Part Four: NASA, SpaceX, and the Blended Ecology of Church

If you had an opportunity to take a trip to outer space, who would you choose to hitch a ride with?

Launching things and people into space was primarily the work of government agencies in the managerial era. But things have changed in the network society (read more about the differences here).

Yesterday, (June 5, 2024), Boeing and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) sent the aerospace company's Starliner spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida toward the International Space Station (ISS). The payload was a crew of two NASA astronauts. Boeing, the struggling aerospace giant, had to scrub the launch several times due to malfunctions, and there is much speculation about the company’s capability for astronaut flight.

In comparison, SpaceX now sends reusable rockets weekly, achieving twelve Falcon 9 launches in March alone, with a goal of 148 launches in 2024. They fly astronaut missions to and from the ISS for NASA and have quickly launched a massive constellation of small satellites called Starlink with the goal of providing global high-speed internet access.

NASA’s mission is to “explore the unknown in air and space,” and to innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery. SpaceX’s mission is “making humanity multiplanetary,” by revolutionizing space technology.

NASA and SpaceX are two organizations with a shared mission, but structurally speaking they are very different. First, NASA is a massive taxpayer-funded U.S. government agency with over a dozen locations around the country. Congress legislatively authorizes NASA’s activities, and it reports to the executive branch. The president directly appoints its administrator.

SpaceX is a smaller, mostly privately funded, for-profit company. NASA has a heavy bureaucracy while SpaceX is a leaner, networked, and open-sourced structure. SpaceX is led by a single board directed primarily by one person, Elon Musk. NASA has a longer track record, that includes some traumatic and very public failures. SpaceX is quickly outpacing NASA in successful launches. Failing fast was built into its early iterative approach.

Boeing, organizationally speaking, is more NASA than SpaceX. They outbid SpaceX on the latest launch to get astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station. This positions Boeing firmly as contenders in the new space exploration ecology of the twenty-first century. However, a near catastrophic failure of a 737 Max jetliner earlier this year has analysts nervous.

Here’s what most people don’t know. NASA and SpaceX are not competitors. SpaceX wouldn’t exist without NASA, especially in terms of funding. In 2006, when SpaceX was a four-year-old startup, NASA paid for roughly half the cost to develop SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. In 2008, when SpaceX was on the verge of bankruptcy, they received a multi-billion-dollar contract to fly cargo to the ISS. While SpaceX generates revenue from numerous customers, a significant portion of its funding comes from the partnership with NASA.

While the two organizations are structured and funded differently, they live in a symbiotic relationship in which they rely on one another for success. If we are serious about space exploration, we need both organizations. A massive, taxpayer funded entity. And a nimble, adaptive, experimental innovator.     

There is wisdom in this both/and way. Ecclesiologically speaking, I call this the blended ecology of church, in which inherited and emerging modes of church live together in a symbiotic relationship. Denominations resemble NASA and Boeing, and movements like Fresh Expressions are more like SpaceX, structurally speaking. Perhaps this kind of collaboration is a wise way for denominations, and local churches, to reinvent themselves for the future.

Consider the distinction between two logic systems, causal and effectual reasoning, to help explain why.

Saras D. Sarasvathy has researched entrepreneurs and how they think. Entrepreneurial types employ effectual reasoning, whereas managerial types employ causal reasoning. The word effectual is the inverse of causal. Causal rationality starts with a pre-determined goal and seeks to develop strategic steps toward meeting that goal. Effectual reasoning does not start with a specific goal. Rather, it begins with a given reality and “allows goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations of the founders and the people they interact with.”^[1]

For instance, while causal reasoning focuses on expected return, effectual reasoning emphasizes affordable loss. Causal reasoning depends upon competitive analyses, effectual reasoning is built upon strategic partnerships. Causal reasoning urges the exploitation of pre-existing knowledge and prediction, effectual reasoning stresses the leveraging of contingencies.^[2]

Thus, by taking the “effects” and starting with who and what entrepreneurs already have, they begin to create something new from those elements. Through a series of relational interactions, as opportunities and strategic partnerships arise, multiple outcomes are possible. This kind of reasoning often employed by entrepreneurs can fuel a journey of innovation in a traditionally structured denomination.

In denominations, causal logic reigns supreme, effectual logic is often discouraged or silenced. Short-term experimental thinking is suffocated with long-range planning, certitude, and outdated conceptions of “sustainability.”

While the affective/compassionate dimension of wisdom finds expression organizationally through a culture that promotes the common good, denominations often resort to self-preservation tendencies. Maintaining the status quo is prioritized over innovation, particularly when innovation is perceived to disrupt economic security.   

Just as not-so-wise organizations see their primary goal as to generate revenue through existing products and services with little to no regard for the consequences on consumers or the environment, so denominations utilize large amounts of resources and properties to sustain a system that is not working.

Denominational systems strive for certainty, regularity, and predictability through the establishment of rigid rules. They employ a causal logic process, setting a vision then creating benchmarks that move the company towards its fulfillment. The established hierarchy preserves a chain of command.

The preset metrics used by denominations to assess health create a competitive scenario in which employee performance is measured by the old cliché “butts and bucks” (how many people, and how much they give). Collaboration among the organization is often superficial with task teams aligning to complete goals that are incentivized with advancement/status rewards.

Yet these established rigid rules and algorithms are not prepared for the shock of the unexpected. Denominations are not structured for uncertainty, irregularity, unpredictability, and impermanence. The institutional logic yields very little to deal with the unexpected and the unknown. The structures resist adaptation and are not designed for ongoing experimentation. While wise organizations are often nimble in highly dynamic and complex environments, denominations, not-so-much.

While entrepreneurial types are often sifted out of the system during the ordination process, those that make it through are often silenced, ignored, or eventually exiled. Yet, we need the disruption that entrepreneurial types can provide. Just as death is a sequence in the journey of resurrection, so is apostolic disruption often a stage in the journey of ecclesial reformation.

The blended ecology will ultimately move the church into a state of Chaordic Ecclesiology. Chaordic is a word coined by Dee Hock that combines chaos and order. A kind of organization that can balance core principles at the center (order), while sustaining experimentation, creativity, and innovation on the edge (chaos).^[3]

This gives denominations a way to cultivate colorful little experiments in the compassion gap. It enables us to live in two worlds at once, to tend to the social structures fading from view, and experiment with the emerging ones. It allows a vital partnership between NASA and SpaceX.

At the beginning of the third millennium, we are on the edge of what perhaps will become the greatest era of space exploration in human history. This blended organizational ecology is the foundation. Can denominational bureaucracies learn from this to launch into the most exciting church renewal movement in centuries?  

In the next post I will explore what this could look like.  

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[1] Saras D. Sarasvathy, “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?” 2, https://www.effectuation.org/sites/default/files/documents/what-makes-entrepreneurs-entrepreneurial-sarasvathy.pdf

[2] Sarasvathy, “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?” 2.

[3] Hirsch, Alan, Tim Catchim, and Mike Breen. The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 218.