Corrosive Criticism

When my wife and I joined our first UU church in 2003, it was obvious to us that we had “come home”. We found in our community a group of very congenial folks who cared about the world and were willing to engage with each other and with life in thoughtful ways. We got involved immediately and have never looked back. I have my issues with the UU church as a whole. I am concerned with what I view to be a fundamental failure of the larger church to address the deeper spiritual needs of congregants and capture a cultural trend that could sustain us into the future. However, none of that affects my deep respect and compassion for my fellow UUs, particularly those I know at my church.

It is now three years later. I have sat on and chaired several committees. My wife is now president of our Boar. During that time I have noticed something I have found endemic to the life of our community and, from what I hear, is pretty characteristic of other communities as well. It is the pall of corrosive criticism.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do believe that there is a place for thoughtful and informed feedback and even criticism if it well conceived and designed to build up and improve on what exists. However, this type of criticism takes a lot of work and care. It is almost never an immediate reaction to a fresh set of facts and circumstances. I am not taking about this kind of thoughtful, constructive criticism. Rather I am talking about what might be called “corrosive criticism”.

In my sort tenure with our church, I have seen people leave our community because of the harshness of people’s judgments of their contributions or the contributions of others. I have watched good people who have put in hours and hours of hard work have it torn to shreds by people in seconds who are reacting without any real thought or consideration. I have seen good, thoughtful ideas tentatively put forward by people who have potential leadership skill put down and dismissed without any real understanding of what was being said. The toll of this type of criticism is enormous.

From what I can see, more than any other dynamic in church life, this type of knee-jerk response and lack of restraint in sharing every idea that pops into our heads, demoralizes people and makes it difficult to recruit leaders. Who wants to set themselves up for this kind of abuse? Why would people want to put their heart and soul in the work to have it so cavalierly disregarded?

Personally, I think this is a real problem. I am really trying this year to be a part of the solution. As such I am working on the following:

• Affirming people for the work they are doing and the contributions they are making.
• Using as a mantra: “Those who do the work get to make the decisions.”
• When I don’t understand a decision of some import, I am trying to go to a person who participated in making the decision and ask questions. The types of questions I have found useful include: How did you come to that decision? Did you consider X and how did that factor into your decision? Is the decision final or is there additional opportunity for input? How are you finding that people are responding? Is there anything I can do to help?
• In conversations about decisions, I am trying to acknowledge the hard work of the people involved and the fact that they undoubtedly had more information than I do.

I find that these questions are almost always best prefaced with something like: “This must have been a tough decision. Have you gotten any flack for it? I want you to know that I support your personal work in this community and I know how much you give. I also want you to know that, to the extent the opportunity arises, I will publicly support the decision you all made. It would help me to understand how you got to the decision both for my own sake and also to help me in my conversations with others."

In trying to avoid corrosive criticism, I feel that I can positively contribute to the community. What I have found is that the people who are making decisions have most often very thoughtful reasons for deciding as they did. I may agree or disagree, but these things are rarely so clear cut that there is only one right course of action. And for the sake of my community, and its long term health, I can support people of goodwill who are doing the best they can as volunteers.

Finally, I would note, that if we cannot be civil and supportive of one another, it seems that it will be very difficult to make an appreciable difference in the world. And so, out of compassion and out of a desire to support and strengthen those in my community who contribute, I am seeking to avoid corrosive criticism.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Guest Blog: Maslow Revisted

By Anna Davis, ARNP, MA

I have long appreciated Maslow's insights on which he based his theory of needs, but I've always had a problem with the idea that the being needs are luxuries. The definition of a need is that without it, an organism is less/not able to grow along its developmental arc, if not survive. An example of this difference is sex, as plenty of people have survived long times without sex, but there is something to an argument that levels intimacy of relationships and the prospect for progeny are severely curtailed without it.

While I was finishing my MA in psychology, I chanced upon an old article written by a man who was then APA president. (Alas, I have been unable to recall his name or find it again.) The article stated that the further in time between the initial urge to meet a need, and when actual physiologic damage happened, the more psychopathology one could find about that need. As an example, he offered the difference between the needs for urination and eating. Both are needs, but damage from urine backing up into the kidneys can happen in about 2 hours, vs starvation takes about 2 weeks. Accordingly, we find very little psychopathology about urination, and so much about food.

I offer that Maslow was correct about his hierarchal arrangement of needs, but what he got wrong was the criteria. I offer that ALL needs are equally needs, and not one is more important than the other, but some are more immediate. The further up the list, the longer it likely takes to meet the needs. Trancendance seems to take the better part of a lifetime, if we get to it even then. (The concept of reincarnation appeals for this---if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.)

I think Maslow listing them as importance vs immediacy was him reflecting a major value of our culture; the easiest way to control people is to keep them with one or more needs pitted against each other. (Most of us have at one time or another chosen to tolerate some sacrifice of our need for self esteem in the workplace so as not to endanger our ability to provide for food, clothing and shelter.) Double binds such as these have long been seen in psychology as a most toxic source of stress. Research into the effects of the stress hormone cortisol is increasingly showing us that stress not only breaks our bodies down, we can't repair and grow beyond past damage until the coast is clear.

Because our culture makes the being needs seem as luxuries, and most of us are constantly on a treadmill chasing after the deficiency needs, we remain maleable and will sacrifice self-actualization and trancendance that would more likely free us from the yoke.It is no coincidence that each of the few examples of people who have reached trancendance (MLK, Jr, Jesus, Ghandi, etc.,) have been radicals and revolutionaries, and terrifying to those holding power in their age. Our current system is no different and prefers there be as few such leaders as possible, and ones who emerge must hire body guards because their predecessors have tended to get killed for thier trouble.

I would not necessarily ask everyone to lead a nationwide or global movement, but encourage revolution in more subtle ways. As part of my practice as a therapist, I routinely refer clients to "The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook," (Davis, Eshelman, & McKay; New Harbinger Press) which is a collection of exercises designed to help people gain some control over one's own internal experience. (This is not suppress emotions, but be able to not have them take control, allowing wisdom to emerge when rationalism is imformed by the heart.) When people have such skills to call upon at any time, they become confident that they get to make clearheaded choices in life, and they get less vulnerable to external manipulations.

Further, I teach my ideas about Maslow's hierarchy and that yes, we all will still have to juggle varying priorities as needs emerge and are sated on different time scales, (much like the old image of a Vaudeville plate spinner.) But, if we know that ALL of our needs should get to included on the list, we can keep an eye to the longer term ones in the quieter moments between meals, chores, bills, homework and the distraction of entertainment. Having all the needs on the list allows us to make clearer choices about what we really need in the long run, and avoid the trap of functioning in crisis mode all the time.

