Structure

Here is what I would say about the 'organization' of the church, and its relative importance to keeping the church on mission, and to advancing the kingdom in the lives of individuals, in communities, and in the world...

http://damascus9.blogspot.com/2010/03/broken-tomato-cages-pt-i.html

http://damascus9.blogspot.com/2010/03/broken-tomato-cages-pt-ii.html

http://damascus9.blogspot.com/2010/05/broken-tomato-cages-pt-iii.html

http://damascus9.blogspot.com/2010/05/broken-tomato-cages-pt-iv.html

The posts above are something I wrote several years ago, and they express my frustration at the rigid structures of church that kill the life within it. However, the metaphor works the other way too, as I have come to see in recent years...

Acts 6 is the tipping point where the early church discovered a need for tomato cages. But here is where I continue to hold the line. While the cages may be necessary at times, they are ALWAYS a means to an end. The point is the life in the garden, and the structures must serve that end. We must be ruthless in this.

What this means is that the 'spontaneous expansion' that results from people falling madly in love with the Kingdom and the King, and then selling everything for that cause, is the life of the church. We can build structures and strategies around that to support, nurture, and foster this central vitality, but we must always prioritize the life of the Spirit, and never the supporting structures...

Broken Tomato Cages pt I

A wonderful metaphor that I have had rattling around the innards of my skull lately is the tomato cage. It is a structure that is very useful. If you have ever planted a tomato plant, you know what happens as the plant grows bigger. The weight of the fruit, and of the plant itself, is too much for it to bear. Its own weight causes it to fall over, which damages the plant, and the tomatoes, which defeats the purpose of planting them! So you put a metal cage around it to help it stay upright. The cage provides support for the plant and allows it to continue its growth far beyond its self-sufficiency without the additional structure.

What has been insightful for me to think on is this: a picture of a gardener putting tomato cages into her garden, but she has no tomato plants! Instead she is putting tomato cages around herbs, carrots, and lettuce, the cages have no point! She continues to focus on the cages themselves and neglecting the plants in the process; the cages have become their own end, they are no longer the means to other ends. She then brags to other gardeners about her marvelous cages, she begins to hold workshops on 'How to Install Tomato Cages,' and markets her own brand of cage.

Cells

*These are old thoughts, I just found them, and cleaned up to make them comprehensible*


I have come to the conclusion that health consists of a unique blend of structure and no structure; clarity and ambiguity. To use a natural metaphor a plant grows best when we combine the completely spontaneous with a structure that does not prohibit the natural growth of the plant but rather aids it. A ditch for water, a watering schedule to maintain proper ammounts, soil additives, weeding, posts for growing vines, etc. Just so, when we speak of Church health, there are quite natural and spontaneous effects of the Spirit of God within a human being. Once the Spirit has been 'planted' we do not make it grow, and we can kill it by over-structure (thinking that we can make the growth happen by our administration), but we can also help its growth by optimal levels of structure properly implemented.

The pro's and con's:

First we must state that amorphism itself is a structure. In order to have 'no structure' one must have a void. A random structure is still a structure. A neglected garden in one sense does not lack structure, rather it lacks intentionality. There are still the structures provided by the natural processes themselves (fiber structures, chemical processes, various ecological niches, etc.), there is simply not the rows, schedules, etc. that allow for the plants protection, care, and harvest.

Secondly we must state that it is easier to change a plan than to create one. The one more likely to be able to creatively adapt to new situations is the one who has deeply thought out the current situation and mapped out a plan to deal with it. The individual who has neglected a proscribed course of action, will not even have a framework with which to engage the future, much less to creatively change to meet it.

Structure is beneficial in that it helps to provide direction. Just as a vine needs something to climb, so do our spiritual lives need direction. Boundaries are immensely helpful to prevent injury, or even just redundancy. Freedom is beneficial in that it allows for growth.

Too much structure will actually impede growth.
Not enough structure will fail to protect and guide growth, and ultimately hinder the harvest.

Too much structure will prohibit spontenaity...
...not enough structure will prevent purposeful direction
An adequate ammount of structure will provide needed direction and prevent useless redundancy...
...an adequate ammount of freedom will allow for creative response to new contexts, and will prevent the reduction of what is inherently organic to a formula.

For this reason, I believe Churches should structure around relationships. We have seen that structure is ubiquitous and unavoidable, even (in spite of my own proclivity to 'kill structure') necessary. Yet in structuring our Church around a program we lose the thing that is important; this would be akin to structuring your apple orchard as an assembly line. The opposite error would be to refuse to intentionally structure the Church; this would be akin to letting the apples take root wherever they fell. Neither makes sense. The central aspect of the apple orchard is the living, growing, healthy apple tree. The orchard needs to be structured in such a way as to maintain the health of the tree and produce healthy fruit. However, the purpose of the apple orchard is providing fruit to the customer at a reasonable price. The orchard needs to be structured in a way so as to make the fruit accessable for harvesting it (hence the rows). So too, in a Church we must structure the Church around the most important thing, relationships; the individual with Jesus, and the individuals with each other. This could look like a myriad of different structural possibilities, however, there would be some commonalities:

The structure would serve and encourage the individual relationship with Jesus.
The structure would serve and encourage the individual relationship with other disciples.
The structure would serve and encourage the inclusion of individuals outside the community.
The structure would serve and encourage propagation, at the individual, relational, and community levels.

We must be confident that whatever structures we implement, whether by intentional planning or unintentional neglect, should accomplish these purposes.