Have you ever bought a car and suddenly started noticing the same model everywhere?
Maybe you even started flashing your lights on the highway as a symbol of consumer-solidarity! And how come you never took note of those cars before?
You’ve fallen into a cognitive bias rabbit-hole known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or frequency illusion. It’s when you start noticing something more often after you become aware of it. We’ve all experienced it, whether with a product or word or idea or whatever. Suddenly, it’s everywhere.
In another lifetime, I was a professional musician. What that really meant was: I didn’t have a day job. I played in cover bands before I became a follower of Jesus…and then after that, I half-starved for years in a Christian rock band. Following that, I served as a worship leader for a number of years before transitioning into a lead pastor role.
So I was always fascinated to hear the worship team exit as I would be walking out to speak. Talking among themselves, I’d hear things like, “Sorry I missed that turnaround on the bridge…” or “I played a diminished B-flat instead of…” or “I totally missed going to half-time on that last verse…”.
I once mentioned to our worship leader, “Wouldn’t it be great if instead of the technical issues, they talked about things like, ‘Did you notice something going on in the room during that second song?’ or ‘Maybe we should have lingered on that chorus—something was happening…’. What if all of us became more aware of the Spirit?”
What if we, as leaders, learned to pay more attention to the numinous—that uncanny sense of presence in our gatherings, the transcendent feeling of something otherly in the room. That is, the Spirit of God. You can’t program that; but surely we could become more cognizant of it.
I wonder if we took time to identify those moments—become more aware of them—we might begin to experience the Baader-Meinhof effect? Neuropsychologists tell us that “selective attention” can create a state where your brain subconsciously looks for whatever it is that we’ve been made more aware of, developing a confirmation bias that ignores information that seems to contradict.
Maybe we’d become better at capturing those moments…then learning to leverage them in a way where we could better see what the Father was doing. Because maybe, just maybe, our people are really looking to experience something rather than defaulting to passive spectators of the Sunday show.
Not easy. But perhaps the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon would kick in.
Dave Workman | The Elemental Group
Every healthy organization is marked by four essential traits: Integrity, Passion, Servanthood, and Imagination. With a practitioner perspective, author Dave Workman offers common sense guidance and tools to maximize leadership. Filled with insight, humor, and reflective exercises, this is an indispensable exploration of these four universal values. Check out Elemental Leaders: Four Essentials Every Leader Needs...and Every Church Must Have.
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