Toolbox For Faith

I read an interesting article this week entitled, “Think Visual” by Clive Thompson. Drawing on the work of an author named Dan Roam, Thompson argues that “our culture relies too heavily on words.” He believes that “dynamic, complicated problems . . . often can’t be boiled down to simple narratives. They’re systems; they have many little parts affecting one another. In those situations, drawing a picture can clarify what’s going on.”

In the church, we do words well. We have scripture. We have tradition. We have liturgies. We have prayer. We have lots and lots of words, so it shouldn’t be surprising that when faced with a problem we often try and talk our way to a solution. I was a part of a conversation last weekend where we discussed an organizational vision. One of the documents we were using had only words and one of them had a picture which incorporated the same ideas and fewer words. Guess which document was referenced again and again and which one was mostly ignored even though the concepts were virtually the same. Increasingly we live in a visual world and perhaps sketching out the problems we face may inspire us to see new connections and discover new solutions.