Flatten the Organization and Focus on Spiritual Experience
Peter Drucker, a leader of contemporary management strategies, wrote “Post-capitalist society has to be decentralized. Its organizations must be able to make fast decisions, based on closeness to performance, closeness to the market, closeness to technology, closeness to the changes in society.” How do traditional churches apply this principle? First, they intentionally decentralize. This means that those with power give it up, and those without power take it on. Wise leadership inculcates leadership skills in the members and gently releases control. Second, the churches restore spiritual life to the members, the life-giving experience of the sacred, transcendent presence of God in their lives and in their community. “If the mainline churches are going to regain their leadership,” Miller writes, “they must do two things that the new paradigm [populist] churches already have mastered: first, they must give the ministry back to the people, which implies creating a much flatter organizational structure; and, second, they must become vehicles for people to access the sacred in profound and life-changing ways.”
Mainline churches must do two things: first, they must give the ministry back to the people, which implies creating a much flatter organizational structure; and, second, they must become vehicles for people to access the sacred in profound and life-changing ways.
Miller with many others believes that it is more effective to start new churches than to renew existing ones. Aubrey Malphurs cites research from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, that “in just the next few years, 100,000 of the 350,000 churches in America will close their doors. Consequently, church planting will be the future for the American church because it’s far easier to plant a new church than to renew a dying one.”1 I draw this out to remind us of the radical nature of the changes that must take place in stagnant churches if they intend to reach the people they believe God has prepared for them.
Miller’s several years study of new growing church bodies led him to realize four steps to abet a shift to the populist model.
One, “radically decentralize organizational structures, abandoning central offices and locating themselves in local churches, especially those flagship churches that are demonstrating leadership.”2 By downsizing denominational headquarters, churches cut overhead, reduce bureaucracy, engender quicker response to challenges and opportunities in local settings and, most importantly, put their most valuable resource — their people — on the frontline.
Two, put young leaders in positions of responsibility and allow them to spin-off experimental ministries. I can mention churches such as SpiritGarage, a Lutheran spin-off in Minneapolis, the Community of Joy, another Lutheran church in Arizona, or the Willow Creek Community Church, which grew out of a Dutch Reformed congregation. The Saddleback Community Church could be considered a spin-off Southern Baptist group, as they never identified themselves as Southern Baptist. It is the same story with The Journey Church, a Southern Baptist ministry in mid-Manhattan. Can you imagine a congregation growing in that urban center with the name “Southern Baptist”? The youthful leaders use a name that is comprehensible to their youthful target market. The Vineyard in lower Manhattan calls itself “the River.” It meets in a science institute’s space that is available on Sundays, forty stories above Ground Zero, with floor to ceiling glass. It was planted by a young Korean couple.
The populist churches of the early 70s broke the mold by inviting young people with long hair who liked rock music and a lot of nasty things into their churches. They found that with the message of the Gospel, they could get rid of the nasty things, as long as they kept the rock music and let them keep their “hair like Jesus wore it.” To grow, young Christians in America are shaking off the bureaucratic overlays, and the wise headquarters are allowing them to do so. I note, therefore, with approval the adoption of new names for next generation ministries in the Unification community: Two Rivers VIP, iUnificationist, uMove, the Hub, the jUnCtion, Up and Coming, Go (God’s own), ESPN (Extreme Saturday Party Night), Charge, How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted, REAL Relationships, Lasting Imprint and Lovin’ Life Ministries.
Three, empower existing clergy to turn control over to the members. This is most critical; it partners with what is called “gifts-based ministry.” To carry it out, Miller recommends some simple steps. Clergy should abolish at least 80 percent of their committee meetings, thereby freeing up people to join small group home fellowships. Help members discover their own spiritual gifts and apply them in the church setting — thereby reshaping the church. Empower pastoral care, evangelism, and cross-generational bonding in small groups, which are led and organized by laypeople. “Mirroring democratic values, [populist churches] encourage members to initiate new programs and projects, which thus reflect the members’ own needs and interests. Indeed, so long as these programs fit the values of the congregation, enormous latitude is granted in what ministries are started and how they evolve.”3 Within the core principles and goals of the faith, let the members themselves shape the local church. This is also, as I discuss in the last chapter, the key to interfaith peace building.
