I just finished reading Organic Community by Jospeh Myers. The focus of the book is about creating a place where people naturally connect.
As we move forward in our attempt to become a more “organic-missional” church, I realized that the mindset of the church has been anything but organic. I was at a conference just a few weeks ago and the very model that we were presented with was taken striaght from the business text books. When did we start confusing churches with businesses?
Myers makes the case with 9 areas where we as the church should redefine our church doing process. He compares and contrasts the “Master Plan” which is the business model with that of an Organic Order.
Here are the 9
Patterns: moving from prescriptive to descriptive
Participation: from representative to individual
Measurement: from bottom line to story
Growth: from bankrupt to sustainable
Power: from positional to revolving
Coordination:from cooperation to collaboration
Partners: from accountability to edit-ability
Language: from nouns to verbs
Resources. from scarcity to abundance
These may not make much sense on their own, but this one quote might sum up the whole thing:
“Churches don’t become legendary on the community grapevine because of reporting numbers. They become legendary through the sharing of their story of mission within the community.”
I pray that I we journey on this together that the Lord will continue to reveal, challenge and shape us.
Filed under: Books
