The Starfish and the Spider

I'm currently reading "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" and am enjoying every word of it. It's a leadership book, a genre I usually despise, but this one takes a look at things from such a fresh angle. It's not a "Christian" book (whatever that means), but I'm constantly left dreaming about how their thoughts could or would look in the Church.

The chapter I just finished reading, chapter three, was all about the benefits of decentralized organizations. It talked about things such as craigslist and wikipedia and about a festival in the Neveda desert called Burning Man. Each one of them is user driven, developed, and policed. Because of how they operate they end up giving the user more than a top down profit driven organization could ever give you. Here's a quote from the last paragraph of the chapter, "When you give people freedom, you get chaos, but you also get incredible creativity. Because everyone tries to contribute to the community, you get a great variety of expression."

As I read that I thought about Ben and Sarah who I'm a part of a church with. They are always dreaming about creative things they would like to do in the context of our lives together. This past fall they decided to have a harvest party. I think most of us who got invited thought it was a strange idea when we got invited and may have even made fun of the idea (I apologize). But when we showed up, in somewhat formal attire, for parlor games, old fashioned line dancing, and good food we all had a blast. Sarah even had a short, but profound, devotional about why we celebrate the harvest that I still think about months later.

What if church gave freedom for people to lead, create, and develop in this way. What if we all had the freedom to contribute in this way without having to go through a hiarchical structure first? A friend told me, "But Ben and Sarah are your friends, and friends always act in such a way." Exactly! What if as a church we adopted this for a model for how we lived life together? Where what Ben and Sarah did wasn't the exception, but the norm? Where it was understood that if no one is contributing then no one will receive anything? But this can't happen if the leader (me) expects everything to flow from him. This can only happen if everybody understands that everything flows from the leader (Jesus) who speaks to all, so all must be listened to and given the freedom to do new things.

A good friend once said, "Leadership in our context is someone taking the lead in a given area."

The role of the pastor

A friend this week wondered out loud in front of me if we have mistaken the call to preach with the call to run an organization (the church).

Myself and the church I am pastor of have been starting to ask similar questions. We are wondering and exploring if we need a full time paid pastor. We are contemplating me getting another job and no longer taking a salary, or at least a greatly reduced one. We are asking what church would look like then and if what it then looked like would be a good thing or not. It's not a question of how to save money or how to be a church the same way just without paying a pastor, but they are questions at the core of what it means for us to be a church and what it means for us to be the people of God in the West End of Mount Vernon. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Why I hate watching sports.

Actually, the reason I hate watching sports is because I love it so much. I just got finished watching the Browns game that ended, in my opinion, on a terrible call. The call, which was a judgment call, cost the Browns the game. If the right call was made the Browns would have won the game and would have been in great position to make the playoffs, now getting into the playoffs are going to take some work. The reason I hate watching sports in that I got really fired up about that final call. How can a stupid game make me so mad. The official didn't make the wrong call on pupose, but in my mind I ripped him a new one.

And what's the worst injustice that I fight against lately? College footballs refusal to go to a playoff system. Because of money college football won't go to a playoff system that would allow all teams a chance to win it all instead of who the voters think should be in the national title game. I say screw the bowls and let's have a 16 team playoff system in place as soon as possible. I love telling people about it and I get really frustrated that the powers that be are so in love with money that they refuse to give the college football fan what they really want and really deserve. The injustice of it all.

I got issues. Sports shouldn't have that place in my life. They shouldn't be allowed to control my emotions in such a way. They should be fun to watch and should be left on the field. I should care about the true injustices in the world. As I write this I am watching sixty minutes which just had a story about Christians in Iraq, well there's really not many Christians in Iraq anymore. Before the invasion there were over a million, but because of intense persecution most are either dead now or refugees in Syrian ghettos.

I'm not saying I shouldn't watch sports or that I should let every injustice in the world constantly depress me, I just need to keep things in perspective. I got to work on my issues.