{"id":33372,"date":"2015-07-26T12:05:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T17:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=33372"},"modified":"2015-07-26T20:59:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T01:59:27","slug":"small-group-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/07\/small-group-dynamics\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Small Group Dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0461.JPG\"<\/a>Far and away, when I am in a small group and decisions need to be made, most people would prefer that someone else make them. \u00a0There are notable, and loud, exceptions. \u00a0Four year olds, for example, very much want to make decisions. \u00a0But for most \u00a0adults, I’ve found that the majority typically\u00a0\u00a0prefer that someone else ponied up and decided where we go to eat or in what order things will occur.[1] \u00a0This is because, one presumes, they are not so concerned about the exact decision making them happy. \u00a0They are generally willing to go along with most reasonable things.<\/p>\n

Let me stop and remind you that this is my general experience. \u00a0Perhaps you live in a world of sharp elbows and loud demands. \u00a0Perhaps you teach fourth graders or lawyers or interact regularly in some other highly vocal and demanding group. \u00a0Or maybe you make lots of high stakes decisions on a regular basis where people care deeply about the outcome. \u00a0But let’s set those aside for a minute and talk about the endless low stakes decisions of day to day living.<\/p>\n

In such relaxed groups, it can be very handy to declare that some specific person will make the decision. \u00a0It is not quite as important who that is, and they should, of course, consider the feelings of others, but they are the one who makes sure something gets decided;\u00a0usually by agreeing with a consensus view or deciding between two fairly close alternatives or whatever. \u00a0That person is the leader, even if they aren’t the king or the dictator. \u00a0They don’t actually need to be particularly impressive to do this job. \u00a0They need to be willing and they need to make decisions.<\/p>\n

Among the many ways of thinking about how a father leads a family through the priesthood, this is perhaps one way that might be more important than we realize. \u00a0Fathers are to make sure that general passivity doesn’t mean that the family business is overlooked. \u00a0Prayers are said morning and night. \u00a0Family home evening happens in a coherent way. \u00a0Scriptures are studied and there is a plan for how that is going to happen. \u00a0It is not brain surgery and it does not require any particularly unusual skills, but it does help to have a clear rule about whose job it is to make sure that these things were not overlooked. \u00a0Not as a dictator, a jerk, or totalitarian; more like as a facilitator or life coach. [2]<\/p>\n

An alternate model would be for each family group to decide who is in charge of each of these things. \u00a0But, see above, most people don’t really like making decisions . \u00a0Some groups would not really decide and the lack of uniformity would make it more difficult to train and reinforce the principle in the church. \u00a0So there are costs to pre- assigning the person in charge, because they may not be very good at it or they do it wrong, but it does have two advantages. \u00a0It is a clear and easy rule that reduces certain kinds of confusion and it ensures that the father is shoved into the middle of family life. \u00a0Some fathers will always be highly involved. \u00a0But other parents, disproportionately men, I think, would benefit from a shove into the middle.<\/p>\n

The father, then, shouts “Vamos!” and gets people into the car, or into the living room for prayer, or whatever. \u00a0 There is a lot of flexibility in families to figure out the details in a way that works for them. \u00a0Because this doesn’t mean the mother can’t or won’t do those things as well, but the father is expected to make sure, in the end, that it has happened. \u00a0So when I am trying to make sense of the injunction to preside, this is actually one of the ways I do that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1] \u00a0And heaven forbid anybody in the 90s actually making a decision at Blockbuster about what movie we’re going to watch that night.<\/p>\n

[2] \u00a0Although let me make clear how little I would enjoy being referred to as a life coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Far and away, when I am in a small group and decisions need to be made, most people would prefer that someone else make them. \u00a0There are notable, and loud, exceptions. \u00a0Four year olds, for example, very much want to make decisions. \u00a0But for most \u00a0adults, I’ve found that the majority typically\u00a0\u00a0prefer that someone else ponied up and decided where we go to eat or in what order things will occur.[1] \u00a0This is because, one presumes, they are not so concerned about the exact decision making them happy. \u00a0They are generally willing to go along with most reasonable things. Let me stop and remind you that this is my general experience. \u00a0Perhaps you live in a world of sharp elbows and loud demands. \u00a0Perhaps you teach fourth graders or lawyers or interact regularly in some other highly vocal and demanding group. \u00a0Or maybe you make lots of high stakes decisions on a regular basis where people care deeply about the outcome. \u00a0But let’s set those aside for a minute and talk about the endless low stakes decisions of day to day living. In such relaxed groups, it can be very handy to declare that some specific person will make the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":33371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/IMG_0461.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33372"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33673,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33372\/revisions\/33673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}