Factfulness: The Negativity Instinct

Are you tired of constantly feeling like your ministry is a series of uphill battles? Discover how to shift your perspective and uncover the hidden victories in our discussion on the "negativity instinct" from Hans Rosling's "Factfulness." In this episode, we dive deep into the common tendency among church leaders to focus on the negative and explore practical steps to overcome this mindset. Learn how practicing gratitude and sharing stories of hope can transform your church community and combat discouragement and burnout.

Join host Todd Rhoades, co-founder of Chemistry Staffing, as he unpacks how the negativity instinct can hinder our ability to recognize God's work in our midst. By expecting bad news but seeking out the good, we can celebrate progress and trust in God's promises. Reflect on how this instinct affects you and take actionable steps to celebrate the many blessings in your life and ministry. Don't miss out on these valuable insights that can help you foster a more positive and hopeful church environment.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm your host, todd Rhodes. I'm also one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and I'd love for you to check out the work that I do every day over at Chemistry Staffing. Today we're continuing here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, our series that we started yesterday on Hans Rawling's new book. It's called Factfulness, and yesterday we talked about the gap instinct, and each day we're going to unpack one of these instincts that Hans brings to our attention. And today we're going to talk about the negativity instinct.

Speaker 1: 0:37

This instinct, if I'm honest, it's our tendency as church leaders many times to focus on the bad and believe that things are getting worse, even if the facts tell us a different story. All right, so now in the church, like I said, we're not immune to this. In fact, it sometimes can feel like negativity is just our default. It's where we go to. We hear about declining church attendance oh my goodness. We hear about declining church attendance, oh my goodness. Moral decay in society, the challenges of reaching our secular culture, and how quickly things are changing. It doesn't seem like things are getting better in a lot of places. We see conflict within our congregations, we see pastors falling, we see struggles with finances, constant pressure to do more with less. The last five years in ministry can we be honest? It's been brutal, and it's really easy to get caught up into this ongoing cycle of negativity and to feel like we're losing. We're fighting just a losing battle.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Okay, but here's the thing the negativity instinct can blind us to the good that's happening all around us. It can prevent us from celebrating those small victories and we talk about that a lot here on the podcast. As a church, as ministries, as pastors, we don't celebrate enough. We wait until there's a home run, but we need to celebrate the singles as well and the doubles. So it can prevent us from celebrating those small victories. It can prevent us from recognizing the ways in which God is at work in our midst and when we allow that to happen, it also can lead to discouragement and burnout and a sense of hopelessness.

Speaker 1: 2:13

How do we overcome this negativity instinct? Hans Rosling suggests that we need to expect bad news. That might sound a little counterintuitive, but it's about recognizing that bad news is more likely to grab our attention and be amplified, and it's about actively seeking out the good news, the stories of hope and progress, and reminding ourselves that things can be both better and bad at the same time. It can be both. And Now, in a church context, this means intentionally focusing on the positive and it means celebrating when lives are changed, and it means celebrating when we have a win in our ministry or our church. It means celebrating the ways at which God is using your church to really make a difference in the world, and it means that we have to communicate these stories of hope and transformation so that we don't just keep them to ourselves, but we share them and remind each other of how God's being faithful and how we can see right before our eyes what God is doing. So here's your bottom line on this.

Speaker 1: 3:22

On the negativity instinct Boy, I can't talk today. The negativity instinct man, it is a powerful horse, but it doesn't have to control us. Okay, we can choose to focus on the good and to celebrate the progress and to trust in God's promises. So here's a few next steps for you to consider today, because I want you to, throughout your day, just for each of these instincts, I want you to think okay, todd talked about the negativity instinct today. How does, how's that affecting me? Here's some steps I think you can take today, as you think of this throughout your day. First is, just make it your practice to practice gratitude.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Take time, maybe right now, right after this podcast, maybe take time to reflect on the blessings of your life and ministry and then, secondly, share some of that good news. Once you find those things that are happening, those things that God is doing uniquely in your life, in your ministry, in the life of your church, after you've intentionally looked for those, share those stories of hope and transformation with your staff, share them with your board, share them with your church and with your community. And when you encounter negative news or perspectives, ask yourself is there another side to the story? Is God at work, even in what seemingly seems bad? Is God at work? And is there a plus side to the story? Is there a way that our church or I can step in and take a bad story and make it good? And then finally and this is important focus on the long term. Remember, progress often happens really slowly, happens a lot more slowly than what we would like to see it. It happens slowly and it happens incrementally, and your chart probably isn't just going straight up to the right. There will be setbacks, there will be challenges, don't get discouraged by those. Remember we serve a God who's bigger than any of these negative things that are going on or any challenges that we can face. Let's choose to focus on his goodness and his faithfulness and the hope that we have in him, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 5:34

I hope this has been helpful to you. We are in the middle of this study, going through Hans Rosling's book called Factfulness. You can pick that up, probably at Amazon or any place you buy your books, but if you'd like to read along, or if this is interesting to you and you want to dig in a little bit deeper, I really would recommend this book to give you some different perspectives. I love books that make me sit back and say, make me think, and they give me some aha moments, and this book has done this for me. I would love to hear your feedback. You can reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. If you or your church have any staffing needs, I'd love to talk with you about that as well. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, thanks so much. Hope you'll join us again tomorrow. We're going to continue on in our series to talk about another brand new instinct.