I believe that as more people change thier perspectives as I have offered, there will be a critical mass effect that will change our broader culture in profound ways. I am not a visionary who can offer strategies of how it will all work out. But I am hopeful that these changes are for the better. I believe that if all people were freer, calmer, and more aware of thier own needs, it would make for deeper and richer communication, which might lead to more efficient means of everyone getting all thier needs met, at least eventually. I continue to wait and see while I work to subvert the dominant paradigm. Viva la revolucion!

© 2007 Anna Davis, ARNP, MA. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

The Work of Jean Gebser

This is a post I have been wanting to do for some time. I finally got up the gumption to tap this out. I hope you, dear reader, find this useful.

Jean Gebser (1905 – 1973) was an autodidact whose main impact was in the study of the transformations of human consciousness. He was also a linguist and poet. While he has had a loyal following both in the United States and Europe, it has been relatively small. Ken Wilber’s work has brought him to the attention of a much wider audience and Gebser’s ideas are most important to anyone who is wrestling seriously with issues of spirituality, politics and human development. His experiences in pre-war Germany, Italy, France and Spain and reflection on the sea-change of intellectual perspectives reflected in the full blossoming of post-modern thought caused him to look closely at the structures of human consciousness through human history. After fleeing to Switzerland hours before the boarders were closed after the invasion of France, we befriended Carl Jung and did most of his mature writing while connected to the Jung Institute. His most notable book is The Ever-Present Origin. His work draws on fields as diverse as poetry, philosophy, religion, physics, architecture, music, and political science. His principal thesis is that humanity has experienced various structures of consciousness that carry within them deep perspectives of time, space, human relations, cosmic connections and images. These epochs span millennia and as there is a fundamental failure in one structure, another emerges. Gebser identifies five basic structures evidenced through human history: The Archaic, The Magic, The Mythic, The Mental and The Integral Ages. Each age includes, yet transcends the ages before it.

The Archaic Structure is difficult for us to grasp – it lies at the dawn of human awareness. Consciousness is dimly aware of itself as something separate from the flow around it. There is some sense of past, present and future but it is wrapped in a miasma and is largely undifferentiated. It is a world devoid of perspectivity. Structures that associate with this stage are groups or family units much like the great apes.

The Magic Structure is characterized by five primary characteristics: 1) a sense of self, but little or no ego structure or deeper self-awareness, 2) ambigous or cyclical sense of space and time, 3) interweaving of self and nature, 4) a magical relationship between self and not-self, 5) a lack of understanding of the differences between the non-liminal and liminal. Language emerges as this stage and words are seen as powerful in their own right. Man is deeply identified with nature and surviving within the natural order is a matter of ritual, incantation, and magic. Religion tends to be shamanistic and animistic. Political organizations tend to be tribal. The cultures tend to be hunter-gathers or in their later stages, horticultural. Tool making is rudimentary. Slavery is endemic. Art begins to be produced. Time tends to be cyclical and space is holy and laden with significance. Gods begin to emerge, but they tend to be local and associated with the tribe or family. This is a highly emotive phase.

The Mythic Structure brings the advent of more sophisticated tools and with it agriculture. Myths begin to emerge and with them mythical beings who stand above nature and can control it. The afterlife begins to become an important factor in life. Formal religion, typically with priests and holy men emerges and political structures tend to be centralized and autocratic. Slavery continues to exist, often on a massive scale. This phase tends to rely heavily on images and art begins to become quit sophisticated. Poetry becomes an important communicator and oral traditions develop to share the myths and stories. Space tends to be two dimensional and time is linear but malleable by the gods. Eventually this stage develops into monotheism and creedal belief systems. This in creates a profound ideological identification and an intolerance of the myths and religions of others. Political structures tend towards the authoritarian and imperial. Technology is sophisticated but largely based on trades and crafts. Guilds and castes are common.

The Mental Structure involves humanity stepping from two dimensional space into three dimensional space. Art becomes truly perspectival and fully articulated. Intellectual abstraction becomes possible as do pursuits of philosophy, science, mathematics, and other studies. Works of fiction emerge. Monotheism continues but eventually gives way to esoteric forms of unitive mysticism, philosophy or atheism. Time is seen as linear and cause and effect are essential to understanding the nature of the world. Ultimately, the mental structure gives way to a form of reductionism in which all that exists is material. Technology is used to reshape our understanding of the universe and matter itself. Industrialization emerges. This stage sees the rise of the nation state and the corporation. Human freedom is highly regarded. The dark side of this age is a profound lack of ethical restraint. While technology can be used for great good, it also wrecks havoc with war and environmental degradation.

The Integral Structure may, according to Gebser, be emerging. He sees the fundamental changes in our understanding of space and time as highly significant – just as with the transitions of prior ages where space and time underwent radical restructuring in human consciousness. The emergent picture is that time and space are not fixed, but relative and related. This age, Geber speculates will be trans-rational, trans-personal, and diaphanous (where there is transparent recognition of the whole, not just parts). It is likely to be highly mystical with deep realizations by both individuals and societies in which truth is uncovered in large chunks of integrated wholeness. The tensions and relations between things are more important, at times, than the things themselves and process becomes of pre-eminent concern. Nothing is seen as isolated and there is a profound experience and understanding of inter-connection and even identity. Time is seen both as infinite and illusory. Sentient life is seen as connected. While it is too early in this process to determine what political structures will emerge or what art will evolve into, there is are hints on the horizon for those who are looking for these.

I find interesting is that the mental stage was adumbrated well before its more general emergence. It was presaged by the intellectual flowering in ancient Greece. Is it possible that, with the current Integral Stage, a presaging may be found in the writings of India in the writings of sages such as Nagarjuna and Sankara?

As we look at our own culture, we see examples of late mythical stages (with rational overtones) and late mental stages of development. We begin to see, in cultural creatives and many on the vanguard of spiritual and intellectual exploration, the emergence of an integral consciousness. This, it seems to me, is important news for Unitarian Universalists.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Rapid Discovery Morality

In his book Sociology of Philosophies, Randall Collins uses the term “rapid discovery science” to refer to the blossoming of human understanding of the material world that occurred in the late Renaissance, its development in and through the Enlightenment, into a burgeoning economic and technological juggernaut that continues to this day. He argues that this breeder reactor phenomena of human knowledge was made possible by three things: the development of genealogies of research instruments, the creation of mathematical models in philosophic networks which both drove and were driven by technological research innovations, and the social networks of philosophers, scientists and occultists that existed at the time. (p. 807.) As Collins states, “The “scientific revolution” in Europe around 1600 changes not the natural focus of traditional science but its social dynamics. By linking intellectual networks onto genealogies of research equipment, a stream of new phenomena is produced on which theoretical interpretations may be constructed. Innovation and hence intellectual reputations no longer depend on moves in abstraction-reflexivity sequence, as in philosophy, but on manipulating the forefront of research technology.” The development of quick consensus at the intellectual core solidified these networks and allowed them to develop exponentially. The convergence of these factors transformed the Western world and generated the apogee of what Gebser would call the “mental” age – the Age of Reason. While a great boon in many ways, as Gebser points out, it lacks a moral center – it creates remarkable technology but no commensurately powerful moral values system that governs how it should be used. That failure has led us to the brink of planetary destruction either through our exploitation of the earth or through nuclear annihilation.

