Killing Church Committees and Other Reflections on Church Organization

Do We Have to Look Like a Fortune 500 company?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way churches organize their common lives. Part of my D.Min. project years centered on reexamining that most ubiquitous form church organization—the “functional church” model.

In a post-World War II era, when the country was heavily invested in manufacturing as the life-blood of the economy the functional church model–based on the industrial organizational model, which privilege efficiency and production–appeared perfectly natural … almost like the universe itself was organized that way. So, when churches started to have a “board of directors” that oversaw the work of “departments” and “committees,” modeled after the indisputable success of Ford and GM, it seemed to make good “business sense.” In fact, early visionaries of this model of church organization went so far as to understand the church’s work to be production, not of durable or household goods, but of “spiritual” goods.

Continue reading on dmergent.org about what the church needs to do to engage a new generation of leaders http://ow.ly/6sxLc #ccdoc