Design Thinking: Not Giving Up Empathy on the Sabbath

Recently, I’ve been taking a class on Design Thinking. I kind of missed it, but in the last few decades design thinking became a “big deal.” Design thinking powers Apple and Google, the largest companies in the world in terms of market value. The Wall Street Journal designated Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known affectionately (or obnoxiously, depending on your perspective) as the d.school, “the hottest graduate program” in America. “D” stands for design in the ubiquitious TED talks. And so on…

But what is it? David Kelly, a Stanford professor and co-founder of IDEO, a premier Silicon Valley design and innovation consulting company, coined the term design thinking, and more narrowly design thinking can refer to the creative work graphic artists, interior designers, architects, and engineers do to build new things. Design thinking can also refer more broadly to a creative process used by leaders crafting new ways for their institutions to grow into the future. In the next several blog articles I’m going to focus on this broad definition and apply it to church leadership.

Bernard Roth, another Stanford pioneer of design thinking teaches that the start of every good design process is empathy. Empathy. Rather than some lonely “creative” genius dreaming up magical solutions in a room somewhere, design thinking starts with relationship. Designers start by paying close attention to actual, living human beings and their needs. Only after learning about human needs do designers start to ideate, or dream up ideas.

This…isn’t how we were taught as pastors. At least I wasn’t. I was taught to be part of a tradition and that the rules of the tradition come before my needs or the needs of the people I serve. For instance let’s say grandparents who attend the church I serve come to me presenting the need to baptize their grandchild the congregation really only sees once or twice a year at most. This is totally academic, right? That’s never happened to you, I’m sure. We are supposed to privilege the traditional communal understanding of baptism over this felt need. We might choose to be nice about it. We might not. But we aren’t supposed to allow pesky human needs get in the way with our Book of Order.

Indeed, if anything, I was trained to be wary of people’s needs. Since congregants weren’t well trained in the tradition I was taught to be on guard against the various needs people might have.

Moreover, not only was I taught to be wary of presented needs, I was taught that my job was to educate and shape these needs so they would conform better with our tradition, whether these people really wanted this or not. And truly, to the degree that leaders are successful in getting people to behave more like we do, like showing up on Sunday and filling offering plates, we can consider ourselves “successful.”

How faithful to scripture is this preferential option for the Presbyterian (in my case) tradition? I can’t help but think about the prophetic practice of lifting up the needs of the poor. Prophets took a distinctly dim view of those who followed the tradition while ignoring the needs of those around them. Isaiah inverts the relationship saying: “True worship is working for justice and caring for the poor and oppressed.” (Isaiah 25:45) Amos memorably voices God’s loathing and hatred for adherence to tradition when the needs of the poor are being trampled longing instead for “justice to flow down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24-25)

And Jesus? Early in Mark’s Gospel Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field on the Sabbath. They are walking through a field on the Sabbath and they begin to pluck golden heads of grain. Some religious leaders grumble. “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” It’s critical to point out that what’s happening here is an internecine, Jewish argument. It is not the case that the bad, legalistic Pharisees are going up against the good, freedom-loving Jesus. Jesus believes in the Torah every bit as much as his good Pharisaic counterparts. What they are arguing about, as all good first century Jewish leaders argued about, is HOW to think about the law. The difference between the two is the difference between how seminaries and denominations train leaders to see the world and how design thinking sees the world. The Pharisees start with a traditional understanding, and they are frustrated that Jesus and his followers appear to be innovating. Jesus, on the other hand, argues practices should make accommodations to human need. “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Now, I don’t hear Jesus saying leaders have to choose between human needs or tradition. Indeed, one of the reasons practices become tradition is they meet deep needs over a great span of time. I definitely don’t hear Jesus saying to heck with tradition- that we should only care about what people today seem to be feeling. But I do hear him saying leaders should at least be open to redesigning traditional practices based on changing human needs.

Working with felt needs might help us figure out how to be what we say we are: a church reformed and always reforming. Redesigning ancient practices like worship, prayer, generosity, and caring for the poor in light of changing needs might be exactly what it takes to keep us faithful to a living God who continues to speak to changing cultures.

And while I was trained to privilege a tradition over the needs of people, the truth is most people I know enter ministry are marked with a deep empathy. If there’s anything most of us are good at it’s having a sense for what people are experiencing and sharing that experience with them. So design thinking is less a novel, fix-all solution as much as a reminder to use the gifts we already have.towelroot apk