Part Three: Wise are the Flexible
“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape.” This is a forgotten beatitude of Jesus. We know he said it, the disciples just forgot to write it down!
Flexibility, the ability to be nimble and adaptive, is a core trait of wise organizations. It’s also a value that the Springtide Research reports young people are looking for.[1] Unfortunately, it is not a trait often associated with denominations or the church in general.
In a previous post we utilized the wise organization index developed by Ardelt and Sharma (2021) to compare wise organizations and not-so-wise organizations. What if we were to sample mainline religious institutions? Organizationally speaking, are denominations wise organizations?
I suspect that diminished wisdom in mainline denominations is not a matter of intent in most cases. Denominations are made up of people. Many of us who have made our home within them intend to enhance the common good, to care for stakeholders and members, to see people flourish in their personal lives. But all the data shared previously points to a mismatch between intent and outcomes. This misalignment between the stated purpose of religious institutions and our actual contribution to making the world a better place is predominantly structural in nature.
My coauthors and I have documented how Protestant denominations in the U.S. adopted the organizational structure of the twentieth-century corporation and benefited greatly for a season (Deep Roots, Wild Branches, 2019; Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions, 2020; Deep and Wild, 2021; Fresh Expressions in a Digital Age, 2021; Red Skies, 2022; Gardens in the Desert, 2024). Adopting this corporate structure helped churches to thrive in that milieu, as the legitimating narrative of the managerial era became a perfect bedfellow for the church. Churches took up the language of rationalized efficiency, professional management, and bureaucratic structures.
Denominations inhabit this managerial lifeworld, complete with our own vocabulary and assumptions that often exist at a subconscious level. Even our conception of the role of a “pastor” has been determined by modern management theory and therapeutic schools. The professionalization of the clergy, hierarchical structures, and an ecclesiology grounded in managerialism has led to a clergy-laity divide. This has fostered less resilient ecclesial ecosystems. However, the “priesthood of all believers” is being reimagined afresh today.
The conditions that caused the largely attractional, propositional, corporate iteration of the church to thrive in the U.S. have changed. In the Fresh Expressions movement, we have utilized the work of pioneering sociologist Manuel Castells. Castells posits that at the end of the second millennium, a new form of society arose from the interactions of several major social, technological, economic, and cultural transformations that he calls the Network Society. We are currently in a period of historical transition between different forms of society, moving from the Industrial Age into the Information Age. The network society consists of a social structure made up of networks enabled by microelectronics-based information and communications technologies.[2]
In The Corporation and the Twentieth Century historian Richard Langlois describes the economic, institutional and intellectual development of the managerial era. Langlois describes the emergence of managerial capitalism in the second half of the 19th century. In the early 1900’s, legendary tycoons like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie established huge empires in industries such as steel, railroads, and oil. A transition from a capitalist to a managerial society began in the early twentieth century, as these founders and their descendants shifted control and ownership over to small private investors and their governing boards. I suspect a similar transfer happened in movements like Methodism shortly after the death of the founders.[3]
Multinational conglomerates like General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and Du Pont became the juggernauts of the managerial age. Yet going back to the 1980’s we have seen long admired powerhouse corporations like these being displaced by a combination of technological change, globalization and the emergence of new markets and new types of investors. Consider that Johnson & Johnson broke up into two companies back in 2021. Just last month (April 2024) General Electric split into three separate businesses, and last week (May 2024) DuPont followed suit, splitting into three publicly traded firms in three areas of specialization: water, electronics, and traditional chemicals.
Economists call this corporate trend deconglomeration. It’s marked by the curtain closing on storied companies that were a fixture of American life for decades. At the very least, wise organizations are restructuring themselves as networks. Only the flexible survive.
I believe here is a lesson for mainline denominations whose structure is patterned after these conglomerations of the managerial age. Think of the “seven sisters” of mainline denominations referenced earlier, several of whom resulted from the mega-conglomeration of smaller denominations. For example, in the early twentieth century, many Methodist splinter groups joined together to form the Methodist Church (USA), and later another merger in 1968 resulted in the formation of The United Methodist Church from the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) and the Methodist Church.
In the place of corporate conglomerations, we are seeing the emergence of technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. These new contenders are organized differently from their predecessors. They are less hierarchical, less vertically integrated, more networked, and deal in “intangible” assets such as knowledge and intellectual property.
Denominations, as currently structured, are splintering and dying. But are we doing this in wise ways? Are we using our resources and energy to birth the fresh forms of Christian community that will thrive in the new social structures? Are we adapting to the structural transformations all around us? Have we defaulted to the institutional impulse of self-preservation? Or are we following the way of Jesus… self-donation?
This requires us to unclench our fists and open our hands. Can we hear the voice of Jesus, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24).
Are we ready to be blessed, broken, and given to the world? This is the heart of the eucharistic nature of the church. An ecclesiology of gift… grounded in compassion.
There are signs of hope. Alongside the decline of institutional religion, new movements of the “spiritual but not religious” appear to be thriving among a growing hunger for authentic spirituality. These movements espouse values like inclusion, diversity, equity, non-judgement, and the rejection of homophobia. They employ shared leadership, lay empowerment, and new economic models. They are committed to the common good of all people and healing a sick planet. These nascent networks are positive deviants amid the massive religious decline and reflect the emerging societal structures of the Network Society.
The new protest-ant “spiritual, but not religious” dichotomy is in part a response to the overly bureaucratic procedures and overly rationalized institutional forms of the McDonaldized church. A church structure forged in the alloy of the managerial era, which, in its more unhelpful expressions, treats people like cogs in a religious machine. Robot-like Christians show up weekly to consume their religious goods and services like Big Macs, but find no real avenue for self-expression, or true community in which to wrestle with the irrationalities of faith, or even opportunities to bring their God-given gifts and abilities.
Perhaps we are seeing less a crisis of collapse and erosion, and more an opportunity for transformation. Followers of Jesus call this resurrection. The problem is we must die in the process. It requires flexibility.
How might lessons from wise organizations help us make the necessary changes to turn panic into hope? Do we have the capacity to escape the technical problem/solution cul-de-sac in which denominations are currently spinning in circles? Do we have the courage to rise to the adaptive challenge? I will explore these questions in the next post, stay tuned!
[1] “The hallmarks of engaging young people will be curiosity, wholeness, connection, and flexibility.” Springtide Research, “The State of Religion and Young People,” 2021.
[2] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.
[3] Richard N. Langlois The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise, Princeton University Press, 2023.