Whenever we visit my parents around the holidays, we are excited to find bowls filled with Christmas candy in almost every room of the house. M&M’s here. Holiday Mints there. As soon as you come upon a stash, you can’t help but grab a handful.
Malcolm Gladwell’s books are like Christmas candy for me. Whenever I see a new one, I grab it and go. I knew Outliers: The Story of Success would be a good book, since I found Malcolm Gladwell’s previous two books: The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking to be entertaining as well as informative. Gladwell has a knack for challenging conventional thinking by telling fascinating stories.
Outliers follows the same formula. Here, Gladwell challenges the conventional notion that success comes from being “self-made.” He shows how the rise of certain people to success is never a one-person affair. Culture, family, community, and hard work all contribute to one individual’s success.
I highly recommend that pastors, preachers and teachers read Malcolm Gladwell. You might think that a book like Outliers is a waste of time. Not so. The illustrations and stories here make for powerful sermon examples.
For example, consider the first chapter in Outliers – a story about the Roseto community. Gladwell shows how this unusual community had virtually no cases of heart disease among people below the age of 65. The doctors and scientists were stumped. No answer seemed to make sense of the data… until they realized that the community itself was acting as a sort of vaccine against heart attacks.
Now think of the ways a Christian teacher can use this material. What does the power of community teach us about the church? How does an example like the Roseto community help us as church leaders to emphasize the importance of community?
Gladwell also speaks of the “10,000 hour rule”. Those who succeed are generally those who worked the hardest and longest. It is not talent or innate giftedness, but perseverance that ultimately counts in working up the ladder to success. And he uses the Beatles as proof! (No more details. I don’t want to spoil the story.)
Most fascinating to me was the chapter on plane crashes – particularly the Korean airlines that were deemed unsafe for a time because of the unwritten cultural rules of protocol that prevented first officers from questioning their superiors (the pilots). Gladwell peers into Korean culture, showing how the culture’s indirect speech was responsible for putting passengers in peril.
While I found the chapter on airlines fascinating, I wish Gladwell had countered with another chapter that shows how our American individualism/assertiveness can be just as dangerous in other circumstances. Some readers might jump to the conclusion that indirect-speech cultures are inferior to direct-speech cultures.
I encourage you to pick up Gladwell’s book(s). They are filled with fascinating details and stories. If you aren’t a teacher, pick up the book for enjoyment. If you are a teacher, don’t miss out on the opportunity to fill a file with powerful illustrations.
