« Week 8: Expectant Prayer | Main | Week 9: The Source of All Beauty »

July 28, 2009

Internal vs. External Motivation

I’ve been thinking lately about the topic of motivation. Consider the difference between internal and external motivation when it comes to getting people into small groups. Internal motivation is when people realize the value of Christian community and are self-motivated to participate in small groups as a result. On the other hand, external motivation is when we use outside stimulus to get people to consider groups. The outside stimulus can range from gentle invitations to nearly forcing people into groups.

If we had to be honest, I think we would have to admit that most of our efforts to get people into community revolve around external motivations. This is the path we most often take because it is much easier and quicker to develop external motivation systems than internal ones. Changing internal motivation takes much time, prayer and relational effort. And, truthfully, it’s harder to measure and see the results of internal motivation. But, while it is easier for leaders to stimulate external motivation than internal motivation, that doesn’t mean external motivation results in the best disciple-making environment.

Neil Cole says it like this in “Cultivating a Life for God”: “The key to effective disciple making and multiplying is to tap internal motivation. Many discipleship methods, however, resort to external motivation, which is much weaker. We have people sign a “contract” (or we spiritualize it and call it a “covenant”) stating that they will fulfill the obligation of the method. Or, as many encourage today, we keep an empty chair in the meeting to remind us to reach out to others. If empty chairs ever did win people to Christ, most of our churches would be experiencing revival. How many of us really share the gospel so that a chair will be filled?

"Far better that our motive be to have heaven filled. Pardon my expression, but I really mean it when I say—to hell with the empty chairs! If disciples don’t want to move forward, but do so only out of guilt and obligation, then as soon as the pressure is removed the process will end. Even while the external compulsion is present, the process will lack quality because the disciples will lack enthusiasm” (pp. 31-32).

While I would disagree with the notion that external motivations, like filling empty chairs, are always worthless (sometimes internal motivations are seeded by the discipline of external motivations), I do agree and believe the underlying message of this quote is why many small groups stop growing or become stagnant. We can prime the pump with external motivations for outreach, knowledge, and fellowship, but if we can’t eventually get people to be self-motivated at pumping their own water, we will find little ongoing success at discipleship.

At some point in our journey with the folks in our small group we need to ask some questions:

--Are the people I’m in small group with passionately moved by the love of Christ?
--Are they demonstrating a compassion for the lost of the world?
--Are they driven by a desire to draw closer to Christ and sacrificially giving themselves to Christ’s mission?

If the answer to these questions is “no,” then you may need to evaluate how your group is being motivated.

share this

posted by Dan Lentz on July 28, 2009 8:09 AM