Shifting the Tracks of Church Networks
Coronavirus and Church Networks, Part 2: Solutions to the Conundrum of Governance in the 21st Century
In the minds of both those attending churches and the growing number opting out, the denominations have lost their legitimacy. That being said, structures are not willy-nilly add-ons that can be sloughed off when not needed. They are the concretization and expression of long-established and deeply held stories. Leaders and members struggle with new questions about the value and role of the institutions that once served them well. Over time, structures change and institutions do get transformed, but such change emerges out of a period of wrestling with these deeper changes in legitimating narratives.
~Alan J. Roxburgh, Structured for Mission: Renewing the Culture of the Church
In the midst of tectonic shifts and hyperactive change with the Coronavirus crisis, churches are struggling to impact the culture. With the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ground has shifted beneath our feet. Now more than ever, what is “new and improved” has become “old and worn out” in a fraction of the time, dramatically impacting the mission of the church.
Now more than ever, we simply can’t keep going down the same ol’ tracks laid over the past fifty years (Jubilee!) and expect that it’ll be sufficient for the journey ahead. The tracks of church history are in the midst of a seismic shift, but denominations, networks, ministries, and churches can move their organizations to add needed speed and agility for what lies ahead.
Just dump current structures or over-control to protect the status quo? Leaders face adaptive challenges by understanding and coordinating variables and complexities; adapting to improve a church or organization’s chance to survive and then thrive.
Adapt-or-die situations also bring compelling opportunities that can galvanize the organization into movement. Institutionalized denominations, networks, ministries, and churches are especially vulnerable, but with unrest comes renewed openness to issues God is sovereignly bringing to the forefront.
Today’s threatening times in the West are still not at the level of overt persecution as in other parts of the world, nor are threats as dangerous as those once hostile to the 1st century church. But we can ask ourselves, “If we’re not going to do Acts 1:8 and take new ground, then will God allow Acts 8:1 to happen and scatter us outward?
Over the past few decades, we could forecast fairly predictably. We had time to develop strategic plans based on projections informed by patterns of the past. We could make adjustments more slowly and expect desired results. Exponential change is making it much more difficult to predict what will happen in two or three years, much less ten or more. This is a real threat to comfortable mainstream churches that didn’t responded well to slow and predictable cultural shifts.
As to church networks, let’s focus on governing and restructuring FOR the Great Commission in order to remain faithful to our God-given sense of mission. The big decision, now heightened by the Coronavirus crisis, has to do with the question of centralization. Is the church supposed to be centralized and hierarchical with accountability, compliance measures and direct supervision? Or is the church supposed to be an organic system that is governed more by the invisible hand of God? Or is it somehow BOTH? Since both have benefits, why not restructure to capitalize on both?
There is something undeniably energizing about unifying hundreds of leaders and thousands of people under one banner. The potential to marshal human resources is significant. Some missional ministries are hard to pull off without collaboration within a larger pool. Conferences and theological training are just two of many examples that benefit from a centralized structure. There is a multiplier effect in shared funding, too. Even small churches that combine their modest giving with the contributions of other churches are able to open up new and meaningful possibilities.
Of course, difficulties develop within centralized structures. Consolidation of resources and platforms can also mean consolidation of power. Leaders are supposed to give away power and let Jesus be the head. Bureaucracy, hierarchy or technocracy have dark sides that stifle mission and a national figure can eventually become the de facto pontiff of an organization.
In contrast, now more than ever, decentralized structures have the potential for social movement. The idea of decentralized networks has been trending and gaining traction. The future includes potent church communities seen through the lens of network instead of institution or denomination. The question is not whether church leaders will be networked, but how. In the midst of large-scale cultural shifts, churches can resist the change. Better to engage the change in order to preach the coming kingdom in emerging environments and cultural contexts.
Also, churches can end up with some unhealthy pastors and typically lack the effective governance needed to deal with these tough situations. This is where a principled, veteran regional leader can be of help. At their best, new church leaders carry the raw DNA of missional movement. But when they are not networked together by a biblical governance structure, they have less chance to sustain that which began organically.
Is it possible to maintain the spirit of organic movements and healthy, organizational oversight? Consider these two polar opposites:
“High church” chain-of-command, hierarchical authority structures have parishioners subject to a priest, who’s subject to a bishop, who’s subject to an archbishop, who’s subject to a Cardinal, who’s subject to the Pope. Compare this to a house-church network that’s self-regulated with a distributed or detached authority structure.
