This continues the look at mDNA - organic systems and how it applies to Northern Community. The other posts in the mDNA serie are here

Characteristics of movements

All organisations must be wary of the dangers of becoming institutionalised. As an organisation ages it may be more likely to become institutionally bound. The early stages of organisations require flexibility and vitality. In the same way, a garden plant that grows old becomes more rigid. Where an organisation becomes so strong that it can stand despite its environment rather than moulding its own structure around its context, there is a danger that it will no longer adapt to its environment. A large tree can survive the harshest conditions in its environment because of its strength, yet this very strength can lead to its eventual demise. The church in its early form was fluid and highly adaptive to its environment because of the threat that environment posed to its very existence.

David Hurst offers some helpful insights into the process of institutionalisation. He identifies five shifts in emphasis that occur in this process:

a) mission becomes strategy
b) roles become tasks
c) teams become structure
d) networks become organisation
e) recognition becomes compensation

These shifts may be seen in the life of many established churches. Mission is expressed through reaching for the next strategic product (MOPs, alpha, 40 days of purpose etc). Teams which were initially structured around missional priorities often become rigid structures. The original reason for existence is lost.

I am reminded of the scene in the movie the Shawshank Redemption where a group of prison inmates are trying to make sense of why a recently released inmate, Brooks, has committed suicide. One character says:

Brooks had no bug, he’s just institutionalised…. The man’s been in here 50 years! 50 years! This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, he’s an educated man. Outside he’s nothing, just a used up con with arthritis in both hands. He probably couldn’t get a library card if he tried… These walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them, enough time passes you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalised. They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they take – the part that counts anyhow.

Hirsch states that for us ‘to recover the missional vitality of the early church… we have to rewaken a virile movement ethos’. However, we must also be careful not to glorify or romanticise the experience of the early church. The early church experience can teach us a great deal, but simply copying 1st century solutions into a 21st century post-modern context will be counter-productive. We need to learn how to create a movement ethos that has a distinctive post-modern contextual flavour.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 5:39 pm by phil and is filed under mDNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.