“It is not possible for the same group of men in one context—when facing the non-Christian world—to assert that the death of Christ is the one sufficient event by which all men may be made one family under God, and, at the same time, in another context—when dealing with one another—to assert that the event is not sufficient to enable those who believe in it to live as one family.”
I’m working on a sermon for Sunday. During my research I ran across a quote in Bosch’s book that I heavily marked the first time I went through it. In commenting on the early church, Bosch argues that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. Those who followed Him were not given a name to distinguish them from other groups, no creed of their own, no rite which distinguised them. Nontheless, “Their survival as a separate religious group, rather than their commitment to the reign of God, began to preoccupy them.”
“Jesus foretold the kingdom and it was the Church that came.” Alfred Loisy (p. 50)
The second failure, according to Bosch, is that the early church ceased to be a movement and turned into an institution.
“There are essential difference between an institution and a movement, says H. R. Niebuhr (following Bergson): The one is conservative, the other progressive; the one is more or less passive, yielding to influences from outside, the other is active, influencing rather than being Read more…
In, “Surfing the Edge of Chaos,†the authors Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja discuss the forces that move and shape large and massively complicated organizations (otherwise known as Complex Adaptive Systems.) The forces, known as attractors, are three (or four depending on who you read.) They are:
As applied to spiritual movements, point attractors may be the tendency of large entities to move toward death, or worse institutionalization, which is simply a living death. Cycle attractors might be seen in the cycles of revival and awakening that the church has experienced over two millennia.
I ran across this in the May 2007 Wired magazine interview with Eric Schmidt. Toward the end of the interview he is asked, “Google’s revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?”
I was interested in this answer because the Wired Magazine editor asked the question with the assumption that Google should be run with a dynamic tension between bureaucratic and chaotic.
The reply:
It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model is still small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. Attempts to provide too much order dries out the creativity. What’s needed in a properly functioning corporation [or organism, movement] is a balance between creativity and order.
But we’ve reined in certain things. For example, we don’t tolerate the kind of “Hey, I want to have my own database and have a good time” behavior that was effective for us in the past.
I was struck by the notion of small team running fast, and the need to embrace a degree of incohesion, lest too much order would kill creativity. How do you think about a citywide movement of the body of Christ that would spur innovation toward transformation?
I finally finished the paper, “Campus Crusade’s Adaptive Challenge“that will wrap up my writing for my current BGU class. Here is a description of what I tried to do.
“This paper will attempt to show that in the midst of the massive shift in current culture, Campus Crusade for Christ, along with the church in North America faces an adaptive challenge, necessitating leadership that might feel more radical than many would feel comfortable with. I will propose that in identifying who Campus Crusade “is,†we should focus on the apostolic impulse that resides in our DNA, and not merely our organizational values and proven strategies. Finally, I will also draw some observations from a recent trip to India that will offer suggestions as to how Campus Crusade should be approaching the gospel transformation in cities that now characterizes a global priority of Campus Crusade.”
Your comments, as always, are welcome.
Campus Crusade, Leadership, Movements, Organizational Theory
One of the things I’ve been wrestling with recently is how do you go about forming partnership, coalitions and other working collaborations? What are the principles and rules that people and organizations need to pay attention to? “Well Connected” by Phill Butler was recommended to me and I thought I’d troll through it again. It’s subtitled,”Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships.”
I thought I’d include the following excerpts dealing with the glue that hold Kingdom partnerships together — Vision.
Key Partnership Principle:
Partnerships are durable, effective, and usually strategic when they are driven by a great vision — a vision that is clearly marked by the following characteristics:
- Greater Than anything that can be accomplished by a single individual or ministry.
- One all participants agree is a “God idea,” a high priority, and not someone’s private agenda.
- On that , in the early stages, can be broken down into high-value, achievable elements that will give participants experience working together, growing confidence, and a sense of achievement.
- Made up of objectives all participants see as highly relevant to their own ministry vision and mission.
