Rebuilding Collaborations

Cooperation is in trouble in America. Or so it seems scanning media reports. But I think those reports are missing something.

The level of cooperation in America is high, significantly high. Charities abound in our nation. They are mostly successful as private citizens join efforts to make good things happen. Churches, too, are experiencing cooperation as they journey through an era where church going is a second thought and falling. Church attendance is low and going lower.

The fact that gets lost in reflecting on church life is this: fewer church goers means more cooperation among church members to keep the institutions alive. Cooperation also teaches church members something: if you think it is important to happen, you have to make it so yourself, or at least help it along with others. This experience is akin to early church life in a sparsely settled global community. The early church was a small group of believers willing to explore their faith with the help of others. Buildings were not a part of the experience. Or pipe organs, either, for that matter!

Choirs were relegated to large temples and other places of worship inside or outside the struggling Christian faith. No, the church was people then. Today we are getting back a little to that same dynamic. If it needs doing, volunteers will step forward to do the work and learn valuable lessons of community in the doing of it.

Think about where church life has been in the last 50 years. Or longer. We have had congregations numbering 1000 to 3000 in some churches. Such a number supports choirs, music ministries, large preaching staffs, education programs, and missionary outreach muscle throughout the globe. Some churches are much larger, reaching 20,000 or 40,000 members.

Catholic parishes aim for 1000 families or more. Such church organizations support day schools and elementary, middle school and high school education programs. Entire communities can view themselves as ‘Catholic’; rarely would a protestant denomination see itself as a Baptist or Presbyterian town. A large congregation or two in the same time frame, maybe, but the not hegemony of one faith or denomination to so identify the town.

Still, large congregations support a rich program of music, education, community ministry work, charities and faith development. Although such large institutional churches exist in America today, the truth of the matter is that fewer people are regular church goers.

By no means does this mean religion is getting smaller. No, it just means it is changing. I continue to believe America is a nation of caring, spiritual people. They may not be religious in the sense of old definitions, but they are still connected with one another in caring for their communities and its people.

OK, with that said churches know more about what is right and wrong in a community. They see the people in need and the people experience highs of success and happiness. They see both sides of the human condition as well as the many stripes in between. Churches also see cooperation.

What they don’t see much of is collaboration. And that is the issue I wish to address.

Collaboration requires people to not just cooperate with effort, but join thinking processes, experiences, and discoveries to discern the real world in which we live. Collaboration demands each person give up important things to gain important things. Power might be one such element being traded. Peace of mind is another. But creative intellects merge their talents in such a way as to properly analyze problems and come up with solutions that work effectively in the community.

Collaboration is an art form of communal living. It is not easy to manage, measure or create. It takes mutual interests for people to give up important things in order to acquire even more important things. Peace, stability, economic development, understanding, cultural awareness, quality of life – all these things are the objective of collaboration.

No one person has all the answers. Not you, not me. None.

If we are to make progress happen we have to work together at the level of collaboration. How much of that is happening right this moment? In our nation or state or town?

Those of us residing in successful communities know collaboration is occurring there. But think of the national problems America has because no one is willing to lessen themselves enough to participate in true collaboration! And in our states as well.

In Illinois (my state for the past 55 years) gridlock has shut down the legislative process and most state programs. Education is barely getting funded. Some state universities may be forced to close. Many charities that do the work of the public with state subsidies are facing closure as well.

This is not a crisis of money. It is a crisis of wills and hubris. Too many people wanting too much power and money insist that the world operate ‘their way’. But it won’t. with opposition they are stymied. So the work of the state is frozen at a standstill. For shame!

But no better is the Congress of the USA. They are stuck in the same shameful paralysis of hubris.

It is time for the rest of us to replace such do nothing elected officials. Please don’t let us do it in the fashion of Trump, Cruz or Rubio. Theirs is just more of the same – their way or the highway. No, what we need is for you and I and those folks ‘over there’ to get involved and start working on common problems with common minds properly stoked with brilliance of shared intellects. Then and only then will things turn away from gridlock and embrace collaborative solutions for the long term benefit of us all.

Amen to that. But when will this process begin?

February 8, 2016