Godly organization

I may have written about this before (edit: yep, in January), but I wanted to return to it with a new approach and some new thoughts.

Dee Hock, former high muckie muck with VISA International (the credit card guys), coined a term called "chaordic". It is order that arises out of chaos. Numerous late 20th and early 21st century innovators in the greater church have embraced chaordic as an approach to church growth and new church plants.

Basically, it is allowing organization to naturally arise by focusing solely on a common mission complemented with commonly held values. Some would interpret much of what happened in Acts and what Paul did as just that: Paul would preach in an area, stay to disciple awhile, then return months or a year or two later and recognize the leaders (elders) that were there already. Yes, most interpretations say appoint, but I would say they are probably right in that Paul probably simply recognized those who were leaders who were of good character and influence and appointed them.

Some also refer to this kind of organization as organic, others use terms like endoskeleton (as opposed to the institutional approach that resembles an exoskeleton). We can all observe that when we are in a small group of friends or in a small group of coworkers thrown together for training or such, there is a naturally occurring organization that arises. I think back simply to my bunkhouse at Advanced Boot Camp in May: when we were thrown together for the practicums on the four streams, we managed to quickly organize and get moving without predetermining a structure or organizational philosophy. (ok, maybe the Holy Spirit was involved there in seeing that happen -- but doesn't that sort of reinforce my point?).

Anything is possible with God of course, but some observations are that "natural" organization is best with smaller numbers. And it would seem that smaller churches are most effective. Generally, if a church is growing, it is growing faster if it is smaller -- two five hundred member churches that are growing grow faster than one thousand member growing church, and five 100 member churches faster than one 500 member church. Moreover, (I'll have to find the references for all this) the smaller churches tend to grow with new converts, the large with "transfers". So the real growth rate is much better with the smaller.

Another observation made by some organizational experts is that formal structure tends to occur when a group hits 20 or so. The larger the organization, the more "structured" in man's eye it gets. Is this good? Look at the business world -- the fastest growing businesses are always the smallest. Few Fortune 500 companies even sustain 3% annual growth over a long duration. More jobs are created "per capita" by small companies than large ones. One case in point -- San Diego lost several huge aerospace employers in the eighties, but the city's unemployment rate didn't spike long term as a result, despite the lack of new business moving in or other large employers hiring in large numbers. What happened, it was discovered years later, was that many of the unemployed started small businesses, and that ended up absorbing the unemployed rapidly. Small is beautiful, as my friend Greg says.

Another thought on organization -- we may think of the small as unorganized, but is anything unorganized really unorganized? The analogy is looking at a piece of land as "undeveloped". Ever realize that is an insult to God? It is undeveloped only in the eyes of man. God has spent centuries invested in that land, hasn't he? If we are a God led people, can we really ever be unorganized in our units? And aren't we more unorganized when we rely on man made bureaucracies?