Broken Windows Pastoral Practice

One of James Q. Wilson’s well-known contributions to public policy discussions is his “broken windows” policing policy (outlined in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic ). He argued that allowing minor infractions ?Epublic pissing, jay-walking ?Eand minor public defacements of a neighborhood ?Egraffiti, broken windows ?Ecreated an atmosphere of disorder where crime flourished. When police begin to crack down on these minor infractions, serious crime declines significantly.

Pastoral policing would seem to benefit from a similar approach. Rather than ignoring or tolerating small sins or symptoms of sinful patterns, pastors and elders should intervene to correct the smaller sins before they become large-scale issues. Marriages normally break down because of an accumulation of low-level sins (which may break out in a huge sin), and the marriage could be saved by addressing those little things – the way the wife talks about her husband to her girlfriends, the way the husband addresses the wife in public settings, the look the husband gives when asked to do X and Y, and so on.

I don’t claim to be good at broken windows pastoring. But the analogy seems strong, and is worth pondering.