Four, reconsider the process of leadership preparation. Miller states that the mainstream should “radically restructure seminaries, allowing more theological education to be done in the local churches… Seminaries should be professional schools where people are mentored and taught while they serve within a local congregation.” In this context, a seminary should not be isolated from the communities and churches it is preparing people to serve. It should include in-house apprenticeships, intensive workshops and hands-on training programs in its curricula, and always be asking the question: “how would this work in my church?”4 American church historian Timothy P. Weber states, “No seminary can effectively educate missional leaders without being missional itself. The commitment to local church ministry will have to permeate all parts of the curriculum, not just the ministry courses. Thus an important question: can the training or orientation of current or future theological faculties support such a missional emphasis?”5 I note that this is not from an evangelical think tank or rambunctious mega-church, but from the journal of the Association of Theological Schools.
The vast majority of new worshiping communities launched in the 1990s are not being started by “denominational systems,” … That is, they are not getting started by a headquarters staff assigned to build new churches.
Current initiatives from Rev. Hyung Jin Moon move in a populist direction. As international president, Rev. Moon is focusing on strengthening the common members’ and visitors’ experience of God. He calls for and personally engages in prayer and praise ministry, home visitations, street witnessing and joy-filled worship services, with multiple services each weekend. He is devoted to improving the quality of church leadership and ministry. When he spoke in Manhattan at the Lovin’ Life Ministries pulpit, he praised Rev. In Jin Moon’s putting ministry in the center. He, with his wife, and Rev. In Jin Moon with her husband and entire family, warmly embrace and speak to visitors, individuals and families during and after church services. They strongly call members to witness their faith boldly with confidence that there are countless people waiting for their message and ministry.
The American church president, Rev. In Jin Moon, is investing significant resources in creating life-giving worship. Worship is, after all, the center of church life but for decades has been an afterthought in the Unification Church. She is also focusing her attention on developing the next generation of ministry leadership. Finally, she is bringing in new leaders who ask the tough questions and bringing the American church to assess its own performance. This begins with gauging members’ confidence and opinions, identifying areas of need, addressing practices that inhibit growth, adopting practices that promote growth, and supporting the spiritual growth of both guests and members. Consistent with populist thinking, the church seeks to “drive continuous improvement in the field” through a “participatory process model” that will “enhance collective thinking around the important objectives of church growth and leadership education.”6 Heather Thalheimer, Director of Education, made it clear to a church leadership conference in January, 2010, that growth takes place in the local churches and so that is where our attention is fixed.
Results of Flattening the Organization
Unificationists live and work in the same spiritual marketplace as everyone else. By flattening the organization and focusing on personal spiritual experience, the following kinds of developments are taking place.
Heaven’s mission and authority are being substantiated in the local church
Reverend Moon calls this “settlement,” “home church” and “hometown.” All religion is local religion. Members will applaud and learn from success throughout the world as they focus on success in their own location. In the words of Heather Thalheimer, UC Director of Education, “Think Cosmically, Act Locally.”
This means that members will work where they are, reach the people who are nearby and make their faith relevant to them. The church will applaud local achievements that might seem small on the universal scale but nonetheless create value for real people. Speaking of this generation, Gary McIntosh writes, “many prefer to focus their ministry efforts in local arenas, where they feel they have more control and can see the results of their work…Churches can focus on the needs in their immediate neighborhoods and the concerns important to their community”7 This will move our eyes away from distant horizons, where we will find no new members, and toward our neighbor. Growing churches focus on “religious education for [people’s] children and some kind of religious experience that helps them make sense of their own lives.”8
The mission of saving the neighborhood first
This means faith in the autonomous power of the principle acting everywhere. It is an admission that it is God, not us, who changes hearts and changes the world, and it happens in the quiet, small spaces. America and the world will be influenced from every locality. We all know the “six-degrees of separation” principle. To give two examples local to my setting, a New York City financier hosted a campaign fund-raiser attended by Hillary Clinton, at his home in Barrytown, New York, which is not even on most maps. In Red Hook, New York, my local village, lives a brother of the head of National Public Radio and a top executive with SONY music.
So the national organization will let churches strengthen their roots locally and encourage innovation and creativity in the local context. It will provide broad parameters, equip local leaders and then get out of the way. Each church will be a frontline laboratory, creating solutions for their own problems. The national church will have not only one laboratory; it will have a hundred. It will benefit also because problems, kinks and potholes will be repaired on the local level without doing a lot of damage.
The church gives the members ownership
It encourages local planning and local styles of worship. Above all it mandates that the local church sustain itself through local funding. No funding will come from above. But in return, it will respect local ownership by curtailing national programs that extract funds and members from the local setting. According to McIntosh, our society tends “to prefer churches that have a clear focus [and] a narrowly defined vision…”9 By not being subsidized financially, the local congregation will be forced to figure out how to succeed. By owning its mission and strategy, the local congregation will have the resources necessary to succeed.
