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Great leaders of the church have been measured against the
challenges posed by dramatically changing circumstances. Abraham
was called to move to a foreign land. Moses led his people into
a troubling and uncertain freedom. Peter and Paul broke ties
with Judaism and brought the Gospel to the Roman World. Augustine
wrote the City of God during the death throes of the Roman Empire.
The Reformation leaders experienced turbulent times which offer
insights into our own. John Calvin undercut the traditional
sources of authority when he asserted "the priesthood,
the prophethood, and the kingship of all believers." These
concepts transformed the way the church related to the state
and the culture. The priesthood of all believers shattered the
traditional boundary between priests and parishioners. His advice
to minister to the whole city and not just to the congregation
opened the boundary between sacred and secular life. The kingship
of all believers, with its unmistakable egalitarianism, struck
a direct blow against feudalism. As a result, the Protestant
Reformation helped establish the nation-state and fostered the
concept of representative democracy.
All these leaders were raised in times of turbulent change.
Born and educated in one paradigm, they guided the people of
God as they discerned God's will for new and uncertain times.
Our challenge is comparable.
The invention of movable type in the mid-1400s rearranged the
political and ideological landscape of Europe. Widespread access
to printed information reduced the power of both king and pope
and paved the way for the emergence of the Protestant Reformation
and the nation-state. In this process, old institutions died
or changed, new ones emerged. In a similar way, a revolution
in communications has brought fundamental changes to our times.
I want to summarize some of those changes from a Reformed faith
perspective.
Living in Transition
Ours is a time of contradictions and transitions between paradigms.
Most church leaders are emigres, born and raised in the old
paradigm, but their children are full citizens of what is emerging.
As a result, we need to be bilingual, to speak both the old
language and the new. Peter, raised as an observant Jew, was
called to the house of Cornelius, a Roman military commander.
Prompted by God in a dream, Peter reached beyond his background
to minister across the divide of culture and language. In so
doing he opened the doors for Christians to reach beyond their
local circumstances to a waiting world. After reaching out to
Cornelius, Peter said: "I now realize how true it is that
God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from every
group" (Acts 10:34). God does not pick and choose among
the races, nor among paradigms. Even as we remember the language
of our past, we need to be conversant in the common language
of the future. So log on, dudes!
Spiderwebbing and Annealing
Under the old paradigm power was arranged in large hierarchical
structures. From the time of the Roman Empire until the 1980s
most organization charts resembled pyramids. Information flowed
"up" and decisions came "down." The base
was broad and power was concentrated at the top; the way to
influence an organization was to get to those at the top. Effective
organizations drew lines, and the difference between outsiders
and insiders was clear.
The new shape takes its geometry not from ancient Egypt but
from the strong and flexible spider's web. Connections are radial,
not linear. The pre-eminent model is the World Wide Web with
its links and nodes. The Web is the most extensive communication
network ever devised. Stuart Kauffman, in his seminal study
The Origins of Order, notes that a decentralized process of
experimental combinations and recombinations may be fundamental
to innovation in the universe. This is planning without a strategic
plan. Small units are allowed enough leeway to reconfigure themselves
to their environment. When they perceive a poor fit they have
the latitude to make adaptations in order to find a better fit.
According to Kauffman a similar process happens when making
super-strong metals. As a metal is heated, molecules can shift
and reconfigure. Cooling allows the new combination to become
fixed. The process of repeated heating and cooling, called annealing,
produces very strong metals. The combination of annealing and
spiderwebbing will produce a network of great strength. The
emerging paradigm allows each unit to meet local needs with
great precision while the links maintain their connectional
unity.
The similarity between Calvin's polity and this emerging structure
is unmistakable. All that is necessary would be to strengthen
the base through greater empowerment. While decentralized congregational
structures provide independence for creative action, they lack
the links to bring the advantages of connectedness. On the other
hand, rigid episcopal structures provide the connections, but
reduce the flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing times and
varying local circumstances. The unexpected finding is that
Calvin's legacy is a polity even better suited to our times
than to his. Moreover, with relatively few modifications it
will serve us well into the future.
Learning How to Learn
Emerging vital organizations have learned how to learn. Projects
are initiated in an experimental way. Many fail and are abandoned,
but over time, others succeed. Failures are not seen as disasters,
but are treated as valuable feedback that can be analyzed to
reshape the organization or project. Adaptive organizations
adjust to a changing world because of their ability to reconstruct
their core as needed in order to adapt to the challenges of
their environments.
Many classical organizations also learn, but this is typically
reactive learning that is linear in nature. Mark Twain once
observed that a cat "having once sat on a hot stove lid
will never again sit on a hot one, nor on a cold one, either."
Chris Argyris, a scholar of organizational learning at Harvard
University, calls the former "single-loop learning."
The lessons learned are often counterproductive. He suggests
a process of "double-loop learning" where the entire
system that contributed to the error is analyzed and then the
organization retools itself to take into account both the system
in which it operates and its own structure. In times of rapid
change, double-loop systems can react, change and reposition
themselves rapidly.
