Please note, the causal loop diagrams are supposed to be integrated with the text, but blogger wouldn't let me upload more than one image per post, so they are all crammed onto one image, and for that i appologize
Problem Articulation
Problem context
Every person and society deals with the issue of morality. Morality seems to be an intrinsic part of humanity, and we can see similarities across many different civilizations. If there is one thing that can be said for morality, is that it is never straight forward. There are always extenuating circumstances, interpersonal contexts, etc. that affect what we would consider right and wrong. The problem is that in an attempt to make moral decisions easier, we sometimes resort to making black and white statements about right and wrong. While these can make instantaneous decisions easier, it would seem they sometimes lead to a decrease in moral behavior. At a hypothetical church, the current pastor has established a reputation for being conservative. He is a "fire and brimstone" preacher that has instilled a healthy fear of damnation into his congregation, and has a knack for making things black and white. Most moral issues like abortion, transgenderism, divorce, etc are clearly spelled out as either "right" or "wrong". Little leeway is given for discussion or exception. As he ages, a new pastor is being brought in to take his place. In an effort to be the most effective leader possible, the new pastor is evaluating how he wants to grow the church into an enlightened, unified congregation. He knows that “a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand,” so in order to begin building the church into a unified body of believers, he needs to start with a good foundation: a unified church. To do this, he must evaluate how the black and white moral approach affects this. In order to do that, he determines that looking at activity participation is a good way to evaluate this, as participation in group activities is a good measure of the overall health of the group. The higher the participation, the higher the unity.
Behavior over time
Despite very regular attendance and fair activity participation by almost all members, the new pastor notices, after speaking to some of the deacons, that attendance and activity participation by youth is dropping. Specifically, attendance of those in the age group of 16-30 has decreased to 1/4th of what it was 10 years ago. Additionally, those in that age group who do come are participating in fewer and fewer church-related activities, such as singing Christmas carols at the nursing homes, volunteering at the soup kitchen, and fun activities planned by the church.
Policies now in place or under consideration
The current policy of the church has been to explicitly define right and wrong behaviors to ensure the congregation stays on the straight and narrow and doesn't get carried away by worldly living. The new pastor wonders if teaching the congregation how to evaluate what decisions are good vs. evil, rather than trying to explicitly define each one may be a better course of action for promoting more participation by young people and growing the unity of the church.
Issues and concerns with the current situation or policies
Although people seem to live essentially moral lives, the new pastor wonders if the existing black and white view is alienating some of the more "open minded" youth. He wonders if the lack of middle ground or the ability to deal with "grey areas" is affecting the membership and participation numbers. He also has learned from deacons that while there is fairly good adherence to explicitly discussed issues, especially in new members, there does not seem to be the cognitive maturity to handle issues that have not been explicitly defined. Additionally, there is concern that members who have attended for many years are becoming "numb" to the explicitly defined rule set, and are deciding for themselves what is right and wrong, and because they have not been taught how to properly analyze these issues, are making poor choices, leading to backsliding and disunity. Similarly, he believes the well defined rule set leads to an increased perception of hypocrisy among the youths, as they see everyday decisions made by other members are not necessarily the same as what is laid out in the set of rules, leading to frustration that ultimately harms attendance and participation.
Study purpose and questions to be addressed
The new pastor, being the savvy systems modeler that he is, puts together a model to study the situation. Specifically, he aims to create a modle that explains the behavior of attendance and participation as function of doctrinal style to determine if the explicitly defined set of rules is alienating the younger members of the church, leading to disunity. In order to determine this, he will model how changing the spectrum of rule definition will affect participation numbers. By looking at activity participation, he will be able to evaluate how unified the church is.
Every person and society deals with the issue of morality. Morality seems to be an intrinsic part of humanity, and we can see similarities across many different civilizations. If there is one thing that can be said for morality, is that it is never straight forward. There are always extenuating circumstances, interpersonal contexts, etc. that affect what we would consider right and wrong. The problem is that in an attempt to make moral decisions easier, we sometimes resort to making black and white statements about right and wrong. While these can make instantaneous decisions easier, it would seem they sometimes lead to a decrease in moral behavior. At a hypothetical church, the current pastor has established a reputation for being conservative. He is a "fire and brimstone" preacher that has instilled a healthy fear of damnation into his congregation, and has a knack for making things black and white. Most moral issues like abortion, transgenderism, divorce, etc are clearly spelled out as either "right" or "wrong". Little leeway is given for discussion or exception. As he ages, a new pastor is being brought in to take his place. In an effort to be the most effective leader possible, the new pastor is evaluating how he wants to grow the church into an enlightened, unified congregation. He knows that “a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand,” so in order to begin building the church into a unified body of believers, he needs to start with a good foundation: a unified church. To do this, he must evaluate how the black and white moral approach affects this. In order to do that, he determines that looking at activity participation is a good way to evaluate this, as participation in group activities is a good measure of the overall health of the group. The higher the participation, the higher the unity.