The church utilizes the principle of gifts-based ministry
It will let ministries arise from the members out of their interests, gifts and needs. It will provide training or encourage members to gain training from any resource. It will provide validation, moral support and encouragement, and share success stories and best practices.
In order to multiply energy, it gives the ministry away to the members, not by increasing control, but by releasing control. As Rev. Jim Edgerly reminded a recent Witnessing Summit, quoting Rick Warren, “you are organized either for control or growth. You can have one or the other, but not both.” The church will empower all the members who are willing as lay ministers and let them find their own resources for parenting, marriage, church growth, small group leadership, skills in media and the arts, worship support and leadership, relational evangelism and all kinds of personal ministries.
We will expect diverse varieties of religious experience
We will not look at the rise of variations as a problem, but as creative adaptation for the sake of advancing God’s providence.
Don’t look at the rise of variations as “denominationalism;” look at it as creative adaptation for the sake of advancing God’s providence.
We will encourage different styles of worship. A radio ad for a local church in northern California informs listeners that the liturgical service starts at 8, the mainstream service at 10, the contemporary service at 1 and the youth service at 3. The church will allow different styles of organization, different styles of dress, food, music, prayer and venue, even for a Frisbee competition in the sanctuary. To make room, it will let go of old formats, properties and styles.
We expect major changes
Young people change things, and the Hartford research shows that growing churches are “very willing to change to meet new challenges,” while dying churches “are not willing to change to meet new challenges.” The Willow group could not have emerged other than with youth leadership. Further, growing churches report that they made significant, not just minor, changes in worship format or style in the last five years, while dying churches had made no changes or just minor changes.
We drop the concern about positions and titles
We allow members to have a significant voice in choosing their own leaders, as Rev. Hyung Jin Moon is now doing in Korea.
Expand Your Social Surface: Go Native
All these characteristics lead churches to open their doors to the larger society. Rodney Stark credits “open networks” as critical in the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. The reason is that religions grow according to the number of contacts each of its members has with non-members, the attractiveness of the religion, and the ease of joining. In Stark’s words, “as movements grow, their social surface expands proportionately. That is, each new member expands the size of the network of attachments between the group and potential converts. …However, this occurs only if the group constitutes an open network.”10
As movements grow, their social surface expands proportionately. That is, each new member expands the size of the network of attachments between the group and potential converts. However, this occurs only if the group constitutes an open network. (Rodney Stark)
The allowance of Christians to abrogate Jewish dietary laws and marry non-Christians made the early church an open network. According to Stark, Christians maintained an ethic of inclusive love to a degree greater than its rival faiths, by such things as granting full membership (and leadership positions) to women, servants and slaves, staying behind in plague-infested cities to tend to the sick non-Christians, and calling people of all racial and national origins to share the same communion. Open networks that expand the network of attachments between members and non-members are crucial to church growth.
Open networks naturally make a church indigenous, which means “originating in and typical of a region or country, natural or inborn.”11 In the words of Ahlen and Thomas, an indigenous church is “a group of believers who live out their life, including their socialized Christian activity, in the patterns of the local society, and for whom any transformation of that society comes out of their felt needs under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the scriptures.”
Rev. Paul Rajan, a UTS student who planted fifty five churches in India and more in New Zealand, expressed this point with utmost bluntness: “Cross cultural evangelism does not work.”12
Rev. Paul Rajan, a UTS student who planted fifty five churches in India and more in New Zealand, expressed this point with utmost bluntness: “Cross cultural evangelism does not work.”
The New Testament churches were indigenous. They were self-propagating: they raised their own workers and spread using their own resources. They were self-supporting and did not receive funding from Jerusalem; in fact, Paul’s churches sent funds to Jerusalem. They were self-governing. The members were the owners.
Ahlen and Thomas’s “key church” strategy is a means to indigenize the church. Once an outside church (the key church) makes a base with a small group in the new culture, it allows a new church to develop within that culture. The key church doesn’t export its own culture into the target community. It expects the new congregation to be different. It separates out its beliefs and ideals from its own cultural expressions, trusting that God can work in the new culture just as well as in the original culture. When a church is indigenous, it engages the interests of local people. Therefore, “Congregations are healthier and more productive, and require little or no outside support, when started and developed in the context of the socioeconomic conditions and culture of the people who are to be evangelized or congregationalized.”13
This takes us to a point that seems obvious but is exceedingly challenging to put into practice once a church settles down: the church is not a building; it is a “collection of believers” who cohere around a message. Reverend Moon concurs, “There are many cathedrals much greater than this [Belvedere garage], all over America. …I do not want to build a great church. I’m looking …for one person who under the worst conditions can still truly hold the heart of God and truly give his entire self. That is the real church, not the building.”14
The Key Church Strategy
Ahlen and Thomas elaborate, “When church is defined as people rather than as real estate, the ceiling on creativity is raised several notches.” Once the members are ready to take the church outside of their familiar walls and restrooms, they can begin to strategize for growth. They boil down two basic components of this strategy. One, go to where the people are rather than waiting for them to come to you. Two, cultivate, encourage and trust indigenous leadership. Keep in mind: we are not just talking about whites reaching Hispanics or African Americans reaching Filipinos; we are talking about 50-somethings reaching the young people who reside physically in a bedroom down the hall but culturally on another planet.
