02.03. Chapter Three – Task Focused Christian Organisations
Denominations have failed at many of the core tasks of the Church – at least compared to task focused Christian organisations.
Bible Translation – the core task of making sure the Scriptures are translated into the heart language of the people. A task beyond most local churches and surely a denominational task? However most Bible translations into other languages have been done by either individuals such as Tyndale or Luther or by task focused Christian organisations such as the Bible Societies or Wycliffe Bible Translators or the various missionary society Bible translation efforts. I cannot think of an occasion when the Bible has been translated into a new language by a denomination though I think some denominations may have produced English versions of the Bible such as the Jerusalem Bible.
Overseas Mission – was initiated by individuals such as Paul, Christian communities such as the Moravians or task focused Christian organisations such as WEC and OMF. Where denominational missionary societies have been involved at mission they have generally been set up quite independently from the denominational structure and are in effect task focused Christian organisations. The few times that denominations as such have attempted involvement in missions have been disastrous and caused many of the “colonial missionary” horror stories.
Evangelism & Revival – The most effective evangelistic organisation today is probably Campus Crusade for Christ with the Jesus Film and the Four Spiritual Laws (now Knowing God Personally). The best known is probably the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The vast bulk of good evangelism is done by gifted individuals or by task focused Christian organisations. Youth evangelism is being done by organisations such as Scripture Union, YWAM, and Students for Christ but hardly at all by denominational evangelistic efforts. Denominational structures talk about evangelism endlessly but rarely accomplish it on any significant scale. The most effective recent evangelistic effort in Townsville was when many of the churches got together in a mini-network to distribute the Jesus Film.
Again denominational hierarchy was cut out of the actual process and it was a local church effort. Denominations should be actively involved in the renewal of their churches however seldom has a denominational official from headquarters started a revival as a deliberate denominational initiative. When revival comes it comes from the difficult people – the small task focused Christian organisations within the churches and from outsiders and from inter-denominational and inter-church efforts such as the revival in Resistencia.
Church Planting – This surely is a denominational activity. Many denominations now have a “church planting strategy” and have officials that take seminars on “church planting” and some even train their theological students in “church planting”. What happens in reality though is that this has killed church planting! Joe Zealous the church planter now goes to his denomination to plant a church in the new housing estate down the road and is told a) It isn’t a priority on our strategy b) He will have to go to church planting school and c) it’s important to cool down and ‘wait for the Lord’s timing”. So the Mormons move into the estate instead! In reality church planting is being done by gifted individuals such as Joe Zealous, by individual local churches wishing to expand and by movements and networks such as AD 2000 and Beyond that co-ordinate the efforts of task focused Christian organisations (let’s call them TF’s from now on). Denominational based church planting has been made into such a bureaucratic and complicated exercise that it simply cannot get off the ground and achieve anything.
Christian Education – here is a story of institutionalisation and eventual renewal. Protestant Christian education was born out of revival, was taken over by the denominations and then stultified to produce institutions with “a saint on the gate and sinners inside”. They became often marginally Christian at best. Then came the Christian schools movement –generally organised as a TF on an, inter-denominational basis or run by individual local churches and definitely not denominational structures. It has renewed the whole arena of Christian education with many more people now sending their children to Christian schools. Even the denominational schools are benefiting and some are revamping their curriculum to put more of an emphasis on the Bible.
I think my point is now clear. Not only are denominations an inferior way of being Christian they are also a very inefficient way of doing Christian ministry. Why have we put up with them?
Why Are Denominations Almost Completely Useless?
Because they are too slow moving, too complex and too political by their very nature and design. No-one founding a denomination and very, very few in the denominations themselves want to create slow moving, complex and political structure. Except for a few diehards of the old school everyone in a bureaucracy is frustrated by it. However every time you create a bureaucracy you end up with a slow moving, complex and political structure. It comes with the turf. Why it comes with the turf is the province of areas such as organisational behaviour, systems theory and management. It’s a hot topic at the moment and has led to a lot of the “restructuring for synergies” that you have probably heard about and seen go nowhere. No matter how you try to configure or restructure a bureaucracy while it remains a bureaucracy it’s a hopeless mess. Managing The New Organisation by Limerick, Cunnington and Crowther is a reasonable primer on this topic.