Behavior over time
Despite very regular attendance and fair activity participation by almost all members, the new pastor notices, after speaking to some of the deacons, that attendance and activity participation by youth is dropping. Specifically, attendance of those in the age group of 16-30 has decreased to 1/4th of what it was 10 years ago. Additionally, those in that age group who do come are participating in fewer and fewer church-related activities, such as singing Christmas carols at the nursing homes, volunteering at the soup kitchen, and fun activities planned by the church.
Policies now in place or under consideration
The current policy of the church has been to explicitly define right and wrong behaviors to ensure the congregation stays on the straight and narrow and doesn't get carried away by worldly living. The new pastor wonders if teaching the congregation how to evaluate what decisions are good vs. evil, rather than trying to explicitly define each one may be a better course of action for promoting more participation by young people and growing the unity of the church.
Issues and concerns with the current situation or policies
Although people seem to live essentially moral lives, the new pastor wonders if the existing black and white view is alienating some of the more "open minded" youth. He wonders if the lack of middle ground or the ability to deal with "grey areas" is affecting the membership and participation numbers. He also has learned from deacons that while there is fairly good adherence to explicitly discussed issues, especially in new members, there does not seem to be the cognitive maturity to handle issues that have not been explicitly defined. Additionally, there is concern that members who have attended for many years are becoming "numb" to the explicitly defined rule set, and are deciding for themselves what is right and wrong, and because they have not been taught how to properly analyze these issues, are making poor choices, leading to backsliding and disunity. Similarly, he believes the well defined rule set leads to an increased perception of hypocrisy among the youths, as they see everyday decisions made by other members are not necessarily the same as what is laid out in the set of rules, leading to frustration that ultimately harms attendance and participation.
Study purpose and questions to be addressed
The new pastor, being the savvy systems modeler that he is, puts together a model to study the situation. Specifically, he aims to create a modle that explains the behavior of attendance and participation as function of doctrinal style to determine if the explicitly defined set of rules is alienating the younger members of the church, leading to disunity. In order to determine this, he will model how changing the spectrum of rule definition will affect participation numbers. By looking at activity participation, he will be able to evaluate how unified the church is.
Dynamic Hypothesis:
In order to explain the dynamic hypothesis, we will start with two simple loops that explain the most intuitive part of the structure: loops R1 and R2.
In loop R1, we see how the church is self supporting in unification. The act of coming to church increases the sense of belonging, which leads to member happiness and ultimately even more attendance. Similarly, R2 shows the same idea, but pertaining to activity participation: as participation goes up, so does the sense of belonging and happiness with the church, leading to more participation. These reinforcing loops work to build the unity of the congregation, so long as they are not pushed into the reverse direction.
Continuing on, we see how the style of preaching affects attendance and participation. Both a doctrinal focus on absolute rules and on teaching how to think about morality, rather than defining it both lead to an increase in understanding of boundaries, which leads members to feel like they understand how to be good, moral people, which lead to their happiness and willingness to participate in activities.
REFER TO IMAGE 2
However, a focus on concrete rules has an unintended consequence in loop R4. By causing people to think in terms of black and white, they are not able to understand why some member make choices based on the inherent grey areas in life that are outside of the defined set of rules. As members see other members not following the rules, after a period of time, they become numb to the rules and the sermons start to hold less weight. As this happens, they tend to backslide and behave outside of the defined rules, which tends to promote more and more people to get apathetic and backslide. This increase in apathy leads to less participation and feeling of unit, turning loops R1 and R2 into a downward spiral of disunity rather than an upward spiral toward unity. As the sense of belonging goes down, loop R3 describes the fact that younger members are inherently less likely to feel tied to the church and are more willing to leave. When the backsliders leave, B1 describes how the church starts to balance out, as there is less awareness of immoral behavior. This balance ultimately works to wean out those less tied to the church, the youth, and leave the older members, and decreases the overall unity of the congregation. In the absence of the focus on concrete rules, loop R4 is minimal as grey decisions made by other members are more easily understood due to the doctrinal focus on teaching about how to handle grey areas. This essentially leaves R1 and R2 to dominate, creating an upward spiral of unity.
REFER TO IMAGE 3
As a result of the causal loop diagram, we can see how the doctrinal style of preaching can affect participation and unity. By removing the main source leading to the potential for a downward spiral, R4, we can reduce the risk of causing a church unity collapse. As a result of the study, the pastor can proceed with a good understand of how the way he presents his sermons may affect the health of the congregation.
REFER TO IMAGE 3
As a result of the causal loop diagram, we can see how the doctrinal style of preaching can affect participation and unity. By removing the main source leading to the potential for a downward spiral, R4, we can reduce the risk of causing a church unity collapse. As a result of the study, the pastor can proceed with a good understand of how the way he presents his sermons may affect the health of the congregation.
