The Ketchup Principle

Recently Seth Bryant, the pastor of the Salt Lake Community of Christ congregation, introduced me to what he called the "ketchup principle." He said that in various parts of the U.S., some people keep their ketchup in the refrigerator while others leave it in the cupboard. The principle is that when people who keep their ketchup in the fridge run out of ketchup, they look for alternatives in the fridge; if you run out of ketchup in the cupboard, you look for replacements in the cupboard. The idea is that when you work on a team, you want both types of people - the creative solutions can come from both the cupboard and the fridge.

In Tuesday's legislative session at World Conference we received information from the Presiding Bishopric about the financial status of the church. Let me be the first to tell you that I am not a fan of financial conversations in business meetings. My eyes tend to glaze over, and the numbers start to hit me in the face. I majored in English for a reason.

This session, however, was different.

Community of Christ has made a historic move. For the first time there are two women serving in the Presiding Bishopric (the top tier of financial leadership in Community of Christ). The team now consists of Stassi Cramm, Michele McGrath, and Steven Graffeo. While I don't want to belittle the hard work of previous teams, I will say that yesterday was the first time I was able to understand the financial information that was presented.

I think there were several reasons for this. For one thing, there were plenty of pictures and fruit metaphors (we were told the story of the budget crisis as if the church were a coconut and papaya farm). In addition, Stassi Cramm brought chairs from her kitchen table as a symbol of hospitality. She and the rest of the team wanted nothing more than to invite us to a kitchen table to have an honest conversation about the budget.

While these were certainly helpful elements of the presentation, I think there was something deeper going on. We live in a culture that has long excluded women from financial conversations. Something shifted within me when I saw two women leading us through our financial endeavors. I felt invited to the conversation in a powerfully new way.

And so, I saw the ketchup principle at work on Tuesday. We brought people to the table that kept their ketchup in both the fridge and the cupboard, and I couldn't be more grateful.