People are More Important than Systems

In the West, we love our systems. We like databases, spreadsheets, to-do lists, procedures, protocols, platforms, and lists. Every single company I know has protocols for taking on new staff, buying materials, and even booking days off. Every church has its membership classes, baptism classes, premarital classes, and more besides. We love systems but sometimes, we forget that systems are much less important than people.

How flexible are our systems?

Let’s take how most churches do classes as an example. For as long as I can remember, Christian teaching resources have been shaped like this: read a chapter or watch a video, then answer set questions that the author (or the denomination) thinks are important. In some churches, they use the fancy word “catechism” and take that to mean being able to give back a bunch of memorised answers.

Education has moved far beyond both approaches. Some people hate being put on the spot and find fixed group discussions about as appealing as an evening in an enclosed space with halitosis sufferers. Other people find that theoretical chit-chat and memorisation teaches them nothing. They have to get their hands dirty physically doing something or living it out for it to make any difference at all.

Systems are often built by people who learn and grow a certain way. Are they flexible enough to welcome (not just accommodate) people who learn a different way?

Here, I am not so much talking about Learning Styles (since they are hotly debated) but our ability to flex our systems to make them work for the people we have, rather than trying to make people flex to fit into the systems. If churches really believe that God is love and that God is creative, might we need to learn to be the same way?

How flexible is our multilingualism?

Here’s a situation that is more familiar to interpreters. Most interpreting clients have a very black and white view. Either people need interpreting or they don’t. Either people have good enough English or they don’t.

But that isn’t how language works, nor is it that friendly for people. My French is pretty good. As an interpreter working with French, you might expect that. But, if I had to go to a doctor in France or see a lawyer in Quebec, you can bet your boots that I would request an interpreter.

Why? Well, my everyday and technical French are both good but I am not a medical or legal specialist. My knowledge of French legal procedure is basically non-existent and my confidence in my ability to describe any symptoms to a doctor are low too. At the very least, I would want what Eloísa Monteoliva-García calls “standby interpreting”, where there is an interpreter on-hand for when I am struggling to understand.

But would the system work to provide that for me? And, if it wouldn’t do that for a white, educated male, what would it do for others who are not like me?

The world doesn’t need more systems. It needs more flexible systems.

The Take-home

So what does this mean for us? Whatever we do and wherever we work, we need to keep asking ourselves: are we building systems or are we serving people? Whenever someone doesn’t quite fit our expectations, whenever we see people struggling, we need to remember that people are far, far more important than systems. Then we need to act accordingly.