Olfactory Fatigue
by Billy Strother
I love living out in the country: fresh air, hardwood trees, green meadows, fish in the pond, and a plethora animal fare to dine on in an apocalypse, if necessary. But there are times when living in the country has a downside.
Our German short-haired pointer, Wilson (named after the volleyball in the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway”) loves to roam the woods around us. Out bedroom has a set of French doors at which he would whine at to be let outside in the middle of the night.
At 2:00 am, out he went for a stroll. He came back and barked at the door an hour later. I rose to open the door, and he hustled past me. Then it hit me . . . a smell so pungent I almost wretched! Wilson had been full-on skunked, rolling around on the floor trying to get rid of pungent stench . . . rolling on his dog bed and on the carpeted floor! Then he ran through the kitchen, living room, and laundry room before we could corral him.
We grabbed Wilson up (well, to be honest, I kind of hung back and my lovely wife, Ms. Carol, grabbed him up) and to the shower he went. We tried everything. I even ran to the grocery in the middle of the night for tomato juice. He gradually got almost tolerable to be around in the wee hours of the morning. Then, we cleaned the bedroom carpet and around the house. The dog bed and clothes we were wearing went to the burn pile.
And every day, Wilson got a little less smelly and the house seemed to be airing out. By the weekend, the skunk smell was gone on him and in the house. We felt comfortable inviting the best man from our wedding, his family, and members of our church, to our house for Sunday lunch, right after church. I had spent a good part of Saturday evening preparing home made from scratch spaghetti sauce. Before we left for church, I put it on to cook . . . for us all to walk into our house and breathe deeply that homemade spaghetti sauce sweet fragrance.
We opened the front door and encouraged our guests to enter first, hospitably offering them the first beautiful whiff of my sauce. Enter they did. But ten seconds after entering, they stampeded back out, nearly trampling us on their exodus. They looked at me and barked, “What is that nasty smell?” I took offense! “Hey, my sauce is always great!” My former best man said, “Not the spaghetti sauce, but that other rancid smell?” Then out came the dog. They pointed at him, “That’s it. What is the matter with your dog!? He stinks! And he has smelled up your house!” We took them out to eat.
Ms. Carol and I were suffering a medical condition known as “olfactory fatigue.” Olfactory fatigue is the temporary and normal inability to distinguish a particular odor after prolonged exposure. Basically, as a defense mechanism, after a time of exposure to smell, the olfactory nerves in the nose diminish in effectiveness. Oh, the smell is still there; you just are not experiencing it fully, or even at all, for a time. You could say, your sense of smell becomes numb – you can no longer smell the smell that new smellers can detect.
Even though not to me, I had to admit, that, to new noses, “My Dog Stinks.” (We finally found an effective and safe remedy that works better and faster.)
Sometimes olfactory fatigue is a good thing. Did you ever take a load of refuse to the local landfill? How do those workers work there all day? Olfactory fatigue. But most often, when we are hosting new guests, those guests notice that with which we have lived with so long that we no longer notice.
As elders and leaders, every one of our hearts desires to see that first-time visitor return. Why? To increase numbers? No. We desire to begin new relationships in Christ and for Christ.
There are, at times, good reasons for first-time visitors to not return:
a family just passing through on vacation;
guilted by a family member to attend on Easter; or
they have heard great things about your church, and just want to see and experience it for themselves, to take creative ideas back to their own church.
Yet there are times when first-time guest do not return, because they smelled something we no longer notice:
no one greeted them – or no one talked to them at all;
the visitor was asked to move seats because they were sitting in a long-time member’s preferred seat;
the women’s restroom looked like something transported from “the Last Stand” gas station, worn out and about closed;
the nursery the visitors were considered putting their child in, smelled like ancient diapers; or
about anything that would not pass your own smell test when you visit a church for the first time.
What can we do to reveal to our fatigued “noses” what smells to first-time visitors, those negative things to which we have become so numb to that we no longer notice?
First, adopt this leadership mindset: “We are committed to ministering to guests before their first-time visit.” As leaders, we are called to serve proactively, not just reactively.
Second, invite a friend who does not attend your church to visit. Give them the mission to help you uncover what you no longer notice. Do not take offense or try to defend . . . just listen to their after-church action report. Most often, your friend will reveal some simple things to address. Then, those simple things can be addressed one at a time.
As a solution, we did not burn our house down or send our dog Wilson to, well, uh, that long-term farm. We just kept cleaning him until the smell was no longer noticed by others who came into our home.
As leaders, seeking to maximize our Kingdom impact, anything worth doing for Jesus is worth doing with excellence.
