…But Did You See the Gorilla?
You’re likely familiar with the Invisible Gorilla Test, a 1999 study where researchers asked participants to watch a brief video of people passing a basketball. Subjects were told to count the number of times that players in white t-shirts passed the basketball. You can see that video here:
(Email and RSS feed subscribers: click here to see the video.)
Once they’d viewed the video and given their answers, they were asked one simple question:
Did you see the gorilla?
Now of course, you saw the gorilla, because the title of this post tipped you off that there was a gorilla to be seen. (And if you’re yelling “HEY, SPOILER ALERTS PLEASE!”, keep in mind that this study is more than a quarter century old. I can no longer be responsible for your procrastination.)
What fascinated the researchers is that 50% of their subjects never saw the gorilla. They were so focused on counting the number of passes, they completely missed the absurdity of a guy in a gorilla costume beating his chest in the center of the screen.
Compare that to those of us who have seen this video before. Our senses are tuned to see the gorilla. It’s almost impossible for us to miss the gorilla. We may or may not count the right number of passes, but the nanosecond that gorilla sticks a toe on the screen, it’s all we can see.
Our own invisible gorillas
Each of us have an invisible gorilla in our ministry: once we’ve seen it, we can’t not see it. And once we’ve seen it, try as we might to put the gorilla obnoxiously in someone’s path, some will see it and some won’t.
Our invisible gorillas might be…
- A piece of trash on the sidewalk or a smudge on the front entry door
- A poor transition in the worship service that leaves first-timers confused or anxious
- The staff member who never – and I mean n e v e r – replies to emails, texts, or phone calls, frustrating those who need a simple answer
- The system that is long outdated, serving a previous generation or preference rather than real needs of the current day
- The “good enough” principle that robs us of quality standards and high excellence
The point is, we’re surrounded by invisible gorillas. Some of our guests have already spotted our invisible gorillas. They can’t figure out why we can’t see the invisible gorillas. They are centered in our frame of reference, begging to be noticed.
So what do we do with them when we actually see them?
