An Emerging Profession: An Addendum.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, you really need to give the other bloggers a read from the thoughts that they shared today.
The other bloggers are Adam Walker Cleaveland (www.pomomusings.com), Carol Merritt (www.tribalchurch.org), Wess Daniels (www.gatheringinlight.com), Julie Clawson (www.julieclawson.com), and Jonny Baker (www.jonnybaker.blogs.com).
I’d specifically like to mention Jonny Baker’s listing of some general comparisons between starfish and spider models, as they give better backdrop for my thoughts. The starfish column is on the left and the spider on the right.
CEO | catalyst
boss | peer
command and control | trust
rational | emotionally intelligent
powerful | inspirational
directive | collaborative
in the spotlight | behind the scenes
order | ambiguity
organizing | connecting
And you should really give Wess Daniel’s post a read. He creates a very insightful link between the consumption patterns of the more traditional top-down approach. I’m not sure why this idea resonated so much with me, but I don’t think I have ever really made the connection with the role “consumption” plays in the whole process. Below are my rather brief comments that I will hopefully build upon in the coming weeks, teasing out this connection between consumption and practice.
Wess, way to build the argument and situate in the proper context of consumerism. i think this a very necessary distinction to make. that consumption is as much of a framing starting point as anything else. and it is from this starting point that most organizational models flow. as consumerism reinforces and perpetuates the existing narrative, there can be no divergence from it. i think the ones who are starting to “get it” (whatever “it” is) are the ones who are wrestling with their relationship to consumption. those who are comfortable within their consumptive patterns tend to exist well within the current paradigms. this is not to say that i/we don’t consume. it’s just that there is a growing uneasiness with it. and it’s from there that a proper critique is forming and taking shape.
An Emerging Profession: Top Down Hierarchies & Flat Worlds.
Drew Ditzel of Hawks, Dawgs, and Jesus is writing his final paper for a class at Columbia Theological Seminary for a class on Emerging Church Models. Part of the stipulations of the paper is that he’s supposed to consult 5 or more bloggers (this is my kind of class). He’s asked me as well as a few other more well known bloggers to contribute to a topic related to pastors/clergy and their relationship towards their congregations.
The other bloggers are Adam Walker Cleaveland (www.pomomusings.com), Anthony Smith (www.postmodernegro.com), Carol Merritt (www.tribalchurch.org), Wess Daniels (www.gatheringinlight.com), Julie Clawson (www.julieclawson.com) and Jonny Baker (www.jonnybaker.blogs.com). I will be blogging along with them today on the same topic.
I’ve chosen to think about the changing dynamic between pastors/clergy and their congregations in relationship to organizational structures built off of hierarchies. My premise is that most pastors/clergy operate and relate from their position on the hierarchy (which is conveniently located at the top rung). They exist at the top and assume that their role is to disseminate power downward towards everyone below them (other staff, volunteers, congregants, community).
Despite good intentions, hierarchies are created for one purpose, to funnel power to the top, effectively creating a bottleneck. In hierarchical models, this distribution of power (i.e. influence, information, communication, control) is puncticular and linear. Meaning that it moves from Point A to Point B and then to Point C and on down the line. The flow of energy is always moving from or going towards the top.
Another workable analogy might be that of a family tree. The pastor sits at the top as the parent. In a traditional understanding of family, a parent can have more than one child, but a child can only have one parent. Thus the parent is always over the child. And the child always under the parent. A family tree is a hierarchical tree.
For the most part, pastors have always run their churches based off these hierarchical models.
Take a look at the rather crude model below. The figure on the left illustrates the way most pastors/congregrations function. Information flows from one level to the next. But always going through the top, always going through the pastor/clergy. This is an illustration of the hierarchical model. Take away the pastor/clergy and the organization collapses in on itself.
However, the model on the right is one that others have suggested might have more potential in our current cultural context. It is a model based off of web-like, networked, indigenous organisms. There is no “top”. There is no “bottom”. There is no “head”. Rather all areas are actively in flux and intermingling with one another.
Ori Brafman and Rob Beckstrom articulated this cultural shift in their seminal work The Starfish and the Spider. They described how most organizations function like spiders. If you cut off the leg of the spider, it’s crippled and will forever be without a leg. If you cut off the head of a spider, it will die. For organizations built on the framework of hierarchy, if you cut off the head, the entire organization withers and wilts.
In comparison to a starfish, you can cut off the arms . . . chop it into a million pieces . . . and it will still regenerate itself and grow again. They further describe this theory of leadership by discussing how the human brain works in relationship to memories.
Let’s say for example, we wanted to erase a certain memory from someone’s brain. Under the hierarchial model, we’d locate the specific neuron and zap it, and the memory would be gone. But in Lettvin’s model (flattened/web-like/network), the memory would be much more difficult to eliminate. We’d have to zap a pattern of neurons – a much more difficult proposition.
The analogy should be clear.
This is why organizations with a plurality of leaders, authority, and voices are the most innovative, creative, and revolutionary. Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster (essentially the tipping point for peer-to-peer technology), for all intents and purposes, began the process of bringing down the top-down music industry. Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda attack and allude the most sophisticated military nation in history from a cave with little to no money. Craig Newark created Craigslist and overnight the top-down print news lost one of their biggest sources of income and audience by undercutting the “classifieds”.
This is why Thomas Friedman coined the term “flattened world”. It’s as if someone stomped on and squashed the traditional hierarchical model. The result is now a flattened world, a world without clear boundaries, hierarchies of power, and linear communication/influence.
Leadership no longer comes from the top and from one source. Rather leadership comes from the margins and from a plurality of sources.
Looking at our model again . . . we can see that the emerging model on the right has the highest potential for collaboration, co-participation, checks and balances and locality to name but a few.
This is not to say that the model on the left wasn’t effective. It worked for a time. It was a great vessel for organization and communication in a time and world that trusted authority, a world where the line between leader and audience was much more concrete and distinct. But as those lines have blurred, as more and more people are being empowered to participate and create alongside of, we are in desperate need of an organizational model that is able to embrace and reflect this change in culture.
And if there is any organization that should be adept at and equipped at making the change it should be the church. The church has a great legacy of decentralized organization. Afterall, the Jesus movement spread like wild fire (virally) as this type of flattened, web-like, network of family and friends moved out and multiplied (as a side note, multiplication is the byproduct of flattened models while addition is the byproduct of hierarchies). I mean can you imagine Jesus as a CEO or a traditional pastor/clergy? The king of the castle, the head honcho? If this was the model that Jesus wanted us to imitate, he would have become a priest and never left the synagogue.
Instead, he knew that any great revolution of love (as opposed to a revolution of force) was dependent on movement from the margins. And consequently empowering those he found at the margins.
This is where true leadership happens. This is what most organizations are already beginning to reflect in their leadership structures. The question is whether or not pastors/clergy will embrace something that their congregants already know to be true.