The second item met a specific concern of mine…
Steve Addison’s seven lessons from the rise and fall of the Student Christian Movement
OnMovements.com comments on the post and adds Campus Crusade for Christ as another movement in this genre that proved unfaithful. I’m not sure I’d say Crusade is unfaithful. I see it more as a blindness to the systems story that really drives our organization. So we continue to reorg, try harder, create new strategies on an order that is insufficient to create the change that is truly necessary.
Crusade knows it is facing a challenge and is trying hard to figure it out. It’s hard for me to say it has been unfaithful because you have to apply a moral judgment to their blindness. Perhaps there is a moral obligation upon leadership to lead through these challenges. I only know that it is sad to watch.
Common Kingdom Value
One of the things that strikes me about the U40 group is how people share the common value of the Kingdom. “Under 40″ is the working name (that I no longer like) for a group of friends that are thinking about how we might take the many diverse focii of the church in San Diego, and work together in functional unity to make a greater difference on our city with the Jesus’ gospel.
“Kingdom” is why people are in the room. When I invited people to the concept, the response was almost intuitive, “Sure, we need to do that.” I continue to believe that a healthy understanding of a “already” part of Kingdom can drive a movement of the church that would be a blessing to the city. There is a common value that each person, and the ministry they represent, wants to join in a larger movement of the church in Kingdom work.
A True Common Understanding will Take Work
The one thing I’m not sure about is whether any of us know just what is involved in working together under that Kingdom umbrella. We haven’t defined it together yet… and that is a little anxiety producing. Our group is quite diverse, spanning the gamut from church planting to working with at-risk youth. We have lawyers and environmentalists, campus workers and marketplace missionaries.
I suspect that one person’s understanding of the Kingdom means we must work to uphold the immigration laws, while another person’s view focuses on scriptural commands to care for the alien amongst us? Some might take the position that Christ and the church must transform culture, while others might say Christ and the church must be against culture. (There are even more categories that Niehbur uses to describe the relationship of the church to culture.)
I’ve been trolling the footnotes of Hirsch’s book and ran across this article on the networked organization, offered by Dee Hock of Visa (the credit card) fame. Hock writes:
“All organizations are merely conceptual embodiments of a very old, very basic idea — the idea of community. They can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the people drawn to them; of their character, judgments, acts, and efforts,” Hock says. “An organization’s success has enormously more to do with clarity of a shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability, or management competence, important as they may be.”
How might this apply to re-thinking of church at a metro level? As we gather gather younger leaders of the church in San Diego, a central question we are seeking to address is “What does Kingdom look like in San Diego?” How does the body of Christ come together in some fashion, such that our relationships enable a synergistic increase in the rate and impact of Kingdom transformation?
It seems clear that we should pursue, or allow, depending on your frame of reference a more organic, networked approach rather than the command and control approach. But if there isn’t someone or something dictating the strategy and implementation, what coordinates the activity?
I read Hock’s comments to suggest that a networked, organic approach to thinking about church in San Diego will be more successful if we clear about what our shared purpose is (Kingdom?), have common principles (”We are better together,” “Dependence upon God,” etc.?), and strength of belief in them. This approach will be better than “focusing on assets, expertise, operating ability, or management competence.”
Another key book for our current time is Transforming Mission - Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, by David Bosch. Beginning on page 50, he begins a discussion entitled, “Where the Early Church Failed.” He begins by reminding readers that despite the growth and all the incredible things that were occuring in and at the hands of the early church, there were shortcomings.
For one, Bosch suggests that Jesus had no intention of creating a new religion. Those that followed him generally formed a counter-cultural community that existed for the sake of others. They had no name until they were first called Christians at Antioch. But this was not maintained for long:
Already at a very early stage Christians tended to be more aware of what distinguished them from others than of their calling and responsibility toward those others. Their survival as a separate religious group, rather than their commitment to the reign of God, began to preoccupy them…In the course of time, the Jesus community simply became a new religion. P. 50