Lessons for the Church from The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge: Curiosity and Learning

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." Matthew 7:7-8

In this verse, Jesus encourages his followers to ask, seek, and knock. This passage can be interpreted as an encouragement to be curious and inquisitive, to seek answers, understanding, and knowledge. It implies that those who earnestly seek and inquire will receive answers and find what they are looking for.

Peter Senge wrote a book called The Fifth Discipline that outlines five disciplines of a learning organization that is vital, growing, and healthy. In the next six blogs, I will reflect on these disciplines as they could be applied to the church.

When did you last feel passionate about your ministry? You'll probably struggle for an answer if you’re anything like most church professionals. Too many church staff go to work to punch the clock and count down the years until retirement. And those that don’t want to wait for retirement leave the church altogether. For many, the last day of their ministry is liberation day. Finally, they are free to pursue their real interests.

But what if work were a place where you could nurture your spirituality, curiosity and discover new passions? What if you had the support of motivated colleagues and inspiring leaders?

Insight One: Curiosity and Learning

Watch any toddler in action, and you’ll see a master of learning. She spends her days hungrily amassing knowledge about the world. She smells, touches, and licks everything she sees. She constantly practices new skills, crawling and walking repeatedly until she gets it right. When she can talk, she is full of questions. She is completely undeterred by failure.

That curious toddler still lives inside every one of us. We’re all dying to learn more about God and the world.

Sadly, many church environments quickly stamp this drive out of us. We don’t talk about that! We’ve never done that before. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” It can feel like church institutions are cast in stone, unmovable, dispassionate, and indifferent. Does this sound like your church?

If nothing else is clear, the creation story teaches that curiosity and creativity are intrinsic to being human. In the image of God, we explore ourselves and our environments. Sure, our curiosity sometimes gets us in trouble, but God picks us up, lets us learn from our mistakes, and lets us grow in maturity.

One great way churches impede learning is to give everybody a narrow job description. This can easily kill off any sense of engagement with what happens in the church overall. It encourages staff and leaders to punch the clock. They do their specific tasks but never think about how they can contribute to reflection, learning, and innovation to solve broader problems or imagine God in more complex and comprehensive ways.

When something goes wrong, a leader’s default is probably to blame someone else. But they’d often be much better off thinking about how their own actions contributed to the problem. Without self-reflection, reflecting on the larger body you are a part of is impossible. Most church cultures don’t support failure, learning, or innovation – encouraging pastors to stay as curious about themselves without the harsh consequences of constant criticism. When we are not permitted to fail, learn, and grow, we blame others and fail to be curious about the larger system.

Another way churches stifle curiosity and learning is by creating a staff culture that discourages exploration beyond our own areas of ministry. We have no sense of what happens across the entire church organization –thus, no sense of ownership. Engagement is extinguished.

Churches can destroy learning opportunities when work becomes too reactive – a “tyranny of the urgent” or constant conflict. If everyone continually puts out fires, there’s no time to analyze things or develop creative solutions for the future. When churches are stuck in reactive mode, they, too, run the risk of missing subtle-but-growing problems.

Finally, pastors often have no idea how to support their staff’s desire to think creatively and build new skills. They are often not curious, learning, and growing because their church does not encourage it. This leadership debility creates a key obstacle to learning for other staff. Churches that don’t value vulnerability, curiosity, and learning become rigid, narrow, and shallow organizations that stifle change and growth.

The good news is that none of these obstacles is insurmountable, as we’ll see in the next blogs on the five key disciplines that can provide a roadmap to a successful learning church organization.