Overstory

The canopy of history, culture, and the effects on the present day church

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering.” I have been a huge fan of Gladwell since I read “Outliers,” around 2010. After that, I went back and read most of his work. I also subscribed to his podcast, “Revisionist History,” since it began in 2016. I love his storytelling and the way he weaves points A, B, C, and D together to demonstrate why E is true.

Overstory and lower story

In “Revenge of the Tippin Point,” Gladwell uses the word “overstory” as a metaphor for why things happen the way that they do. Overstory refers to the upper layer of foliage in a forest canopy and how it affects the behavior of the lower story of the forest. In my backyard, we have 80-foot-tall white pines. They cast major shadows on our yard, affecting where grass can put down deep roots and where only dirt grows. The overstory affects the lower story.

Gladwell uses many examples of an overstory affecting the reality of culture or situation. He talks about how the TV show “Will & Grace” helped get the US to be comfortable with gay marriage faster than expected. He looks at Waldorf schools and how it affects child vaccinations. One that shocked me was how a 1978 television miniseries is responsible for naming the Holocaust, “The Holocaust.” These are examples of how an overstory was countered and became a source of the tipping point of change.

This got me thinking of what it is like to change a church’s culture. I never could put this into words but what I have found is that all faith communities have an overstory. They have an overarching narrative that pushes and molds their specific culture and how they build the kingdom of God in their community. Our job as leaders is to learn the overstory and understand its effects on the present day.

Sure, it will not be as drastic as how our society views same-sex weddings or the Holocaust, but it is there. “That’s not how we do it here.” “That won’t work. We tried it once and it failed.” These are phrases that clue us into the fact there is a specific overstory we should pay attention to. It could be the sanctuary caught on fire in 1954 or how the neighborhood changed around the church. These are parts of the overstory that effects the lower story, or the culture of the church today.

The church I grew up in moved. My family started to attend when they moved from their location near downtown to the growing suburbs. This congregation started to meet in the elementary school I attended. I fell in love with God and the church in this place and it wasn’t until I grew up and got into ministry that I learned some of the overstory of my home church. I started to put pieces of the puzzle together when I learned more about the neighborhood they moved from. The community around their original location changed in the 1980s and early 90s. It went from a white middle-class neighborhood to a black lower-income neighborhood. Instead of working to change the church to meet the needs of their community, they decided it was perfect timing to move out to the suburbs. Or what I would suggest is they moved to where more white middle-class families live.

Those original members who helped relaunch this church in the suburbs were looked at as saints, which many of them were, but as the church grew and flourished in the suburbs those “original families” continued to hold a lot of power over the decisions of this new church. The overstory of moving and the leaders who made that happen, was still strong in this congregation decades after they transitioned out there. For good and bad, this is the overstory of this congregation which has effects on how they do things and how they view their ever-changing community.

Whenever I am appointed to a new congregation, I have always spent a long time listening. I listen to the stories of the congregation, the stories of their ministry and missions that have gone well or not so well. I listen for the people or families they talk about and the big moments they keep pointing at as special. What I can name now, is that these are parts of the overstory.

Hearing the overstory is important because if change is going to come, you need to know where the pushback will come from and why. Learning the overstory enables a leader to talk about the hopes, dreams, and fears that make their home up there in the canopy. In addition, as a leader, you can start to hold up pieces of a new story up and slowly tip the overstory for change God is desiring for the Body of Christ.

One congregation I served was very inwardly focused. They did not do much when it came to missions. They were too focused on the people inside the church to worry about the people outside the church. This got me thinking of ways to create opportunities to change the overstory, to cut a few branches down so the sunlight can start to let some plants grow on the forest floor. What I came up with was empowering the children of the church to help the children of the community. We started the “Noisy Offering.” The children of our church would walk around on a certain Sunday of the month and collect change from the parishioners in tin cans. They could shake the cans and make a joyful noise. We would then collect that change throughout the year and near the end of the school year we would buy a new book for every student at the elementary school just down the street.

The overstory of this church was they dearly loved the children of their church and so they gladly supported this ministry moment with pockets full of change. Then these same members went and delivered these books to the local elementary school and saw the faces of kids light up with their books to read over the summer. It was a small branch to remove from the overstory, but the light it brought down started to make things grow. Slowly we could do a little bit more for the people outside of our church because it wasn’t as scary as it once was. They saw how proud the children were of this mission, and they owned it and we expanded on that feeling.

Overstories are not final and are encased in concrete. They can be altered. They can be used for change. Many congregations just want you to know their stories and when we listen, truly listen, we can hear how God can use them to build a better and more effective church through those same stories.

What is your overstory? What is the overstory of the church you help lead? Where could God use that overstory to let change, meaningful, kingdom-building change happen?