There may be a physiological reason contributing to why bureaucracies such as denominations stagnate. It has to do with the selective attention mechanism in the reticular formation (a part of the brain). It limits the amount of information we can process and selects what we will and won’t attend to on the basis of importance and urgency. It can be fairly easily overwhelmed when there are a) too many urgent things to pay attention to or b) what you have to pay attention to is very complex. That is why people suffering stress burn-out are asked “Are you doing too much?” and “Is what you are doing too complex?” If you have ever had a horribly overwhelming day and then walked into a crowded shopping centre to do late-night shopping and felt like leaving on the spot – that overwhelmed feeling is the reticular formation hitting the overload switch and pulling you out of there. We have a limit to the complexity that we can cope with.
That is why people who reduce complexity by setting priorities tend to get a lot more done. Now denominations are so complex that by the time you have handled the internal complexity of the bureaucracy your reticular formation doesn’t have a whole lot of room for all the complexities of actually doing ministry and the complexities of implementation. It’s all “too much”. So the complex pressing demands of HQ get attended to and getting into the field gets more and more remote. Every new initiative which of course “adds complexity” is automatically resisted by people whose complexity plate is full. As field work and new initiatives fail to happen a creeping sense of failure begins to take hold. As people realise that they are not accomplishing what they should be accomplishing they add “self-justification” to the lists of tasks to be done and it becomes mission critical because their survival now depends on it. Soon everyone in the bureaucracy becomes an expert in self-justification and a failure at ministry. Yet they are right. It’s NOT their fault, they are trying hard and they are doing their best. It’s just that they are in a system of such inherent complexity that they physiologically cannot handle all that is asked of them or go anywhere near achieving their job description. When bureaucracies are demolished people say they feel “liberated” and “now I can get on with my job” – and they do. The transformation of MLC by the dynamic management team at Lend Lease who turned a stodgy 120 year old bureaucracy into a dynamic and fulfilled system of networked project teams is a recent Australian example of this at its very best. Has A Major Bureaucracy Ever Been Transformed Into A Network or Task Focused Organisation? The Australian Government used to have the Commonwealth Employment Service or CES which was supposed to match unemployed people with jobs. As a bureaucracy it was horribly unsuccessful in doing so. It was rather clumsily transformed into the Job Network where private providers formed a network and provided the job matching services. It was also backed up with a powerful website and database at www.jobsearch.gov.au . The results were spectacular. Costs dropped from $250 million to $150 million and people placed in jobs rose from 170,000 to between 300,000 to 400,000 (Bulletin Oct 12th 1999 p52). Twice the productivity for just over half the cost. Now the Job Network is by no means an ideal network as its components are in competition with each other and there are few synergies of cooperation and the network is still run by DEWRSB (Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business). As non-ideal as this network is it is still a HUGE improvement over its performance when it was a bureaucracy. I believe we will see improvements as big as this – or even greater – when denominations are transformed into cooperating local area networks and spin off their tasks into single task focused organisations especially if the TF’s can be networked and supplied with appropriate information technology.
Denominations, Disintermediaration and the Demise of Vertical Integration
Back in the Industrial era mammoth organizations that were vertically integrated and controlled everything from the coal to the iron ore to the steel production and the milling lathes were thought to be successful due to “economies of scale”. However as the world became more complex these huge vertically integrated behemoths became unmanageable by the board.
Divisions were formed and then sub-divisions, then the least profitable areas were “spun-off” and other areas were “outsourced” and now executives speak of “fast companies” and “core values” and “sticking to our knitting”. As appealing as vertical integration is on paper and to the ego, it creates unmanageably large and complex organizations that are “unresponsive”. The reticular formation of their executives is on overload and they just cannot adapt the organisation to the rapid changes that are always taking place in our day. Layers of management are scrapped and intermediaries such as “middle men”, some suppliers and middle management are done away with. The chain of command is made as short as possible. This process is known as dis-intermediar- ation that is getting rid of intermediaries.
