Abstract
This paper examines the improvisation practiced by leaders in three emergency feeding programs on the south side of Chicago. It contributes to the theoretical understanding of religious leadership. Scholars recognize that religious leadership is improvisational, but little research has been done about how and when leaders improvise. This paper demonstrates that leaders in these feeding programs innovate frequently, but it argues that they do so in a limited way. Unlike improvisers in music, theater, or business, who innovate to increase variability, these kitchen improvisers exercise creativity in order to lessen variability and produce predictable results. The paper identifies the structural factors that promote and inhibit improvisation. It argues that space for improvisation is constructed by human need, institutional mission, and supply uncertainty, but that space for innovation is simultaneously limited by organizational expectations and the structure of volunteer labor. The paper suggests that the structural factors limiting improvisation in these programs also limits creativity in other areas of church work.
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Notes
The names of these congregations have been changed.
Lakeshore claims about 450 members and Southside about 140. These numbers come from denominational Websites, and it is difficult to determine how accurate they are.
This study was conducted in 2007, and these neighborhood data reflect conditions at that time.
Information about condo prices is anecdotal, shaped by visiting condominium open houses in both neighborhoods.
About a year after the data for this study were collected, Southside closed its Head Start program, because it could no longer fund it.
At the end of the month, lines at the two soup kitchens are always longer than they are at the beginning of the month. The pastors and workers report that the change in numbers of clients is a direct result of their not being able to stretch food stamps or money to the end of the month.
“Red food” is the term given by the clients, who are describing the tomato sauce based menus they enjoy there. The term is a descriptor, not a complaint.
Glasser describes the challenge of unexpected food donations in her soup kitchen ethnography (1988).
I have been helped in understanding the physical, temporal, or psychic space people have to improvise by what Kim Kamoche and Miguel Pina e Cunha call “zones of maneuvering” (2001). Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s insights about improvisation suggest ways in which actors could create broader zones of maneuvering. How maintaining situational openness, respecting and transcending binaries, constructing and playing pivot chords, using narrative creatively, and accessing aesthetic devices could broaden space for action is a provocative set of ideas (2000).
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A version of this paper was delivered at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association in October, 2007. I am grateful to Sharon Miller, Melody Knowles, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts, and constructive suggestions for revisions.
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Kapp, D.J. I’ll Think of Something: Improvisation in Small Church Service Programs. Rev Relig Res 54, 197–215 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-011-0044-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-011-0044-z