stage of grief is said to be bargaining, accepting that something has to change but seeking to delay or dilute what needs to be done ...  In the current Republican case, you can hear it in the time-honoured admission that "we didn't get our message across" or "there is a perception problem". The party agrees to tweak appearances, but remains unwilling to undertake deep reform.

I think this is probably where a lot of the churches in GB are at the moment: if only we update our worship, say things in a relevant way, use modern media ... you get the picture. Please note that 'deep reform' in this case doesn't mean changing the basic values or core identity, but it does mean recognising that there may be things that have become quite dear to us which are barriers to us reaching out and connecting beyond our own communities.

Friedland rushes the last two stages:

After depression – common after a string of losses, such as the five defeats in the popular vote the Republicans have suffered in the last six presidential elections – comes acceptance. In politics, that usually means a recognition that the country you seek to lead has changed and that, therefore, you have to change with it, no matter how painful that process will be.

Depression? Yes, that's around. I know I have and do experience this stage (nb, one of the crits of the 5 stages is the observation that, in reality, people seem to re-visit 'previous' stages and go at different speeds in different bits of their lives through the process). To be fair, depression is a kind of acceptance where the loss is still keenly felt.

I hadn't realised that I had become so invested in some of the 'advantages' of Christendom until I found myself depressed about their ebb. I was a bit bemused because I recalled praying (way back when I was a newish Christian full of the realisation that many people had the label 'Christian' but didn't understand the importance of the cross and hadn't had an experience of inviting Christ into their lives) that the 'nominals' would stop thinking of themselves as Christian so it would be clearer what being a Christian is and they wouldn't have a false assurance. Well, I kind of feel that that prayer was prescient and now it seems to be in process of being 'answered' (I don't actually think it is being, btw, because I don't think that my asking it was necessarily either right or actually a 'causal' factor), I wasn't sure that it was so good a thing.

Not necessarily good because I think that maybe there are a number of those 'nominals' who actually do  'have a faith' but whom the way we have done church has left cold. I'm also more aware now of how the Christian cultural legacy has helped evangelism. Of course, there is still a dimension of the legacy of Christendom that it would be good not to have and which corresponds to the intent of my erstwhile prayer. That legacy is the sense that people think they know what is 'Christian' and reject it. The problem being that when one investigates, it becomes plain that they don't understand a real Christian faith at all and have rejected a cartoon. The problem is that a post-Christendom society has a lot of this around. It'd be better if we could re-pristinate society with regard to Christianity, but we can't. Not to mention that we continue to score own goals in relation to this: we keep apparently fulfilling those negative stereotypes.

And what would acceptance look like? I think it would have a lot less nostalgia about it. It would be more focused on disciple-making and intentional Christian-formation, it would be strategically counter-cultural rather than narrowly moralistic.

We're not collectively there yet, and those who are (often in contexts like emergent churches) suffer the denial-anger reactions or depressive cynical responses. It's the work of generations, probably.

Of course the other thing to notice about this is that way that I've tended to describe individuals still, rather than institutions. I guess the question is how the way that groups of people sharing grief reactions  scales up within a collection of smaller institutions and organisations interacting when all are at various stages: how does the overall 'feel' change out of those component dynamics?