Now a denomination is a religious version of the industrial behemoth. It is the vertical integration of the Church’s tasks and on the human level it is just as bedeviled (what a metaphor) by complexity as any corporation. And on the human level denominations need to take many of the same simplifying steps that many corporations have, not because the world is right or better but because simplicity is necessary and there are not too many easy ways to achieve it. That Might Be Good Management Theory – However Are TF’s Scriptural? The missiologist Ralph Winter wrote a paper about “sodalities and modalities” in Scripture and pointed out that much of the evangelism and mission in the New Testament was done by “roving missionary bands” while the local church looked after the worship, pastoral care and much of the teaching needs of the congregation. This concept of dual structures within the church is I think borne out by a look at the book of Acts. Mission there is done by people on the move – Peter at Joppa, Phillip out in the desert with the Ethiopian eunuch, Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journey etc. Mission in the NT is not by committees in the local church or by the denominational hierarchy at HQ. In fact after Peter’s visit to Joppa it was the Judaisers at HQ that wanted to put a stop to reaching the Gentiles (Acts 11:1-30) and after Paul and Barnabas’ missionary journey they again tried to bring some “order and control” into the new churches by requiring converts to be circumcised (Acts 15:1-41).
Right from the beginning there was a tension between the Spirit-led mobile missionaries on the cutting edge of ministry and the traditionalists with a bureaucratic mindset. There always has been and always will be a need for Spirit-led people with a focus on a particular task which they believe God wants them to accomplish, and which local churches and denominational hierarchy are ill-equipped to do, or reluctant to do, or both. Call it what you want – a roving missionary band, a TF, or a project team, clear focus empowered by God’s Spirit brings real Kingdom results that cannot be achieved in any other way. These people are not generalists or pastors in the traditional sense. They are passionate, goal oriented achievers. They would probably be very annoying in a local church and “troublemakers” in a bureaucracy but in the field they do a great job.
Evangelism, Mission and Bible Translation Are Complex Tasks
Many of the tasks done by TF’s are complex tasks that required dedicated specialists and unique organisational structures to support them. Tasks such as bible translation, mission and evangelism are more complex than most people realise. They require deep study of people groups, languages and cultures and the best methods of communicating the gospel. To do them well requires total focus and concentration so they are generally best done by called, equipped and motivated specialists. Such specialists require special structures to facilitate their ministry. The structure of a crusade evangelism organization will be very different from that of a missionary society which will in turn be different from the structure needed to serve linguists. It would be surprising if one denominational structure can understand and facilitate such a diverse range of ministries. The Leaven Of The Scribes and The Pharisees
(Mat 16:6-12 NASB) And Jesus said to them, "Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." And they began to discuss among themselves, saying, "It is because we took no bread." But Jesus, aware of this, said, "You men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? "Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up? "Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets you took up? "How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The love of hierarchy, and of places of honour and control of others creeps into TFs and para-church ministries and can turn them into clones of the worst offending denominations if we are not careful. The task focus of such groups tends to keep this from happening as “its results that count”. However it is no guarantee of it and some missions are pompous, controlling and frankly evil in their structures. I have heard phrases such as “the decisions of the mission board are the will of God for your life.” when an obviously wrong decision has been questioned. However because missions have no guaranteed existence and rely heavily on supporters and the recruitment of new missionaries who have choices about where to put their money and their service such stodginess and control soon leads to the decline of the mission. The decline often sparks some soul-searching and the organisation renews itself. If it is ignored the mission slowly fades from the scene wondering what happened. While TF’s can go wrong – and go badly wrong the decline does not last as long, affect as many people or go as far as denominational decline does. Meanwhile while I advocate spinning off denominational functions to TF’s I add the rider that the organisation must be consciously anti-bureaucratic and task –focused. This is why I have largely avoided the term “para-church organisation” as some of those have as deep a sense of entitlement and as ghastly a bureaucratic mindset as the denominations do. Only organisations that keep their task clearly in focus under God can help renew His church. If we just change the mindset but do not change the structures we will just end up frustrated. Telstra tried that in the 80’s and failed. Structures support and reinforce mindsets. So we need an active mission-minded, anti-bureaucratic, empowering mindset and the structures that help us express it easily and freely and which empower us to achieve the results we want to achieve.