Create and Release
Under the old model, organizations gained strength through
growth. This produced the large entities that dominated the
economy and politics from the start of the Industrial Revolution
until the present. Maintaining subsidiary units places a burden
on the entire organization. Old-paradigm organizations can be
excavated like a fossil bed: the various layers take you back
through the history of the organization. Each layer captures
the priorities of a bygone time while capturing resources that
could be used for present priorities. In a "create and
release" approach new entities become partners, not dependents.
They are created with a culture of self-reliance and staffed
with entrepreneurial leaders. They will need nontraditional
start-up capital, the most important of which is a commitment
to Reformed theology.
The parables of Jesus are replete with "create and release"
images. In the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6-8) Jesus shares
the advice given to a vineyard owner concerning the fig tree
that did not bear fruit: "Sir," the man replied, "Leave
it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize
it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down."
Create and release was well understood by the Reformers. Visitors
from distant lands journeyed to Geneva to experience the changes
there. When they returned home they had internalized portions
of Calvin's model. John Knox recognized this when he wrote of
Calvin's Geneva that it was "the most perfect school of
Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles."
The Power of Vision
The hardest aspect of the new paradigm to grasp is the power
of vision. Traditional organizations maintained power through
efficiency, firm boundaries, control over the means of communication,
and a centralization of authority at the top of the organizational
pyramid. The emerging paradigm uses a more potent form of power.
Vision is the motive force in decentralized organizations. Positive
vision has tremendous potential to bring good; negative or malevolent
visions can cause great harm.
Traditional organizations have a command and control center
that promulgates rules and has the power to punish those who
violate them. Order is maintained through coercive sanctions.
One of the limits on the size of traditional organizations is
simply the cost of maintaining authoritative control.
Emerging organizations are quite different. Their boundaries
are semi-permeable. Membership is less important, hence the
threat of suspending membership carries less threat than in
traditional organizations. What holds these webs together is
an infrastructure that facilitates communication and the direction
provided by a shared vision.
Many thoughtful people balk at the notion of vision as a powerful
motivator. This is likely because they have observed the numerous
trendy but ineffective vision statements which wallpaper today's
institutions.
Shared vision has a power to cut through layers of bureaucracy,
to slice through procedure manuals, and to replace the traditional
chain of command. The most powerful visions create their own
reality and lead people into it. Jesus used the power of vision
in his parables, short stories that invite the hearer to enter
into a world of virtual reality. In this alternative universe
we experience the power of the kingdom. The last become first,
the weak become strong, the lost are found.
In the emerging paradigm, vision cuts through geographical
and organizational boundaries. In an old-style organization,
decisions that motivated members or workers originated at the
top of the organization. Old-style vision was weak, but at least
it could be controlled by hierarchical organizations. Power,
in the form of institutionally detached visions, characterizes
the emerging paradigm.
Consider the power of four letters: WWJD. By themselves they
have no meaning, but point out that they stand for the question
"What would Jesus do?" and they take on a more compelling
meaning. Add them to wristbands, T-shirts, lapel pins, and they
become icons of a Christian subculture.
The critical point-and where the power of vision-as-icon comes
into play-is that the four letters, with all their potential
to change lives, came not from church councils but from outside
the church. In an era of more or less open boundaries, the power
of vision-as-icon easily transcends traditional boundaries.
Churches have excelled at the production of documents, but
they have lagged at the production and distribution of vision-as-icon.
This is a major weakness since more nimble competitors will
have no qualms about using their own vision to attract individuals.
Luther's theses were handwritten and nailed to the door of
the cathedral at Wurtenburg, while the documents of the Presbyterian
controversy were printed and distributed. Future debates will
be waged in the domain of semiotics, the study of signs and
symbols, a field that old-line denominations are ill-prepared
to enter.
Reduce the Middle
As we have seen, if organizations fail to speak directly to
their members, others will take advantage of the possibilities
for direct communication.
In traditional organizations, information flows tend to meet
the needs of the organization. Emerging organizations meet member
or client needs first. They direct the bulk of their efforts
toward finding out what their network wants to know and delivering
that. Emerging organizations eliminate their wholesale activities
and directly connect information suppliers and users; they examine
every communication chain and reduce its length, allowing information
to enter the network from any point. In so doing, they link
individuals both horizontally and vertically and avoid intermediaries.
As they have in the past, church leaders are called to live
and witness in their own times. For us this means learning how
to use both old and new tools. Although institutions have been
slow to adjust, many individuals are already living and working
under the newer model and its rules. We should learn from them
and remember the advice given to overseas missionaries: "Before
you ever get there remember that God was there first."
As Christian leaders our call is neither to resist nor to serve
as cheerleaders for the emerging paradigm. Regardless of our
feelings, times are changing and we need to restructure the
way we conduct our lives and our actions so that, like Paul
summoned to the house of Cornelius, we can minister to a world
that needs the healing balm of Christ-filled lives.
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