So the question, it seems to me, is how do we, as humanity, create “rapid discovery morality” before it is too late? What are its constituent parts? It seems that some pieces are in place. We have now mapped both the human psyche and the stages of moral and social development to some degree. We have models in place that allow a human being to consciously and intentionally begin to explore human potential. We also have a popular convergence of great spiritual traditions in the West and the East in forms heretofore unknown. Finally, for better and for worse, we have an occultism that is playing at the margins of this process. What we do not have are lineages for passing on information, nor have we discovered processes that reliably take advantage of moving those individuals and societies that are willing to the next higher stages of development. That, it seems to me, is the challenge of the religious calling – first for ourselves, then for our communities, and finally for the world. Do we not owe it to ourselve and our planet to figure this out sooner rather than later?

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Social Transcendence

In her book, Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics, Marsha Sinetar talks of the inherent disquiet that accompanies the beginning of the spiritual journey. There is, she says, a distancing from social convention and being enmeshed in the currents of life. She calls this process “social transcendence”. From my experience, there is a great deal of truth in this concept. Those who seek a spiritual path are a bit syncopated. We are in the world, but not quite of it. We make different choices for different reasons than our peers. This difference is part of what fuels and engages us in the quest of deeper truths. There is nothing special in this, everyone has this to some degree, it is only that those who are on a self-consciously spiritual path don't push these things away - they instead embrace them.

This is, to my mind, precisely where a vipassana practice is so very useful. When I am paying attention to the little things, as they arise in my awareness, I find that I socially transcend in more skillful ways. As I pay attention, it becomes increasingly clear that a large part of my “identity” is the result of social conditioning and I can actually see its working as it exists in my thoughts and actions. This revelation of the nature of the the self, with the slow peeling back of the accretions of social layers, admits the freedom required to begin to explore my own true nature. And, as I do this, I become less reactive in the world around me. I am naturally more tolerant of the social unfolding. And, on very good days, I am able to see that process clearly enough to be able to interject the right action at just the right point to be helpful.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Humanism Reprise

In the recent article “Does Humanism need to be new?” Doug Muder wrestles with the question of how humanism can be made relevant and how a militant new atheism fits into the picture. To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, “practical people who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct philosopher.” Some of my very best friends are religious humanists, and I care for them deeply. They are very moral and kind people and have very good intentions. However, I have to say that they are the unwitting slaves of some very defunct philosophers.

With all due respect to them and to good humanists everywhere, humanism is fighting a rearguard action and simply will not succeed. Its quest for widespread acceptance of an Enlightenment worldview is doomed to ultimate failure. While the reasons for this inevitable failure are intensely complex and wrapped in long history, the culmination of the line of the thought that spelt their demise is found in the thinking David Hume. While this grossly oversimplifies the matter, it is the best leverage point I know of to make this point. Hume’s body of work conclusively demonstrates that one cannot arrive at a moral system from observable phenomena alone. That singular observation, the rationale behind it and its necessary corollaries spelled out more fully in Hume’s broader work sound the death knell to an optimistic humanist value structure. This fundamental breakdown of the ability to of representational reason alone to cope with moral and aesthetic truth, as acknowledged by Hume, accounts for the Humanism’s increasingly marginalized voice

If humanism had its birth in the early renaissance, it met its demise over 300 years ago in the late Enlightenment. The rise of empirical skepticism was a deathblow from which it cannot recover. The German and English Idealists attempted to revive a moral center, but in the end were unsuccessful. To date we have not been able to find a widely acceptable answer to the question of the relationship between reason and morals. Post-Kantians everywhere (and most of those educated in universities after the 1960s are the unwitting slaves of Kant and his intellectual progeny) understand this problem at a visceral level. Such people recognize the fundamental inability of Humanism to put forward a compelling moral position.

This fundamental failure of humanists to grasp post-modernist thought means that they will be forever marginalized. The world has clearly moved on into postmodernism and many are now exploring integral models of understanding the world. Humanism simply does not have the intellectual horsepower to address humanity’s deepest questions. Continuing to dream of a rationalist renaissance is a fine fantasy, but rather quixotic in a post-modern world.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Contemplative Activism

What is the relationship between the contemplative life and the ethical life? Is there a way to tie these two together? To what extent does the development of a greater sense of inner spaciousness and transformation result in more profoundly transformative practices in our efforts to make the world a better place? Many intuitively believe that the outer journey must be supported by a rich interior life and that an exclusive focus on interior practice is narcissistic and in the end, counter-productive to true spiritual development. Yet the connection between a rich interior life and a robust social engagement remains elusive. Precisely how these two are connected remains, for many, a mystery.

While pondering this question recently, the image of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs popped into my awareness and I began to play with it. As most will recall, Abraham Maslow attempted to create a model for psychological health. He posited that there is a hierarchy of needs that human beings have. These start with base survival needs (such as food, shelter and warmth), move into subtler needs (such as love, belongingness and self-esteem) and eventually end up in transformative needs, such as self-actualization and transcendence. He referred to the lower needs as “D-needs” or deficiency needs and “B-needs” or being needs. The D-needs are fulfilled out of a sense of basic drives and, if they are not met, the vacuum is felt acutely. B-needs are far less compelling and meeting them is largely optional. If they are not met, the individual may feel a sense of disquiet, but individuals need not pursue these for survival or even contentment.

As we ponder the higher levels of need – needs for self-actualization and transcendence – it seems that the pursuit of meeting these needs is what many people mean by leading a spiritual life. Those individuals who develop disciplines in these areas and consistently seek to explore these aspects of their lives are often said to have spiritual disciplines.

At the other end of the pyramid, something very interesting emerges as we ponder the question of ethics. It seems that creating situations which impair or potentially impair the ability of others to meet these basic needs is clearly immoral. For example, stealing is wrong because it threatens the individual’s ability to meet basic needs. Adultry is wrong because it alienates one from a fundamental source of love and affection. Denying health care seems wrong because it threatens physical survival and also a persons need to feel safe and secure. For those with some subtlety in their ethical analysis, we would say that stealing from a poor person is more reprehensible than stealing from someone who is wealthy because of the increased risk to that the poor person will be unable to meet basic needs.