How Can We Spin Off The Components of Denominational Ministry to Task Focused Christian Organisations?
1. Find a fairly large number (e.g. 20) of doctrinally and philosophically compatible high quality Christian TF’s with which a “common spirit” can be shared. Select these with great care. They have got to be able to catch the vision, value the vision and implement the vision you have. They must not take on the ministries you pass on to them for mercenary reasons and they must not be bureaucratic themselves.
2. Call a meeting at which ALL of these TF’s are present and share how you want to turn over the operations of the denomination to them. Let THEM decide on which agency will do which tasks.
3. Decide on a 3-6 month handover period and at least fortnightly meetings of all parties to thrash out common problems and “keep the fire burning”.
4. Keep handing more and more functions over. Even functions like the placement of clergy can be handed over to Christian employment agencies. Evangelism, mission, hospitals, aged care and schools are obvious candidates that can be done better by TF’s.
5. Do not hand over functions that affect the core philosophy of the denomination until the very end of the process and then only after much consultation with a carefully selected agency. The training and mentoring of clergy would be one such function.
6. Close the doors of denominational HQ and go home. It may well be a sad moment but it will not be a bad moment. Your sacrifice will have helped the renewal of God’s precious Church.
What will the churches do then?
Preach, teach, exhort, encourage, support and counsel believers, they will administer the sacraments, pray for the sick and be the light of the world. Life will go on without HQ. The above process should happen in parallel with exhortations to form local area networks of churches and to build unity with other churches around them. As the denomination fades out, local area networks and TF’s should fade in.
Isn’t unity dangerous?
I first had to wrestle with this as a University chaplain in PNG when I had to relate to 6 other chaplains – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Independent Baptist, Baptist, SDA and United if I remember rightly. I represented the 23 Evangelical Alliance denominations. I asked for guidance from God and he gave me the following passage from Hebrews which has stood by me since. (Heb 12:14 NASB) Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.
We are to actively pursue peace with “all men” – that is everyone. We are to be peacemakers and relationship builders. We are not to be Pharisees which means “separatists”. The spirit of separation and the spirit of incarnation are opposites and the spirit of incarnation is the one I’m following! However our peace-making is not to be compromising. We are to be holy and if there is a clash between the two then holiness must win because without it we cannot see the Lord. My solution at the time was to be friendly with everyone but be very cautious with the SDA chaplain as he thought that Sunday worship was the “mark of the beast”. If my memory is correct the Catholic chaplain was hardly ever around and so was not a problem for me at the time. Since then I have had good fellowship with Catholics from the renewal stream and Ray Benjamin the godly Catholic bishop of Townsville.
I am still very cautious about Seventh Day Adventists though I am aware that large differences exist and that evangelical SDA’s who are brothers in Christ exist in reasonable numbers. I pursue peace with everyone that adheres to the “universal creeds of Christendom” – the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the formula of Chalcedon and the Athanasian creed. That is I actively fellowship with those who believe in the Trinity, virgin birth, historicity of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and that He is God, and in the return of the Lord . The very basic Christian beliefs that all main denominations have held for all time and which everyone from Pentecostals such as me to Baptists and Catholics believe. I find this a useful basis for unity and for inter-denominational work. I do not build any ministry alliances with cults such as Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. As we spin off ministries to theologically compatible TF’s and form local area networks of churches it must be within the bounds of Scripture and the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Never fellowship outside of the truth or in such a way as to compromise core beliefs or to fall into sin. Are you really saying that we can eventually get rid of denominations altogether and still maintain theological purity and get the job of world evangelisation done?
Yes I am.
Please explain a bit more. All the functions that we use a bureaucratic denominational structure for can be better achieved by unified local area networks of churches doing the teaching, preaching, caring and fellowship bit and task focused Christian organisations doing the missions, evangelism, recruitment, education, aged care, and medical ministries etc. bit. Theological purity will be maintained by good faithful pastors and elders, theological colleges, bible teachers, Christian authors and by reference to already existing materials and even by using the universal creeds mentioned earlier.