In my 25 years of leading people I’ve learned that change is
hard…really hard. Even more difficult is
changing traditions and social norms that are deeply rooted in culture and conscious. As a student of organizational development, I’ve
spent countless hours, studying, pondering and speculating what makes certain
organizations “successful” while others die.
Leaving the definition of success for another time, I believe the key
element of organizational, and individual, success is the ability to adapt to
changing realities. I’ve also learned that
people, while resistant to change, are fairly open to experiments. It seems like a safer way to test new methods
and perceptions without having to abandon what is comfortable and familiar
suddenly. It invites the team to
participate rather than to simply comply and opens the conversation for truthful
exchanges versus polite head nodding. Of
course, experiments fail and institutions regularly fall back to proven methods
for yesterday’s problems. Despite that
possibility, I’ve embarked on the grandest experiment of my life. It’s an experiment involving the oldest
institution known to man, founded by divine declaration, rooted in the most
ancient of writings but made up of very ordinary people…people like me.
You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m experimenting with the
local church. Before you check out, this
is not an essay on how bad things are and how other groups have really screwed
things up. It’s not an indictment on individuals
or methods and certainly not a personal vendetta. My experiment is rooted in my love for the
Church and the timeless truths she is entrusted to deliver. Having said that I am an analyst and my experiment
is rooted in observation. It’s these observations that move me to risk
resources and relationships to acknowledge her brokenness in our culture. Of course this isn’t every church, and
success looks different. However, the
trends are undeniable the American church is in decline as millions of
Christians have left the local church and even more refuse to engage for a list
of reasons too long for this discussion.
Before I go any further it’s important to note that my view is
not intended to be comprehensive and I don’t claim exclusive insight to the
Church’s struggles. This is about the experiment
I’m leading for my community and others that may look like mine. Our church’s experiment starts with the
noticing that most churches gather and grow around similarities. Similar races, similar neighborhoods, similar
social groups, similar income brackets.
The hard part for me is that the community I live in does not have those
similarities. The neighborhoods are
different, education levels are different, cultures are different, incomes are
different…you get the idea. Faced with
these realities it’s not uncommon for a church to select a group they want to “target”
and build a model that fits that group.
It’s popular and it works, unfortunately it greatly favors communities
with attractive demographics. The unwritten
model of church planting sometimes is to find a white affluent suburban community
with household incomes over $100k and create a culture that is attractive to
that demographic. This model fills the
elementary school auditoriums of those communities with aspiring church
planters looking for critical mass.
Interestingly, our experiment also involves an elementary
school. A school abandoned several years
ago in favor of a more favorable location.
We started our church in this elementary school building. A church is not a building but our building is
an important part of our church. We don’t
own it, the community does, so we want it to represent and be used by the
community. We’ve converted our
elementary school into a Community Center.
We have a building, we have a purpose so who do we
invite? You guessed it…our
community. That’s where this experiment
starts to get really messy. While we are
comfortable defining our community by geographic boundaries it’s clear that our
community defines itself by social boundaries.
Kids in the trailer park play together and kids at the Country Club play
together…we have both in our community.
It’s at this point when some community churches start to redefine mission. Here is the thought: The families in the expensive neighborhoods
have too much stuff and the families in the less expensive neighborhoods don’t
have enough stuff. We then experiment with
the idea redistributing stuff from the haves to the have-nots. This works if the issue is stuff. We live in a material world so material
solutions seem logical. Our experiment
has taught us that redistributing stuff is helpful in some ways but is divisive
in others. We don’t invite poor people
to our church because they have material needs and we don’t invite wealthy
people because they material abundance.
We want people to come to our church to join the mission and meet the
guy that started this mission (by the way that isn’t me).
So what does a church committed to this kind of social
diversity look like? We believe you don’t
battle the cultural complexities of division with more complexity and
methods. We believe the solution is
simplicity. We work to not be impressive
but always inviting. Our plans are
anchored in simple ideas that are powerful enough to transcend income
divisions. Sociologists tell us that
diverse groups can work and grow together where there is meaning. They tell us that a group has to find an
outward purpose centered on core ideals that are inclusive enough to accept
broad experiences but clear enough to easily communicate. Our simple idea is that we exist to Love God
and Love Others. We believe this allows
for a diverse group of voices and invites everyone to play, regardless of where
they are on the spiritual or social continuum.
Those voices have to be represented in leadership (or power) so our
leadership team is made up of roofers and school counselors, felons and lawyers,
entrepreneurs and factory workers. They lead
from different social experiences but are anchored in our simple idea to Love
God and Love Others. It’s this glue that
holds the whole experiment together. Are
we successful? I think so. We see success in the areas you predict but
our most measured area is that of change.
Change by all of us to be more like the guy that started this idea and
we know how difficult that change can really be.