Finally, we would say that the person who goes out of her way to provide for the basic needs of others is a highly ethical person. The person who gives their time or funds to feed the hungry, house the homeless or ensure basic liberties for those who have few legal or social protections, are held up as models of ethical behavior. Those who give self-sacrificially to meet these types of needs are seen not merely as ethical people, but as highly spiritual people, particularly where this type of self-sacrifice is seen not as motivated by pathology but out of a sense of psychological abundance.

The notion that spirituality and ethics is tied together by human need provides the possibility of bridging the gap between contemplative life and the life of the activist. Seeking to meet the basic needs of others is the heart of activism, seeking to meet the growth needs of self is spirituality. Thus, spirituality and ethics are flip sides of the same coin.

In looking more deeply at the higher order needs, Maslow noted that, at these stages, effort is required to keep B-needs alive and engaged. There is a point at which people who are seeking to reach their fuller potentials will become self-motivated and create a positive loop that will continually feed the need for further growth. One of the principal ways in which that that cycle can become self-perpetuating is through a concerted and sustained effort to meet the D-needs of others. This focus on others can become a prime driver in the process of self-actualization. Indeed, to do so in healthy ways requires that the B-needs be addressed. Those who become lost in meeting the D-needs of others, without boundaries or a healthy sense of ego protection, are quickly burned out and diminished. Conversely, those who simply seek to meet B-needs find it difficult to sustain motivation, particularly in early stages of B-need development.

While it is clearly possible to engage in meeting B-needs without affirmative ethical behavior (i.e. intentionally seeking to meet lower level needs in others), one could argue that a person seeking to fully self-actualize and do so as effectively as possible, will engage in deeply ethical behavior that stresses not merely doing no harm but actually seeking opportunities to do good for others. Thus, commitment to justice and compassion fosters spiritual growth.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Implementing the Plan

Introduction

This is the final installment on the series Bullfrogs in Wheelbarrows. Here we get to the level of implementing our plan. The work of any church can be divided into two basic parts – maintenance and ministry. The maintenance side is all about meeting the needs of the organization. Any organization requires a certain amount of effort simply to keep the organization afloat. In a church this means that you need a finance committee, a building and grounds committee, a stewardship committee and perhaps one or two others. These are important ministries in themselves and should be see as such. Folks in these committees are real servants to the entire community and it is their work that allows the church to continue to exist. However, if you compare the needs you identified in the strategic plan to the committee structure that you have, probably not one of committees on the maintenance side would be reflected. Thus it is important to differentiate between an individual ministry (which may be to serve on the Finance Committee) and the ministry of the church, which is to meet needs of individuals, families and the community at large.

Overhead and Human Capital

If you considered maintenance of the organization as “overhead”, you would almost certainly want to allocate only a small percentage of your resources to that effort. The vast bulk of your efforts would be spent in actually doing the work of the business. Perhaps the most valuable asset that a church has is its people and the commitment, creativity, imagination and hard work that they put into making the church a viable place. These hours of time are a form of “capital” that must be stewarded. Thus a significant goal would be to decrease the volunteer hour “overhead” that goes into maintaining the organization and increasing the amount that goes to meeting the needs of individuals, families and the broader community.

Structural Alignment

So let’s look at your existing committee structure. Take out two sheets of paper and create three columns. Title the first two Maintenance and Ministry, respectively. List your existing committees under each column. Under the third column list the Needs from your strategic plan. (as outlined in the last article). Now draw lines from each need to the committee that is meeting that need. What is the overlap?

On your second sheet of paper, reorganize your church so that each need has a group of people that is meeting that need. Some needs may be subdivided, but the idea is that we are focusing on the needs and the needs are driving structure, not the other way around. On the Maintenance side of the chart, put the minimum number of people necessary to do that job. For example, some churches have found that a committee of 1 is sufficient for finance if it is the right person and there is good oversight. This is an important number to keep in mind as think about all of the work that must be done in the church Many churches are finding that committees work well on the Maintenance side of the chart, but that the committee model carries too much baggage to work well on the Ministry side. One option to consider would be to have Ministry Teams that are focused on a need with a steering committee of a couple of team members who actually meet to discuss the coordination of the work of the team.

Now the ministry teams or committees are charged with meeting the need based on the strategic plan’s statement. The Board can take its hands off and the creativity and imagination of the people on those teams can simply go to town on meeting those needs. These committees or ministry teams can look at the need, at the statement in the strategic plan, go to work to meet that need as it sees fit. The Board exists to monitor issues as they arise and, in rare cases, to intervene if groups need to be called back to task.

Now you have structure that allows for maximization of the chaordic nature of the church. It is now powered from the periphery but unified at the core; it is based on clarity of share purpose and principles; it enables and empowers its constituent parts; it is durable in purpose, but malleable in form and function; it has distributed power, rights and responsibility; it should liberate and amplify ingenuity, initiative and judgment; it is compatible with and fosters diversity, complexity and change; and it restrains power and embeds authority in persons vested with accomplishing the tasks.

A Side Note on Giftedness

In the early Christian church, there was a recognition that people have different roles to play in the life of a church. They saw these roles as "charisma" or "gifts" given by God to individuals and the community. These gifts were part of what made individuals feel special and connected to the community, gave them a sense of purpose and that they were a valued and important contributor. From what I have seen in UU churches, we don't focus on this much. I think that is a shame. Clearly the gifts and talents that we have are diverse and many of us can serve the church in a variety of ways, but my guess is that most of us have a place where we feel most productive and most useful to our community and where the work most fulfills us. Any chaordic organization should take than giftedness into account and, perhaps. as a church, it might not be a a bad idea to a bit more "charismatic" in the sense of empowering people to do what they are good at and what has heart and meaning for them. This sense of giftedness is often what moves our contributions of time and effort from being "work" to "play".

Conclusion

At the end of this process we have come to creating a model that

1. Accounts for the chaordic nature of most UU churches
2. Ties every aspect of the organization in meeting basic needs.
3. Provides clarity to each person in the organization.
4. Creates an empowering and effective construct for meeting the real needs of people.

I hope that this has been helpful. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have.