Therefore the key church strategy begins with a small mission team. (A large mission group becomes an intrusion that overwhelms the target people.) The small team teaches locals to lead, and withdraws within a year. They let the people determine the strategy, programs and ministries. They put the focus on what the locals think is important. In the process, the new group naturally plugs into local resources. The missioners reject “the arrogant assumption that the people lack the capability, discernment, financial resources and leaders to minister to one another and start a church.”15 After the team wins its first two or three converts, the early adapters will, if allowed, take ownership of the message and reach their less adventurous peers.
Growth comes when missionaries let the local leaders take this initiative. This liberates energy, for, as Ahlen and Thomas put it, “no one is lazy except in the pursuit of someone else’s idea.” Of course, they counsel, “some initiative needs to be taken by the sponsor church in order to make progress, but too much initiative from persons outside the congregation takes away ownership. When ownership is taken away, local initiative stops.”
Ahlen and Thomas reject the view that “Until the daughter church can be trusted to behave just like the parent, the parent maintains tight control over the church’s finances and activities.” New churches that develop under such control, they contend, are sterile and out of touch. In the key church strategy, sponsorship is partnership. The sponsor provides doctrine, leadership and initial resources. The new congregation provides a cultural base and local relationships. In effect, the sponsor should work itself out of a job.
In the area of funding, Ahlen and Thomas advise that it is easy to help too much, in the name of benevolence. At the beginning, one might initiate fundraising projects, with matching gifts from the sponsoring church. But long-term support communicates a welfare and entitlement mentality. It removes the sense of ownership, responsibility and incentive and makes the pastor accountable to the funding agencies, not to the community.
Set the Message, Release Control
I am convinced that doctrine is not the main determinant of health and growth. All church doctrines are strange in the eyes of an unchurched person. The growing churches are able to identify the core message embedded in the doctrine and let it work its way into new cultures. They separate the message from the home culture. Just as the message of Jesus stands independent of first-century Palestine, the message of True Parents needs to stand independent of twentieth-century Korea. This happens when people in a new culture take ownership of the message. At that point they naturally express it in their own language.
I believe that the starting point is the understanding that the growing churches are able to identify the message and adapt it to different cultures.
Now I need to gently point out that our Unification Church has assumed some characteristics of the mainline denominational churches, and suggest that this has been detrimental to our growth. But we are a people of deep faith and ability to sacrifice for God’s will, and so we can quickly transition into a populist faith community. In the next chapter, I will draw out some affirmations of our theology and practice that make it right and good for us to do so.
Footnotes
Footnotes
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Ibid., pp. 17, 187. Malphurs, op. cit., pp. 15-16. ↩
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Miller, op. cit., p. 188. ↩
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Miller, pp. 187-188. ↩
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Ibid., p. 188. ↩
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Timothy P. Weber, “The Seminaries and the Churches: Looking for New Relationships,” Theological Education, 44/1 (2008): p. 85. ↩
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Heather Thalheimer, et. al., HSA America Department of Education, “Evaluation of Performance Using Key Performance Indicators,” distributed to church leaders at the National Leadership Conference 2010 (January 22-25, 2010, New York City). ↩
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Gary L. McIntosh, Three Generations: Riding the Waves of Change in Your Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1995), p. 105. ↩
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Ibid., p. 149. ↩
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Ibid., p. 100, citing a Lilly Endowment Occasional Report. ↩
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Rodney Stark, op. cit., pp. 20-21. ↩
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Encarta World English Dictionary, 1999 Microsoft Corporation. ↩
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Conversation with the author during directed study class, May 10, 2010. ↩
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Ahlen and Thomas, p. 32. ↩
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“A New Breed of People” (Sept 15, 1974, Tarrytown, NY). ↩
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Ibid., p. 35; all citations from Ahlen and Thomas. ↩