Living Organism vs. Organization

I am part of a small group of clergy and consultants who meet on a fairly regular basis to discuss issues we find important in our ministries with congregations that are going through various stages of transition or redevelopment.  Last Wednesday our group discussed a paper titled, “Adapt or Die,” by the Rev. Ken Howard, rector of a church in the Diocese of Maryland.  Ken Howard began his paper by noting that he was asked at a recent conference “to speculate about what our parishes would look like a decade from now.”  His answer was brief: “One thing I can say with certainty is this: The only way our churches will look like they do now is if they have been stuffed and mounted and displayed in a museum of natural church history.”

I found this statement to be a rather depressing thought in his provocative article.  But then he continued, “We are facing radical change – radical as in going to the root – requiring of us both radical recognition and radical response.”

Think about the organizations to which you belong.  It may be the company or institution that employs you; it might be the local rotary club; or a fraternal order; or social club; an art club; a medical society; a school, college or university.  It is also your church.  How do these organizations embrace change?  Are they preoccupied with doing things the same way over and over again?  Do they have a business plan that guides their activities?  Are they constantly trying to do more good things with fewer resources?  What is it about your participation that keeps you involved in the organizations to which you belong?

Ken Howard’s article focused only on churches.  It suggested that we must confront the fact that many of our churches are dying.   The older ways of being church are no longer what they used to be.  Church is more than a building that is there for its members and others when they need it.  A church is more like a living organism that goes through the life cycle or birth, development, growth, maturity, decline and death.  Death happens so new life can arise.

The author writes,  “At the core our churches are living human organisms, and dying is what all living organisms eventually do. But first they are born, live, adapt, create new life, and pass on their DNA to the next generation. We cannot insulate our churches from death without isolating them from the very process that would empower the next generation, not just to survive but also to thrive.”

“To guide our churches into a vital future, vestries and other church leaders must help our congregations to embrace their organic nature – to see death not as the ultimate failure but as the door to greater life. We need to help our congregations learn how to die in a way that plants the seeds of their resurrection….How do we help our congregations live into a more incarnational Christianity that values organism over organization?”

I share this with you for two reasons:  First, our Vestry will be on a retreat this next Saturday.  I am proposing that we examine what a shift in our understanding of church as an organism would look like for All Saints’. How might we refocus our energies from an organizational model to an organism model?  This shift would have several implications for our life together.  Ken Howard claims that by “embracing the organic and incarnational nature of Christian community [we] can both make our congregations more vital in the present and enable them to face the ‘changes and chances’ of the future with adaptability and resilience.”  It may be challenging and good for us to think and discuss this as it pertains to our mission and ministry and how we understand leadership within out congregation.

My second reason for sharing this is that our Scripture readings this morning have a lot to say about our common life and what our relationships are and should be.  For example, in the Old Testament reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, the Lord said to Moses,  “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.” 

Then, in the reading from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, after chiding his listeners because of their divisions, Paul said, “We are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building.”  Later in his letter Paul states, “There are many members, yet one body….  If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

Finally, in Matthew’s gospel Jesus said that his mission is not to abolish the law as it is written in the Ten Commandments and the Torah, but he has come to fulfill the law.  So, as a way to fulfill the law, “when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” 

Reconciliation and right relationships are important.  It takes more that mere obedience to the law because as living organisms of Christian ministry and service, how we envision our future growth and our ability to adapt to the changes that inevitably come before us will determine how we embrace new life, rejoice and offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving to God.  As a verse in a familiar Advent hymn puts it, “Our hope and expectation, O Jesus now appear; arise, thou Sun so longed for, above this darkened sphere! With hearts and hands uplifted, we plead, O Lord, to see the day of earth’s redemption, and ever be with thee!”  Amen.