Both have downfalls and can have abuses of power. These two opposite sides of the spectrum each have counter merits as well as shortcomings.
Upper echelons have clear-cut command and control. Some godly higher-ups can be life giving, but power corrupts, gets heady or eventually ruins the leader. This negatively impacts the people they’ve been leading.
So then what about a congregational-vote approach? In theory, this is a check to any one person’s control or exaggerated power. The cost is slower decision-making. When everyone has an equal vote, leadership can be lacking. A longstanding governmental body has trouble breaking free of maintaining the status quo and needed change is difficult. Democratic votes require compromise, because no one can get all that they want.
Because Jesus is the head of His church, human governing bodies must submit to His leading as best as can be understood in real time. Jesus is alive and building His church. Therefore, governance is essentially discerning and stewarding His active rule and reign.
Which brings us to a key question: What is it that we’re supposed to be governing? Is it denomination-style hierarchy or missional movement? Which should be our hope and aim for the future? Subsequently, should our dominant structure be centralized or decentralized?
Maybe our current American context is best served by straddling both for the good of the cause. Let’s shift the tracks of church-network structures with a two-track solution to the conundrum of governance in the 21st century.
Image two tracks under the same Jesus-centric umbrella. A dual-track system would allow for human leadership practices that provide a national identity to better serve the churches and networks, while keeping the practices and identity of the churches and networks at large as a decentralized reality. This gives the advantage of lean missional leadership teams, while simultaneously operating a plurality of eldership that keeps Jesus’ sovereign supremacy at the forefront.
I’ve seen this attempted as a hybrid approach through one entity. This can have merit. But with a national identity, I think I’d recommend accepting the value of both and organizing into two complementary entities. This can allow for a division of labor with expansion, while looking freshly at the biblical models of church in the New Testament, comparing 1st century realities with today’s 21st century practicalities. Workloads can be allocated into two silos with the missional-ministry organization on one side and the movemental network of churches on the other.
New networks of new churches would be the desired result and, therefore, intentionality. The national agency side exists to serve the organic system. The national association exists to serve, but not control movements. Both exist in order to better advance Jesus’ mission and expand His kingdom, with new churches and emerging networks empowered and released.
An existing fellowship of churches can learn to become a collaboration between these two tracks, one written and amended in official articles and one written and amended in hearts as part of the DNA of great-commissional movements.
My GC tribe, on the one hand, originally developed as an organic network of autonomous campus works that developed into community microchurches and megachurches (with the church growth movement), all united by a common agreement to a common set of core values that included a set of standards of character and conduct for elders. On the other hand, my GC tribe regionalized and developed a centralized national office purposed with unity, accountability, and equipping. Much has happened historically, including spin-offs of church networks and church-planting associations on other continents as well as a tightly organized mission agency to provide a service platform for mobilizing and supporting campus workers and international missionaries, eventually partnering with a broad range of evangelical organizations. All these historic movements inform and envision future opportunities to more intentionally empower and release new leaders, church plants and new networks for the sake of the Kingdom.
In his groundbreaking book, Accelerate (XLR8): Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World, John Kotter makes a strong case for a radically new reorganization of both nonprofit and business management structures. He sees the gravity of current challenges affecting a whole new way to organize, govern, and lead. Critical of “management-driven hierarchies,” he urgently argues for networks, not necessarily to replace existing hierarchies, but to operate as complementary, parallel structures. As quoted in a previous blog entitled Bound by the Voyage Jesus Launched: Courageous Stewardship of BOTH Structures and Supporting Core Values, Kotter writes:
The world is now changing at a rate at which the basic systems, structures, and cultures built over the past century cannot keep up with the demands being placed on them… The solution is NOT to trash what we know and start over . . .
Now, Kotter goes on to add:
. . . but instead to reintroduce, in an organic way, a second system—one which would be familiar to most successful entrepreneurs. The new system adds needed agility and speed, while the old one, which keeps running, provides reliability and efficiency. The two together—a dual system—are actually very similar to what all mature organizations had at one point in their life cycles, yet did not sustain (and have long since forgotten).
