The management theory and process, called "Appreciative Inquiry," has been in the research literature since 1989 (Watkins, Mohr, Hammond, Pasmore, Woodman), and since the late 90s, this methodology has been applied to congregations with significant success. Here is what we need to know!

First of all, "Appreciative Inquiry" cannot be well understood or practiced if it is seen as just one more strategy for change. "Appreciative Inquiry" (AI) is a different way for the people of an organization or congregation to know, communicate, discern and imagine concerning themselves, their past and future. AI provides an organization-wide rubric for initiating narratives and practices that are creative and life-giving. Thereafter an organization is nourished along the lines of its "best stories" ... or the discovery of an organizational-system "at its moments of wonder...used to construct its best and highest future." (Watkins/Mohr: Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination (San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2001).

American Baptist missionaries and World Vision International were the first organizations to use AI on the mission field and in congregational-type settings. It makes sense: As churches, we are founded as a people of stories, and gratefulness is essential to our faith and social well-being. That's what worship is: A Great Thanksgiving Festival.

Many forms of organizational development assume that the job of leaders is to find the problems and fix them. For example: recruit anyone with a pulse to the board (this will increase their commitment, and give the rest of us a rest). When this "problem-solving" approach dominates, most discussions involve deficiencies and inadequacies. The medical field is an example, focusing upon illness instead of prevention (washing your hands/nutrition) whereby the body, when healthy, heals itself.

The problem solving approach goes like this: (1) Identify a "felt need"; (2) Analyze the causes; (3) Present an array of possible solutions; (4) structure an action plan for remedy. (Sounds logical; but that is the problem.) If anything, organizational and family systems are not mechanistic; they are living systems and "organic.")

AI, by contrast, would see a process something like this: (1) Initiate steps to discover the organization's "best stories"; (2) Collect "the best" narratives, practices and imaginations; (3) Imagine "what might be" by interpreting the stories collected, building toward a consensus of "what should be"; (4) Innovate "what will be" with the largest possible level of participation.

There are profound differences in these two approaches! By discovering the best stories, important links are create to the past, with the most hopeful images for the future. Congregations are "interpretative communities." For example, what do we mean by "gospel," "salvation" or "discipleship, ministry and mission?" Too often members of congregations simply assume that these central interpretations have already been decided by others and need not be worked through again.

So leadership, in a "fixing-problems" or "corporate-decision-making" mode becomes little more than a function, keeping the wheels turning. An interpretative community asks the deeper questions about whether these are the wheels we should be turning in the first place. (For example an interpretative community will not ask, how can we be successful (or "grow"); but will challenge the meaning of "success" in the first place.)

AI assumes that (1) in every organization, some things work well; (2) What we "focus on" becomes our reality; (3) Asking powerful questions influences the narrative; (4) People have more confidence in the journey to the future when they carry forward parts of the past; (5) The parts we carry into the future should be the best ones. (6) The valuing of difference will come when all the personal narratives are collected; (7) The language we use creates our reality; (8) All steps are collaborative, building consensus...and the big one: (9) "All organizations are 'HELIOTROPIC'" -- a botanical term indicating that all growing organisms lean toward the sun, or toward energy sources, whether that energy (or "animus") is healthy or not. In other words, we orient ourselves toward life-giving nourishment.

Now there is much more to this. Dig down more deeply and you get into modern physics (Einstein/Bohr) plus "Chaos," "simultaneity" and "complexity" theory."

But, "enough already!"

We can see there is something here for us, to focus our direction and, in this Thanksgiving Season, to give thanks for our "best stories." Appreciative Inquiry depends on the power of images to bring about change for the better.

Or, to quote Watkins/Mohr: "Since there is a reasonable amount of evidence that we create what we imagine," a well-imagined future depends upon the belief that we can make a difference, empowering others, and directing our energies toward the sun, the warmth, the best of what we have been, and, with God's Spirit, can bring with us to being into the future!

Roger Sizemore, Ph.D.,
Consulting Pastor for Discerning Missional Faithfulness, FCCA
(Adapted from Mark Branson: Appreciative Inquiry, Memories, Hopes and Conversations (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2004).
November, 26th, 2006

Back to the Essay Archive