If you want to start this series from the beginning, go to Bullfrogs in Wheelbarrows.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Planning: Undoing the Gordian Knot

INTRODUCTION

The blog has been dark for a couple of days, but not for want of trying. This one has been hard to write. It is all about untying the knot that often exists around mission statements and strategic plans. I have been wrestling with a couple of issues: first the traditional choardic “lenses” used for planning don’t fit the needs of a church quite as well as they do other types of organizations I have worked with; second, they have never been as clear as some other models I have used, and, finally, I suspect that they over complicate the problem. To that end, I am working to integrate the ideas embedded into the chaordic lenses into a workable framework for a church.

PART I: THE MISSION STATEMENT

Why does everyone groan when the topic of a mission statement comes up? One simple reason - it is a paaaain-ful process. The task forces shanghaied to do this work often take an inordinate amount of time and expend great effort, most often based on the unsupportable belief that it a mission statement is so central to the church, it requires painstaking care to develop and create. I have seen committees wrestle for months or even a full year on a mission statement. Often surveys are taken or there are extensive interviews. A lot of research happens. There is lots of wordsmithing and focus on individual words freighted with meaning. At the end of the day, the statement is usually bloodless, it appears in print periodically and most people forget it. Certainly no one ever uses it. Moreover, because new or fringe people didn’t labor over every word, they do not get all of the subtle meanings conveyed by the statement. This same sort of complicated process often occurs with strategic planning. Committees, surveys, church meetings and all sorts of effort can go into creating the strategic plan. A church can spend way to much time talking about what it is going to do rather than doing it. Moreover, the marginal improvement on the mission statement based on this time commitment is mot much better than one that could have been created less than an hour.

Fortunately it doesn’t have to be that hard. You can arrive at a mission statement and strategic plan very, very quickly if you have a handle on some basic principles and know how to structure the meeting. If done properly, everyone in the room already has all of the information they need to create the statement and the plan. Church groups are, by their very nature, pretty homogeneous in terms of the attitudes, beliefs and values of the people who have gathered. Not only that, but they know each other and have history together. That type of solidarity makes creating the mission statement and the strategic plan pretty simple.

So here is the recipe for a mission statement:

1. Gather your Board, minister and Committee on Ministry and, if you like, the chairs of your various committees. Do a check in and a brief explanation of the purpose of the meeting -that is: To come up with a mission statement for the church. If any important stakeholder groups are not represented in the group, make sure that you invite one or two from those groups.
2. Identify the ten or so biggest needs that the church meets in the lives of its parishioners and in the world. (Note is is important to figure out what needs the church is meeting in the world beyond its four walls.) Don't spend a lot of time on this - when it seems you are simply refining the list, it is time to stop. Given the people in the room, it will be accurate enough.
3. Narrow that list of ten or so down to at most four. This is usually done by grouping like things together and coming up with a word for each of those clusters of needs. For example, Connection, Significance, and Personal Growth. This part is fun, and now you have a very clear idea as to why your church exists! It is there to meet those needs in your lives and in the life of your community.
4. Craft a simple, simple statement that a reasonably intelligent fourth grader would be able to understand and repeat to tell the world why your church is there. For example based on the above words, you could end up with something like this: “We are a people connected to each other and the world around us, a people who seek to make a significant difference by thought, word and deed, and who seek to fulfill our human potential individually and collectively." Yours will be more artful because it will be a group effort and it will grow organically from your discussion.
5. Congratulate yourself on coming up with a mission statement and break out the champagne. The only trick now is to use it almost ever Sunday – recite it in the words of gathering, the chalice lighting, prior to the offering whenever it makes sense in your community (though it should be ritualistically included almost always in the same spot in the order of service). You should decide as a group where in the service this will go. Get to the point that everyone who is committed to the community has memorized it and everyone who is new hears it when they visit.

PART II: THE STRATEGIC PLAN

If you have time in your meeting, you can go on to do the strategic plan. There are two parts to the strategic plan: the work you must do because of your size and the work that is your own because of the particular nature of your community.

Prior to this phase of the meeting it is important that people understand the different sizes of church (Cell/Family/Pastoral/Program/Corporate/Mega) and the characteristics of each one. You orient them by having everyone read something before they come or have someone prepared to present on these stages and their most important traits. Have some discussion until there is a consensus in the room as to what size of a church you have. It should not be an option to say that you are sort of this size and sort of that size...you have to land in the type that you most closely resemble. (Remember your church type is more like probability cloud than rungs on a ladder - if you are a pastoral sized church, it is likely that 10-20% of your structure and patterns of relating are similar to a family sized church and about the same percentage is reflects a program sized church.)

A. The Work You Have to Do

The work you have to do is based on the size of the church you are. For example if a pastoral sized church is all about communication, leadership and incorporating new people, you have to include a statement in your strategic plan about each of these areas. For more information, click here.

Next you are going to ask yourselves some questions. First you want to know what your church would be like if it was firing on all cylinders in each of the areas you have to be focused on in a church of your size. Here you want to ask 1) What would it feel like? 2) What would it look like? 3) What structures would be in place behind the scenes? 4) What are the values that drive this? These are the questions of the individual, the behavioral, the structural, and the cultural from the last article. Discuss these questions. Everyone should be taking notes at this point to remember important parts of the discussion.

The Goals That Are Your Own.

Now we come to the stuff your church should do.

Looking above, you recall that you identified the three or four basic needs your church meets. In our hypothetical church, the needs were: Connection. Significance. Personal Growth. Again you want to ask what it would be like if the church as firing on all cylinders. Again you want to ask:

• What would it feel like?
• What would it look like?
• What structures would be in place behind the scenes?
• What are the values that drive this?

These are the questions of the psychology, behavior, the structure, and the culture from the last article and can be diagramed like this:



You could even use this diagram in your discussion. Put the major need on top and the observations to each question in each quadrant.

The next question is the hard one: What negative feelings, behaviors, structures or values are we dealing with that keep us from embodying the ideal we just articulated? It is time to get really honest. This is the shadow side of the church community and perhaps even a few individuals in it. Unless you deal with it the plan has no chance of success.

Creating Your Plan.

You should now have 3 or 4 areas that arise from the nature of the size of your church and 3 or 4 that are based on the needs you meet among yourselves and in your community.

After you discuss each area in turn, you can then begin to structure your strategic plan. This a great time to break into small groups and give each group the task of writing up one of the needs that must be met to progress and the one that is specific to your church and the needs your church in particular meets in its current and potential members. Using the area of “Connection” from above, you might come up with the following:

We want each person to feel deeply connected to at least a few others in the church, connected to the mission of the church, and that they are doing something constructive to make the world a better place. We want to have this type of compassion and concern as a core value and will design specific pathways to
that end. We will support a culture that encourages connection by creating structures that allow us to meet in different kinds of settings and cause us to deepen our connections. As much as possible, we, as leaders will commit to modeling behavior that is supportive of creating connection both in terms of what we do and what we refrain from doing. We give one another permission to remind us of this goal. As a community, we recognize that one of the things that tears at our ability to create connection is unkind criticism of others behind their backs. We resolve to change that behavior in constructive ways.

