“Just the facts, Ma’am!” I loved watching the old “Dragnet” detective series on T.V. when I was a kid. The cops were so deadpan. If a woman was upset after having her bag stolen, they would discount it by saying, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” After people had their houses broken into or were assaulted on the street and were very emotional, the cops would work with them to remember the actual facts that happened in order to solve the crime. They had to separate the facts from peoples’ feelings and impressions. The implication was that facts are more objective. “Just the facts, Ma’am,” became the byline for the show.

Doctors look at facts, too, to do their own detective work of figuring out what’s wrong with a patient’s body. While a patient may complain of symptoms, doctors look at the many facts or “signs,” such as our blood pressure rate, temperature, blood test results and medical history, to understand the present illness that the more obvious symptoms may be alluding to. Signs signify that problems exist, so by identifying and delving more deeply to understand these signs, we can get to the root of the problem. As “social system doctors,” we need to listen to the symptoms (what the church is complaining of), then look for the deeper signs to diagnose the “disease.” Here are some examples of what we’ve seen:

Symptoms you hear: “We’re not getting enough done, we need to do more.”
Signs you see: The church plans short-term goals that are producing short-term results. People in the church are stressed or burnt out.
Possible disease: The church believes that programs are the only way to do anything.

Symptoms you hear: “We saw a need, so we made a plan to fit that need. Our hearts were in the right place, that’s what God cares about.”
Signs you see: Sincere Christians do not realize that they can be counter-productive. The church is actually producing negative returns.
Possible disease: The church disregards fallenness and focuses only on sincerity.

Symptoms you hear: “We want to give God our best, so we hire professionals to lead our ministries and programs.”
Signs you see: The church is investing a lot of money and resources, but there is little or no returns. The people serving in church are all being paid; there are no volunteers.
Possible disease: The rich church is poor. The church’s organizational system is running its social system (prioritizing the “toaster” over the “cat.”)

Certainly, the huge amount of dysfunctionality speaks volumes! As “social system doctors” we, too, have to discover the underlying signs that are causing the symptoms in our own churches. As we identify these deeper signs, they will point us to the root of the problems, the “diseases” that are keeping our churches from working at their “normal state of being.”