A stunning matchup with my own experiences and confirmation of my own thinking and observations of nonprofit denominations, networks, ministries, and churches (and for-profit businesses, for that matter).
On one side, the organizational structure; on the other side, the accelerated network(s) made up of autonomous, self-directed, missional entrepreneurs and pioneers. This is where ongoing, catalytic creativity and strategic, generative expansion of the organization comes from, which in turn exists FOR the network(s).
If you’re intrigued, I’d recommend the entire book. Kotter also reexamines the role of vision in a way that’s prophetic (published April, 2014) for today’s churches and nonprofits facing the COVID-19 crisis. Now especially, what unites is “no longer vision” (although still important in the biblical sense, in my opinion) but urgent opportunity. Kotter puts forth:
People who create successful dual systems center the creation of great urgency around opportunity, not vision.
Needs drive pastors. Meeting needs is helped by networking and teamwork for contextualized solutions. But the network side still needs an organizational side, which should exist to serve the network, not the other way around. Decentralized churches and empowered networks generally desire catalytic leadership and support from a generative national reality.
Kotter also argues that the lifecycle of an organization tends to move from network to hierarchy, but the best organizations learn to create an equilibrium between the two, not remaining a network only, but also not devolving into a hierarchical bureaucracy. Parallel tracks keep the enterprise moving forward. It’s what loose church networks need to hear AND it’s what management-driven organizations need to hear.
This dual-track solution is an approach of the centralized side serving the decentralized side; of the organization serving the networks of churches; of restructuring FOR the Great Commission; of putting the church on the side of missional ministries and movemental thinking. This will mitigate unintended consequences and capitalize on opportunities both now and as new ones emerge. Let’s put the adventure back in the venture!
The single-track organization will continue to flounder and decline, either in the old one or a new one attempting to replace it. By the way, renewal and restructuring may well lead to reuniting with pastors and churches that have left, bringing additional renewed energy.
There’s nothing to lose by experimenting before dumping what you know. An organization can DISSOLVE at any time. Instead, RESOLVE to first “reintroduce, in an organic way,” a second track. This will add “needed agility and speed,” while maintaining “reliability and efficiency . . . what all mature organizations had at one point in their life cycles, yet did not sustain (and have long since forgotten).” So let’s reimagine and restructure FOR the Great Commission with a dual-operating system that creates a healthy exchange between two tracks—minimizing the weaknesses of each AND getting the best out of both!
Bonus poem:
When the Last Vote’s Cast
“Don’t be alarmed. He is risen!” heard the first to arrive
Later, this same dear disciple, first to see Christ alive
It's all there in the Gospels, the Magdalene girl
Came to pay her respects, but her mind was awhirl
She found the tomb empty, the stone had been rolled
Not a sign of the corpse, in the vault dark and cold
Oh, but there on the stone was an angelic sight
Appearance like lighting, dressed in robes of white
Well, it’s now Twenty-Twenty, long since Calvary hill
The Board is in a big hurry, but ye might catch ‘em still
“Tell me where are you goin’, and why in such haste?”
Now don't hinder me, man. I’ve no time to waste
I must cast my Board vote, at the first sign of May
Oh, I’ll have to be there, the Board mustn’t delay
I’ll cast my vote, no matter what’s disappointed me
Why else would the Spirit Himself have appointed me?
For nothing will stop me, I have to prevail
May the angels protect me if all else should fail
A short window of time before ballots get passed
And whatever got said, they'll be counted at last
May be hard to celebrate that a Jubilee’s past
When the last vote’s cast. Whoa, the last vote’s cast
“But then where are we going?” the elders debate
Well, for sure Jubilee, and we dare not be late
We'll be casting a vote; we’ll be taking a side
And we’ll come from all over, from far and from wide
Well, the first to arrive . . . is that the Pontiff of Rome?
And then every Board member, or will any stay home?
We’ll all have our ballots . . . now, just a detail
“Dissolve the Organization’ . . . now, will it prevail?
Whatever they’ve promised, whatever they've done
And whatever “Denomination” they’ve become
In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son
And no matter what “Future Proposal” got spun
A short window of time before ballots get passed
And whatever got said, they'll be counted at last
May be hard to celebrate that a Jubilee’s past
When the last vote’s cast. Whoa, the last vote’s cast