Note that this statement contains what you hope people will feel based on shared values with an eye toward culture and structure and a discussion of behavior. (In other words it address all four quadrants.) It also identifies the shadow and how you hope to deal with it.

It is critical to identify how you want people to feel, because is the connection between their need and the church structure and programing that is absolutely critical to their commitment to and involvement with the church.

The last thing to do is to have each group add a matrix for measuring success for their group's portion of the plan. Every plan must have some tools to measure progress. The measurement tool should have a way of gauging the feelings of the individuals, the behavior of the community, the creation of successful structures and the growth in values. For some of these, before and after questions or surveys are almost always useful. There are other creative ways to do this as well.

To bring this to a close, you would then bring the groups back together to simply share their work. No comments, no judgments, just sharing.

You now have the backbone of your strategic plan. The next step is to get a small group of volunteers together to edit the statements created by the various groups and circulate it for comment to the people at the meeting and others.

Now that was painless and fun and it didn’t take six months. What a relief. Let’s move on to implementing the strategic plan.

If you jumped into the middle of this discussion, you can begin at Bullfrogs In Wheelbarrows.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Unruly Organizations

Introduction

Before we look at the specifics of managing chaordic organization, it is important to dig into and understand some important aspects of the churches and unruly organizations. We like to think that if we simply find the right rules or structures or hit upon just the right formula, we will have a church that works. Unfortunately, churches are inherently messy. The share many of traits common to social groups. Now there are many ways of looking at social groups, but one that I particularly like and find very useful is set out below. I believe that understanding these concepts will help as we move into the discussion of managing a chaordic organization.

Social Holons

Arther Koestler coined the term holon. A holon is a system that is a whole in itself as well as a part of a larger system. This has direct applicability to churches. There is a truth that is so basic it will seem childish – but it is a critically important concept to truly internalize and understand.

A church is system comprised of individuals.

The individuals in the church are one type of holon and and the church itself is quite another and how these two interact is as the heart of virtually every issue facing any church. Let's explore this difference and its implications.

The human beings in the church could be considered sentient holons. A living being is made of up constituent parts – atoms, molecules, cells, organs and so on. Let’s take a goose for example. If the goose flies away, virtually ever part of the goose moves with it – except perhaps a couple of feathers. The constituent parts of the system do not get a vote in what happens. A sentient holon acts as one unit.

Contrast this with a social holon. Compared to the sentient geese holons, the flock of geese is an very different type of holon. Geese flock together because it serves a purpose. If it didn’t serve a purpose, the organization simply wouldn’t exist. Every goose in the flock knows why it is there and what its role is. It also recognizes its own kind – geese don’t flock with deer. A fancy way to say this is that there is a common “inter-subjective"reality of "goose-ness" that all geese share. However, there are times when, for whatever reason, some geese will drop out of a flock and let the others go on. Each individual holon with thin the group is self-existent, autonomous and, in higher order animals, self-determining. This type of system could be called a “social holon.” Sentient and social holons are found throughout nature. They are built into the fabric of our world and they function in remarkably analogous ways up and down the chain of life.

This brings us to the critical point - every social holon exists as an aggregate of individual holons held together by 1) the internal motivations or drives of the individuals in the group, 2) the gathering of the individuals in a physical environment which will support them as a group, 3) a discernable structure to their relationships, and 4) an “intersubjective” commonality – what could be called a culture. If any one of these pieces goes too badly wrong, the social holon simply ceases to exist. In the animal world, the creation of social holons is largely driven by biology and instinct. In humans, it is driven by biology, instinct and self-reflective consciousness. That self-reflective consciousness means that human beings have the ability to create intentional social holons.

Thus, every human social holon has four critically important aspects.

• The individuals that comprise it.
• The physical resources and characteristics of the collective.
• The structural organization of the gatherine.
• The intersubjective cultural perspective the individuals share.

To map this, it might look like this:

A successful chaordic organization must function well in each of these four quadrants. Functioning well means different things in each quadrant.

Individuals

For the social holon to survive, enough individuals within the holon must be getting what they need from the group. It is vitally important that leaders understand both the stated and unstated needs that drive the individuals within the group. Almost all groups have both stated shadow reasons that bring people together. For example, a stated reason might be to change the world. A shadow reason might be that people are getting enthused by the drama of the community. Both may be true and that is OK as long as everyone is clear what is going on and dealing with the darker underbelly. Thus, leaders have to ask deep questions that uncover the authentic motivations that people in the community hold in common.

These conversations require a lot of self inquiry and real honesty. It is hard for someone to say about themselves, “You know, I came from an alcoholic family and one of the reasons I am part of this system is because it meets my need for chaos.” Or “I am a fearful person and change terrifies me and I know that the reason I am part of this church is because it is simply set up not to change. I can count on it being stagnate” Doing this shadow work as a church is absolutely essential. When any social organization is stuck in bad patterns, it is almost always these shadow motivations that are to blame. People are getting something out of the stuckness or the social holon would simply fall apart or change.

The great thing about being authentic in this way is that you can identify one or two dominant themes on the shadow side. By identifying them, and giving them a name and voice, you automatically empower yourself to recognize the dynamic at work. More importantly, these shadow sides also contain tremendous constructive energy in groups. They can be turned into positives. For example, if you have a church that seems to thrive on chaos, you can turn that into a postive part of the mission of the church For example, you might officially recognize that part of the purpose of the church is to be enthusiastically engaged it vital change. If you have a church that is fearful of change, you can state that one of your goals will be to make the church a safe, stable place and sanctuary for everyone who enters its doors. Either is a completely valid choice and either is clearly appropriate for that stage in the church’s life because that is the shadow side that it absolutely must deal with to fulfill its purpose for existence. The church that takes either of these roads is making decisions about what kind of a church it will be and the kind of people it will attract. The important thing is to be honest not only with your aspirational goals, but also with the shadow goals. Once you are honest, you can make progress.

Note: Ideally each leader is asking themselves these questions on a personal level. All of us participate for mixed motives and understanding what those motives are will help us engage authentically and mindfully with the community as a whole.

Environmental

Every church has a physical location, certain resources, and a collection of individuals who are already there. You can point to things in the world and say that these particular people and things are the outward manifestations of the church. It is important to recognize that these physical realities do put real constraints on a church. Indeed, most church leaders are painfully aware of these constraints and often these constraints drive decisions. That does not have to be the case, but it is foolish to ignore them and it will put certain constraints on what the organization can do.

