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How does this grand cosmology relate to our experience of the local church? One of the reflections arising out of my 15 years experience at SMRC is that as we grew and began to operate in the classic church growth mode it became increasingly harder to find God in the midst of the progressively more machine-like apparatus required to ‘run a church.’ With numerical growth, it seemed that we increasingly being drawn away from the natural rhythms of life, from direct ministry, and our roles seemed to become more managerial than ever before. But this mechanization of ministry was not only felt by the leadership of the church, the people in the church were increasingly being programmed out of life and therefore less engaged in active relationships with those outside of the faith community. Given my broader ministry, I know that this experience is endemic to many contemporary expressions of church. All this led to a personal quest to find a more life-oriented approach to mission, ministry and community, and eventually led to the discovery of what has been called the living systems approach (see addendum ‘a crash course in chaos’.)
A living systems approach seeks to structure the common life of an organization around the rhythms and structures that mirror life itself. In this approach we seek to probe the nature of life, we seek to observe how living things tend to organize themselves, and then try to emulate as closely as possible this innate capacity of living systems to develop higher levels of organization, to adapt to different conditions, and to activate latent intelligence when needed (emergence.) This quest for a more sustainable way of life is not just limited to the church. Leading proponents of this view explicitly propose ‘a science of sustainable living’ based on the study of, and respect for, life (Fritjof Capra, Margaret Wheatley, Richard Pascale, et.al.) In these books I have found new metaphors and perspectives that have profoundly inspired me in my search for more life-oriented, organic, less programmatical, approach to our task. Some of these include…
- That all living things seem to have innate intelligence. Living systems, whether they be organic in form (e.g. a virus, a human being) or systemic organizations (e.g., the stock market, a bee-hive, a city, or a commercial enterprise, even crystal formations), seem to have a life of their own and possess an inbuilt intelligence which involves a aptitude for survival, adaptation, and reproduction. This capacity for developing higher life forms life has been linked with what is called ‘distributed intelligence’ by theorists in the field. When applied to organizational theory the task of leadership is to unleash, harness, and direct distributed intelligence by creating environments where it can manifest.
- Life seems to be profoundly inter-connected. The primary operative idea is that of relationships arranged in a dynamic network—a web of life and meaning. Living systems theory recognizes that we are always part of a larger system; we belong to an ecology comprised of internal and external systems with which we are constantly relating. Disturbances in one part of the system set a chain reaction which affects all the elements in a system. Capra calls this ‘the web of life’ and some of the implications are as follows: (1) Small things can have system wide consequences, sometimes called ‘the butterfly effect’ (The idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a hurricane in another continent.) We should never underestimate the power of seemingly insignificant things to affect a system even if they seem unrelated at first. (2) That a system is functional or dysfunctional to the extent that all of its parts are healthy and relating to each other in an organic way. (3) That the way to develop a healthy learning/adaptive system is to bring disparate elements into meaningful communication with each other.
- Information brings change: All living systems respond to information. In fact they seem to be able to sort out information based on what is meaningful or useful to it. Information is therefore critical to intelligence, adaptivity, and growth. The free flow of information in the system is vital to growth and adaptation.
- Adaptive challenges and emergence: That by constantly interacting with its environment, the living system will catalyze its inbuilt capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Failure to do so results in decline and death. Emergence (new forms of organization) happens when a living system is in adaptive (and therefore learning) mode, all the elements in the system are relating functionally, and distributed intelligence is cultivated and focused through information.
While all this might seem to be a little esoteric and conceptual, just stop for a moment and consider a living system approach as it relates to Christian community. Following this approach we firstly need to assume that any particular group of God’s people, if they are truly his people, have everything in themselves (latent mDNA) to be able to adapt and thrive in any setting. We must assume that given the right conditions, the community can discover latent resources and capacities that it never thought it possessed. The task of missional leadership here is simply to unleash the mDNA that is dormant in the system and help guide it to its God intended purpose. .
Secondly, the task of missional leadership here is to bring the various elements in the system into meaningful inter-relationship. This will require that the leader focuses on developing a relationally networked, as opposed to an institutional, structure for the church. We must become an effective expression of the ‘body of Christ’ (1 Cor.12:12-27 is not just a metaphor after all—it’s a description of the church in its inter-relationship with each part to its Head.) It is critical to share information and ideas and to cross pollinate in terms of gifts and callings around common tasks (Eph.4:1ff.) We must bring all necessary parts of the body into the missional equation if we want to truly function as a body. In non-ecclesial settings, this would mean getting the various departments and specialists to relate meaningfully and share information functionally around common tasks thereby bringing diversity into a functioning unity. It seems that in living systems, the real answer is always found in the grander perspective—when diverse gifts and knowledge rub up against one another new forms of knowledge and possibilities will arise.
Thirdly, we need to move the system towards the edge of chaos…that is, it needs to become highly responsive to its environment. The assumption here is that if it will not deal with real issues facing it, the system will not adapt and will thus perish in the context of any significant adaptive challenge. Burying the head in the sand never did help the ostrich when there is a predator in the area. We need to disturb the system that is in equilibrium in order to activate a learning journey and missional mode. The community needs to become responsive and response-able. Aligning elements in a system into a healthy network will inevitably involve dealing with dysfunctions that, due to the falleness of all things, are inevitably in the system. Failure to deal with dysfunction will always undermine the organization or community’s health. Here conflict will arise (I promise) and the task of good leadership in this situation is to manage it and creatively translate it into a significant learning experience.
Fourthly, because systems exist in a mass of disordered information the task of leadership here will be to help select the flow of information and focus the community around it. Not in order to dominate and try and predetermine the outcome, but rather to supply accurate and meaningful information into the system so that it can in-form itself in response to it. This aspect has sometimes been called the management of meaning because it is through the engagement with meaning-ful information that systems will respond, change, and thrive. Missional leaders must know how to handle meaning in order to motivate a group of people from the inside out. Focusing the flow of information requires a good handle on theology, psychology, as well as sociology because it will involve focusing information based on the Church’s primary narratives (the Scriptures, and particularly the Gospels), information about the core tasks of the church, and essential data about our cultural and social contexts, etc. If we get all these elements right, the whole church is activated, motivated, responsive, and informed, and the mission of God will flow naturally through and out of the mix.
What is most exciting about this approach is that things seem to flow effortlessly because one is not going against the grain of the universe. The resultant ambience in the Jesus community is one that feels natural and therefore closer to the actual rhythms of life itself—in fact it is based squarely on these rhythms and relationships—they are its starting point as well as its ongoing sub-structure. When we look at networks, which are an essential aspect of organic structures, we will see that church must structure itself around the natural ebb and flow of the believer’s life. Existing relationships with believer’s and non-believers alike become the very fabric of the church. There ought to be nothing artificial about it. Planting a new church, or remissionalizing an existing one, in this approach isn’t primarily about buildings, worship services, size of congregations, and pastoral care, but rather about gearing the whole community around natural discipling friendships, worship as lifestyle, and mission in the context of everyday life. As a living network ‘in Christ‘ it can meet anywhere, anytime and still be a viable expression of church. This as a much more organic way to plant a church or to revitalize it.
I’ve also relocated to Portland. It’s an amazing city- friendly, diverse, creative, polemical, active. In my short time here, I’ve found that I’m not the only Christian subculture refugee. Now that the dust is settling from the hoards of corporately-sponsored professional church planters who have come and gone (all the cool kids are planting in Arizona/New Mexico these days), the Pacific Northwest is a pretty neat place to be. We’re going to see what it can be like to live here like we lived in Barcelona; in intentional missional community that concerns itself with people and what’s important to them.
