I’ve heard of churches arguing and dividing for any number of reasons – sometimes from serious, substantive theological differences, sometimes over music style or pews versus chairs, sometimes over race or politics or pandemic responses, sometimes from plain old personality conflicts between sinful human beings. The typical example of a trivial church division is over the color of the carpet; I’ve never heard of a specific instance of this occurring, but humans being human, I’m sure it’s happened. An argument over coffee, though, was a new one for me.
As explained by the retired preacher, the issue was what kind of coffee to get. His church, like many, served coffee to Sunday morning attendees. One of the people involved in the coffee ministry believed that they should only buy fair trade coffee; the Bible contains instructions on paying workers fair wages and on taking care of the disadvantaged, poor, and powerless, and he saw fair trade coffee as a way of doing that. Another believed they should buy only the most economical coffee, purchased in bulk from Sam’s Club or similar; the Bible contains instructions on good stewardship, living simply, and using the Lord’s resources wisely, and he saw saving money on coffee as a way of doing that. The two individuals were unable to come to an agreement; they eventually settled on serving both kinds of coffee and leaving it up to churchgoers to decide for themselves whether they were on Team Fair Trade or Team Low Cost.
Jeff Bezos has been phenomenally successful. He founded Amazon in 1994, and it’s gone on to become the fifth largest company in the world. Amazon has revolutionized e-commerce; business and technology analyst Ben Thompson describes it as having achieved a dominant strategy that allows it to simultaneously outdo its competitors on selection, price, and convenience. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon, is the first and largest cloud computing provider; it serves entities ranging from Netflix to US and UK government agencies to tiny startups, providing a staggering array of technologies that companies would otherwise have to buy or build out themselves. Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021. His record is marred by an affair and divorce in 2019, as well as accusations against Amazon of alleged antilabor practices, overworking their employees, and monopolistic behavior. Despite this, his success with Amazon made him, for a time, the richest person in the world.
Success breeds emulation; Bezos’ leadership style and business practices have been studied in hopes of bringing similar success to others. As a result, I’ll often stumble across discussions of “two-pizza teams” (Bezos’ idea that the best work is done by teams small enough to be fed with an order of two pizzas), or the “six-page memo” approach to running meetings (begin a meeting by reading a prepared six-page memo giving the key ideas to discuss, instead of talking through a prepared PowerPoint), or his “Day 1” mentality (treat every day as day 1 of the company, remembering your initial values and ambition).
One of his more interesting practices is “disagree and commit.” Although the concept isn’t original to Bezos, he helped popularize the idea that too much time is spent in business meetings arguing over the right decision to make; instead, once everyone has made their positions known, if there still isn’t agreement, then simply choose and commit to a path forward. As Bezos explained it in his 2016 letter to shareholders,
Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong?…
Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.
Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.
I can’t help but recall Jeff Bezos’ advice when thinking about the fair trade coffee dispute. In general, I wouldn’t recommend applying business advice to the church - our goal is to glorify God and enjoy him, by being and advancing his kingdom, not to promote shareholders’ financial interests. Still, common grace means that God gives good gifts to everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike, in sacred and secular contexts, and sometimes those good gifts take the form of good sense that we can learn from.
What would an irreversible, one-way door, a decision that we can’t course-correct from, even look like in the church? Jesus can “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
Are we worried about wasting the church’s finances? All the world’s resources - “every wild animal in the forest… as well as the cattle that graze on a thousand hills” - are God’s (Ps 50:10).
Are we worried about wasting time in the church’s mission? God can “restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25 ESV).
Are we worried that the church will fail if we make the wrong decision? “The gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Mt 19:18).
Are we worried that God will find us guilty if, in spite of our best efforts, we decide on a morally wrong action? “As far as the eastern horizon is from the west, so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us” (Ps 103:12).
This is something of what Martin Luther’s (slightly misquoted) saying, “Love God and sin boldly,” is getting at. It’s not that we can ignore morality and do whatever we want; rather, it’s acknowledging that, despite our best efforts, we’ll make decisions that are morally, prudentially, or factually wrong, and the cross covers our failings regardless.
What would it look like to adopt this “disagree and commit” philosophy within the church? To do our best to follow God and follow our conscience, but then, having done so, to not let our disagreements interfere with our commitment to love each other and serve together?
Bezos’ 2016 letter to the shareholders continues,
Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment.
Within a business like Amazon, misalignment would be over matters of business strategy or execution. Within the church, though, true misalignment should never happen, as long as we stay focused on Christ. As Jesus prayed:
“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.” (Jn 17:20-23)