Structural

A church is typically comprised of a series of structures. The people in the group are organized in certain ways. There are almost always formal structures (such as governance bodies, committees, task forces, RE classes, and so on). There are also the informal structures which consist of friendships, informal groups and thought leaders. How these work together can have a tremendous impact on whether the church is doing well or not. You might have every official group of the church headed in one direction and one informal group that is working against it and as a result, you have major problems. Understanding these structural issues is essential to managing a chaordic organization. Structures must fit the organization and further, not impede, its purposes.

Cultural

The church is comprised of principles and values that create the intersubjective shared values. This has to do with the way members treat each other and the norms and rules that govern interaction. Who is included and excluded and what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. Here the question is what is appropriate and inappropriate. Again, there will be express values and shadow values. For example, we might espouse to be a loving community, but the cultural norms tolerate unkind criticism.

Obviously much more could be written about each of these but I believe, we have introduced the concepts sufficiently to move on.

In our next piece, Planning: There's the Hard Way Then There's the Easy Way, we will look at the way chaordic organizations become successfully self-organizing an self-governing.

To start this series at the beginning, go to Bullfrogs In Wheelbarrows.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Getting the Frogs Into the Wheelbarrow

If leading a UU church is a lot like pushing frogs in a wheelbarrow, progress comes only if the frogs stay put as we move forward. If we are constantly trying to get the frogs back into the wheelbarrow, we are doomed to frustration and burnout. However, if they stay in the wheelbarrow on their own, then the entire enterprise works. In short, for a church to develop, the frogs have to see some wisdom in being in the wheelbarrow.* Like the -little guys in our picture, some UUs are a bit suspicious of the wheelbarrow and we have to use some skillful means to get them to hop on board and stay there.

As mentioned in the first article of this series, Bullfrogs in Wheelbarrows, UU churches tend to be chaordic organizations. Such organizations are largely self-organizing and self-governing. They do not operate best through hierarchies of authority but through networks of individuals. What makes them work is a clear shared purpose, ethical operating principles and responsibility distributed through nodes. The organizations are powered from the periphery and unified from the core.

What Type of Church.

The first issue in managing our wheelbarrow is identifying the stage of the church's development. Is your community a Family, Pastoral, Program or Corporate sized church? (See Why Size Matters.) Sometimes the conclusion is obvious. Sometimes, particularly for pastoral sized churches that want to be program churches, it can be remarkably difficult to honestly assess. However, if we are going to get all the frogs to stay in the right wheelbarrow, we have to identify the right wheelbarrow. One reason congregational leadership is difficult is because one group is building one kind of an organization and another is building another. For example, you might have people who are continually concerned about procedures, but until you get to a corporate sized church, the overdoing of procedures is typically a sign of the breakdowns of relationships between individuals or cells within the church. Once people understand that a pastoral and program sized church is largely about maintaining right relationships, you can begin to focus on the real issue and hopefully begin to dissipate the conflict while building a healthy church.

Implications for Strategic Planning.

Once the church leadership is in agreement about its size it knows what to focus on. The strum and drang around strategic planning becomes much less painful, the clouds part and you know what you as a church need to be focused on. The key strategic tasks of the church will center around the developmental work of the church at that stage. For example, a pastoral sized church requires a solid leadership team that is happy, effective and personally fulfilled by their work. These people are often in personal relationship with the minister who acts as part mentor, part pastor and part teacher. Another key to the pastoral sized church is healthy communication among leaders and with the congregation with a minimum of drama and crisis. Creating pathways for newcomers into the community is another key issue.

Since these are a few of the key developmental issues of a church this size, the strategic plan absolutely and unequivocally has to address these issue as matters of primary focus. This is not to say that the church is limited to these goals, but that the strategic plan has to address these and they must be a center of focus for the work of the church.

Thus, the goals of a pastoral sized church would include at least: creating and sustaining a committed and joyful group of leaders, having excellent communication within the church, and creating ways to help newcomers enter and continue on their spiral of engagement. These would be fleshed out with particulars appropriate to the church in that situation.

In putting together the particulars, the church leadership would first have to assess how the church is doing in each of these key areas. This "assessment" should not be drawn out or involve surveys and studies. Usually the leaders of the church know the realities of the church in these key areas and it is simply a matter of saying what is to create a common base. The way to surface this in the discussion is to explore what is working in the area being examined, what isn't and whether everyone agrees with the general assessment. So, taking leadership development, the questions would be "What are we doing well with leadership development?" "What isn't going so well?" "Does anyone have a major disagreement with the picture we just painted?"

Conclusion.

If this work is being done properly then the frogs are much more likely to stay put. Everyone in the church has a common language about the size of the church and what a church of that size is "supposed" to be doing to develop in a healthy way. All of this makes leadership much easier and allows the leaders to work with wayward frogs in a that honor their independence but keep the focus on the work that the community has to be doing. For the frogs who are happy to be in the wheelbarrow, there is an increased sense of purpose and real accomplishment as the deepest needs of the church are met.

Once the frogs are in the wheelbarrow and we have a grasp of the issues, we are ready to go to work. In our next article we will look at the topic of Unruly Organizations.
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* For those who feel that the references to frogs in this article are demeaning to people or to frogs please don't get your knickers in a knot until you read the upcoming post on the perils of pluralism in our UU churches.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Why Size Matters

In 1983 Arlin Routhage wrote a nifty pamphlet that has become the standard analysis used by church consultants anywhere. The pamphlet is entitled "Sizing Up a Congregation" (available on-line). Anyone involved in leadership is wise to read at least the section of the pamphlet that applies to their churches.

Routhage breaks down congregations into four sizes: Family, Pastoral, Program and Corporate. These break down largely along the lines of size and structure. For example, many family sized churches cannot afford and do not have a pastor. Program sized churches need critical masses of people and lay leaders to function. The numbers are clearly up for grabs and you can get into all sorts of arguments of the “angels on the head of a pin” variety over where these breaks occur. Below is one model (mine) and you will see it differs from Routhage’s numbers. My numbers have some good research behind them but are admittedly as arbitrary as anyone’s.

Note that I added “Cell” at the bottom and “Mega” at the top to Routhage’s list.

Most church consultants would agree with those additions.

So what is the point of all of this? Well, this is really a developmental model. Churches grow through these stages. Indeed, they have to grow these in sequence. It simply is not optional to skip from a Family sized church to a Program sized church in the same way as it is not optional for an infant to go from pre-verbal communication to formal-operational logic (to borrow some language from Piaget).

A Tool for Understanding.

Using a developmental model helps us understand the dynamics and potential of our own church. For example pastoral sized churches often rush into “doing program” rather than simply doing an exceptional job of being a pastoral sized church.

