The Happiness Trap

I once heard a story about a young minister who served a small, mostly older congregation. Church members complained regularly about the absence of young families. So, the minister contacted young couples who had a connection with the church, sat down with them and asked what would make it easier for them to attend. With their input, he made a number of changes to the service, including setting up a play area in the sanctuary with rocking chairs where parents could sit with their young kids during worship.

It worked. Five or six families began to come to church regularly. But then abruptly, they all stopped. The minister called to them to find out if something was wrong. It turned out that one of the elders had phoned each of the families and told them that, while it was nice to see them, people were finding the children disruptive during the service. The church, he said, would be happy to pay for babysitting if they would agree to leave their kids at home.

Despite the minister’s best efforts at damage control, none of those families ever returned.

This story is a classic illustration of what church consultants Gil Rendle and Alice Mann call

“The Happiness Trap.” Churches get caught in the happiness trap when they expect their ministers to create change, but at the same time to keep everybody happy.

Change and contentment are often incompatible goals. As Rendle and Mann put it, “Satisfied people, by definition, do not seek change.”

Most clergy know about the happiness trap. People say they want things to change – fuller pews, more children and youth, increased givings, innovative programming – but then stoutly resist the changes that would allow those things, which they say they want, to happen.

It’s not that people are bad or malevolent. That man who phoned all those young families was probably a well-intentioned and caring person.  Long-time members were upset and he wanted to keep them happy.

But it’s human nature to both wish things were different, but also want them to be the way we like. Change is disruptive. And when we are disrupted, we get anxious, and when we are anxious, we react negatively. The result of this emotional process in churches can be conflict, often very painful conflict.

Add to that the fact that most clergy and church leaders are conflict-averse and, like Sally Field, really want people to like them. (Full disclosure: I am the chief of sinners in this

regard.) We feel it’s our job to make sure that everybody is playing nicely together.

What we don’t often do is to count the cost of this belief that a good church and a contented church are necessarily the same thing. Change grows out of discontentment with the way things are. The people who are happy are the ones who like it the way it is. The unhappy people aren’t there. So the price of valuing happiness above all else is that the church will continue to cater to the wants and needs of the present congregation, fail to reach out to new people and probably get older and smaller with each passing year.

It’s a lot easier to describe the Happiness Trap than it is to escape it. But here are some thoughts about what we can do.

Don’t Play the Blame Game
It’s natural when we want things to change to point fingers when change is resisted. “If  those people weren’t so stubborn, we could get somewhere around here!” The fact is, though, that we all collude together in perpetuating the happiness trap, and we need to work together to escape it. Accusations and put downs will simply entrench hurt feelings.

Be clear about what needs to change and why.
Churches often have a vague sense that not everything is the way it should be, but don’t have a very coherent idea of what, specifically, they are prepared to do about it.

Why do you want young families? Is it only because you’re getting old and tired and need someone to share the workload? Not good enough. And not enough motivation to change the things that may be keeping younger people away. It has to be about them, not just you. You have to honestly assess both the likelihood of being able to attract young families, and your tolerance level for the changes they would create.

Communicate, communicate – then communicate some more.
A mistake I made over and over again in ministry was to assume that just because I had said something, people had heard it and understood it – and ought to agree with it. The fact is that change is difficult and frightening. It requires patience and persistence over time. You need to keep on telling people why it is that these changes need to happen, and deal carefully and compassionately with the emotions they stir up.

At the same time, gently but firmly emphasize that not every squeaky wheel is going to get greased, and that you are going ahead.

Leaders need to stick together.
The secretary at my former church used to say, “Never stand in the firing line alone.” Those were wise words. Often, the minister or key lay leaders are left out on a limb to bear the brunt of people’s displeasure on their own. Leaders need to support , encourage, care for and stand with one another during the process of change.

Take an “experimental” approach.
People’s fear of change is often a fear of the unknown, and of losing control. They may have a genuine fear that something precious will be lost forever. Most people also have difficulty imagining how tomorrow could be different from today. They instinctively oppose what they do not understand.

Anxiety drops, though, if the approach is one of “Let’s try this for a while to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something different.”

However, it’s critical to not abandon the vision for change at the first sign of failure or resistance. You need to gird up your loins and try something else, not simply revert to the status quo.

The Happiness Trap can give people a false sense of calm and security, which is one of the main contributors to church decline. Leadership means giving people the tools to break free.

(Gil Rendle and Alice Mann describe the Happiness Trap in their book Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations.)