Risk

I read an article that featured Nicholas Taleb who wrote The Black Swan about risk assessment. Black Swan Theory is about large impact hard to predict risk and Taleb writes about how it relates to business, especially in light of the sub-prime disaster.

In the article he talks about the fact that bank failure isn't really anything new. Banks have always failed but there were so many banks it really wasn't a big deal, at least in the big picture. Taleb relates it to ecology and how diversification makes our ecology stronger and able to bounce back from natural catastrophes. But the banking picture is different today. With all the mergers and acquisitions we have a much smaller number of banks. The result when one of these giants fail is devastating.

I think we need to be careful in the church to use God's ecology rather than man's. This has far reaching impact all the way down to our smallest Sunday School class. Taleb notes that a key characteristic of Black Swan Theory is that it surprises us when we actually should have seen it coming. It is easy to believe that it will never happen, at least not to us. This morning I'm wondering how closely my church's ecology mirrors the ecology we see in God's creation. Actually, I'm staring at the gulf between the two.