Let's focus on the development of a pastoral sized church for a moment. Leadership shifts from the founders to pastor (a difficult transition in any church but all the more so in our anti-authoritarian environment)*. Old decision makers are finding that they don't have the control that they once did and if fights emerge that drive newcomers away, the church will not develop as it should. Moreover, the focus of a pastoral sized church is the pastor. The pastor becomes the major reason new people join the church and the pastor is intimately involved in every aspect of church life - from finances to worship. The Pastor will be grooming leaders but is leading primarily by relationship. There are typically a number of cells that can either cooperate or end up in tension, but these revolve around the pastor who has taken the place of the "parents" of the family sized church. Communication between leaders and laity is vital.

Just as is true with the Pastoral sized church, certain dynamics of leadership are at each wave in this developmental progression. These dynamics have the potential of either decimating initiatives if they are resisted but can be used to great advantage if they are understood. Leaders who understand these developmental structures, and cooperate with them, will be far more effective leaders just as parents of a four year old who understand what four year old’s are supposed to be doing developmentally level will be far better parents.

How This Helps.

This model of church development gives us two very important pieces of information:

1. It tells us what is possible in our church.
2. It tells us what our issues are and what we have to be doing.

No. 1 keeps us focused and guilt free. In recent non-profit board retreat I attended, one of the members said that we had to develop the ability to say “no” so that we could say “yes.” That has become a mantra for us on that Board. When people come along and tell the leaders that they should be doing X, then we can subject that to the question, is X “stage appropriate”. This understanding allows us to focus on what we need to do in the moment and allows us to provide a rationale as to why were are doing certain things but not others.

No. 2 gives us a model for organizing ourselves. Routhage and others help us understand what we should be doing with our human, financial, social and cultural capital (more on that later). If we are a pastoral sized church, we need to focus on the work that a pastoral sized church needs to do. Every initiative, every action of leadership, every group within the church can be seen as fitting into that puzzle. This tells us exactly what our work is to be – to create the very best family/pastoral/program/corporate church we can create. We don’t need to worry about the developmental stages except our own.

The good news is that if churches do their developmental work properly at each stage, the next stage will transcend and include the good lessons learned. If not, then the church at the next stage will exhibit pathologies which will limit growth and the ability to work effectively in the world.

Remedial Work.

Oftentimes, if a church is having chronic problems at one stage, it is because it is either failing to address the new realities or it has failed to do the work it needed to do at a prior stage. We have addressed the first issue above - it involves getting the leadership to focus on what needs to be done at that particular stage of development.

Some church issues may be rooted in the past. For example, a dysfunctional pastor (or laity) can create bad dynamics at the pastoral stage that go on to effect the program sized church. For example if the transition of leadership from the founders to the pastor did not occur as it should have, the foundation for leadership in the program sized church simply isn't in place. Oftentimes these churches require the organizational equivalent of therapy. They need to go back to do the developmental work that was not done when it should have been. One way to gage whether this is a problem in your church is to look at Routhage’s pamphlet with ruthless honesty and ask if his descriptions of healthy function are accurate to the history of your community.

Next in the Series: Getting The Frogs Into The Wheelbarrow.

To start this series at the beginning, go to Bullfrogs In Wheelbarrows.
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1. See, Robert Latham’s Moving on From Church Folly Lane for an excellent treatment of this pastoral to program transition.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.

Bullfrogs In Wheelbarrows

One friend of mine likens church leadership to pushing bullfrogs in a wheelbarrow. It is probably not as bad as all that, but Unitarian Universalist churches present some very interesting leadership issues. The culture of our churches frequently reflects at least some of the the following core values:

• Individual autonomy and self direction
• The importance of taking everyone’s view into account
• Curiosity about human thought
• High, but relativistic, moral values
• A commitment to social justice
• Radical egalitarianism

In short, we are typically strong minded individuals who have banded together around a few key values: among them inclusion, justice, and exploration. While this makes for a terrific group of people, it can lead to very interesting organizational challenges. Our autonomy can clash with a need for organization. The importance of taking everyone’s viewpoint in account can result a paralysis in making decisions or decisions that satisfy the lowest common denominator. Our egalitarianism can undermine leadership and result in not deferring to people with knowledge and life experience.

The next few posts use a few key concepts to suggest some useful tools in leading a church in a culture as diverse as ours. Hopefully at the end of this series people will have a few new ways of looking at their role as leaders and have some practical tools to apply to church leadership.

The first concept to introduce is the notion of the chaordic organization. The Wikipedia entry for “chaordic” states:

The portmanteau chaordic refers to a system that blends characteristics of chaos and order. The term was coined by Dee Hock.

The mix of chaos and order is often described as a harmonious existence displaying characteristics of both, with neither chaotic nor ordered behavior dominating. Some hold that nature is largely organized in such a manner; in particular, living organisms and the volutionary process by which they arose are often described as chaordic in nature. The chaordic principles have also been used as guidelines for creating human organizations -- business, nonprofit, government and hybrids -- that would be either hierarchical nor anarchic.

This seems a relatively accurate description of most of our churches – neither hierarchical nor anarchic. Simply having a concept to apply to the type of organization we are in can be helpful. Knowing that we are "choardic" means that we don't have to feel guilty about not having enough structure and not being effective in a linear sort of way. Those types of expect ions go with certain structures and our churches - so long as they are chaordic - will never reflect those characteristics, nor should they. Taking the "ought" out can help us not focus on things we cannot change and focus on strategies that will be effective for our type of organization.

Many living systems live in the band of the chaordic and there is some evidence that these organizations, when functioning well, can be among the most dynamic, healthy and effective. Those organizations that rely on compete control often lack flexibility and adaptability. Those that are ordered tend towards perpetuating institutional values. Those that are completely anarchic tend to fall apart. However, that sweet spot between order and chaos can create a climate of excitement and joy as well as real growth and creativity.

A successful chaordic organization will have the following characteristics.

• It is now powered from the periphery but unified at the core
• It is based on clarity of shared purpose and principles
• It enables and empowers its constituent parts
• It is durable in purpose, but malleable in form and function
• It has distributed power, rights and responsibility
• It should liberate and amplify ingenuity, initiative and judgment
• It is compatible with and fosters diversity, complexity and change; and
• It restrains power and embeds authority in persons vested with accomplishing the tasks.

So how do chaordic organizations mange to move forward in intentional and deliberate ways? What tools are available to leaders to help them break down the complexities of an organization like this and make sense of it? How do stakeholders and constituencies work best together to further the interests of the community as well as meet their own needs? These and other questions will become the topics of he next few posts.

Next in the series. Why Size Matters


© 2007. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.