Chapter 27 MOVEMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS
The missionary enterprise of the nineteenth century offers important insights into the character of effective movements. Early in that century, many of the new churches established by Western missionaries in the non-Western world were locked into unhealthy patterns of dependency. These congregations and denominations had the traditional marks of a true church—the faithful preaching of the Word of God, the right use of the sacraments, and a functioning system of discipline. 1 They held to sound doctrine and included ministers and leaders from the local population, yet they were unable to propagate themselves readily or to support themselves financially. As a result, they remained dependent on Western missionaries and money indefinitely.
An alternate approach to missions - pioneered by John Nevius, Hudson Taylor, Roland Allen, and others - sought to plant churches that were self-sustaining from inception. The goal was establishing congregations that grew naturally, without the artificial “life support” of foreign aid, not only by winning converts effectively within their own cultures but also by attracting and developing new indigenous leaders at such a rate that the churches regularly reproduced themselves. In short, they wanted churches to have a dynamism that made them able to grow from within without needing to be propped up with money and leaders from outside. They wanted these churches to be more than just sound institutions; they wanted them to be vital and dynamic movements.
The title of Roland Allen’s book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, gets at this idea. 2 It evokes the image of spontaneous combustion-combustion without an external ignition source. A church (or group of churches) with movement dynamics generates its own converts, ideas, leaders, and resources from within in order to realize its vision of being the church for its city and culture. Unless the environment is extremely hostile (e.g., heavy persecution, war, economic collapse), the church grows in numbers and in spiritual maturity. In the language of missiologists, such a church is “self-propagating, self-governing, and self-supporting.” It will reproduce into other churches that reproduce themselves for the same reasons. The more ideas, leaders, and resources that are pooled and deployed, the more the movement dynamic strengthens and snowballs. As long as the reproducing churches keep a unified vision, the movement can build steam and grow steadily, even exponentially.
Churches with no movement dynamics are like a person on a life support machine. I have seen at least three ways in which churches survive without movement dynamics:
- Some churches have a denominational structure or a missionary structure that subsidizes the church financially.
- Some churches have a substantial endowment and a building that serves as a community center for the local population. In this situation, there is no need for outside financial or leadership assistance in the near term, but the church does not produce additional resources or dynamism to sustain growth through conversions and the spiritual growth of its members. It essentially operates as a well-run business. Finances come from a judiciously managed endowment, supplemented by income from rentals, fees, and a few donations. Many churches sustain themselves as institutions in this way.
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND CHURCH GROWTH The subject of church growth can be controversial. In the introduction I briefly discussed Paul’s metaphor of the church as a garden (1 Cor 3:4-9). In this image, leading a church is like gardening. The garden’s growth is determined by at least three factors: (1) the skill and diligence of the gardener, (2) the soil’s fertility, and (3) the weather conditions. If skillful ministry is like gardening, and the soil and weather conditions are akin to the sovereignty of God’s Spirit, then we see that a lack of church growth cannot be simplistically assumed to be attributable to human failure, nor can it simplistically be excused as God’s will. Calvin’s classic treatment of God’s sovereignty fully affirms the importance of human responsibility. 3
To generalize, many modern church growth technique books do not give sufficient weight to God’s sovereignty, while many anti-church-growth books and voices make excuses for a lack of spiritual vitality in the church. Our point in this chapter is that it is possible for a church to be a doctrinally sound organization but not a dynamic, growing organism. The Bible envisions a church that is both.
- Some churches have a small, overworked core of people within a larger, stagnant structure.
While the congregation has no movement dynamism, it is propped up from within. That is, a sinall handful of people give an inordinate amount of time and money to keep a stagnant or declining church going. These individuals may be spiritually vital Christians themselves who cannot spread this vitality to the rest of the church, or they simply may be hardworking people with deep roots in the church, which creates a sacrificial loyalty. This solution is temporary. At some point, the few people who are keeping the church alive through their sacrificial giving grow too tired to continue, and in the absence of an ability to reproduce, the church eventually dies.
HOW MOVEMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS CONTRAST
I am not suggesting simplistically that movements are good and institutions are bad-rather, that organizations should have both institutional characteristics and movement dynamics, though there are some tensions and trade-offs in the balance. Institutions promote stable patterns of behavior through rules and policies that change slowly, thereby limiting and shaping people’s choices and practices. 4 But this intentional limiting of choices is often a healthy thing. Think for a moment of a grocery store. Customers typically have a good idea of how to check out. They know where to go and where to stand; they know about lines (queues) and about how long to expect to stand in line; and they know what to do when they get to the head of the line. What would it be like if every week the way you pay for your items changed drastically? It would be chaotic. Institutionalization makes it possible for millions of people each day to shop for the things they need in a grocery store. Some of the institutional practices are formal (like how to pay), while some of them are informal (like how long people expect to wait in line). If you try to pay for your food at the grocery store with a bar of gold, it just won’t work. If customers have to wait for an hour in line, anger will break out. Why? Because “everyone knows” that an hour is too long to wait (at least in a Western country). The grocery store is obligated (informally) to not make you wait that long. If it violates this bond of trust, you probably won’t come back. Your expectations and behaviors have been limited, directed, and shaped by this institution. No one could go into a grocery store and shop efficiently if not for institutionalization.
Hugh Heclo defines institutions this way: “Institutions represent inheritances of valued purposes with attendant rules and moral obligations” stewarded by those with authority. 5 This is an abstract, academic description, but it leads us in a helpful direction. Institutions rely on submission to an established authority that preserves the values and purposes of the past. Institutions are necessary and helpful, providing established, reliable systems and frames for accomplishing what needs to be done. Heclo writes, “To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without a skeleton or hoping to use a language but not its grammar.” Institutions bring order to life and establish many of the conditions for human flourishing and civilized society.
Movements, on the other hand, have more to do with the assertion of individual preference and bringing forth the realities of the future. I would define four key characteristics of a movement: vision, sacrifice, flexibility with unity, and spontaneity.
1. First and foremost, movements are marked by a compelling vision. A vision consists of an attractive, vivid, and clear picture of the future that the movement and its leaders are seeking to bring about. A movement states, “If this is where you want to go, come along with us.” This picture of the future is accompanied by a strong set of values or beliefs to which the movement is committed. The content of this vision must be expressed so that others can grasp it readily; it must not be so esoteric or difficult that only a handful of people can articulate it.
The content of a vision must be compellingly expressed so that others can learn it and carry it out in their own community without a great deal of centralized control or assistance. So, for example, the transforming concept of the Alcoholics Anonymous “twelve-step group” has been compellingly expressed and applied in innumerable books. Because of this, a person with a vision for changing lives through such a group can often simply pick up the literature and get started. They won’t need anyone’s permission or money, and there are many ways to get excellent training. Or, to use a less sanguine example, we could note that one of the reasons al-Qaeda has been effective is that it disseminates its worldview broadly and clearly. People imbibe it and educate themselves with it, and many form terrorist cells that operate without central control or cominunication. In some cases, they may go to an al-Qaeda training camp to become more effective, but afterward they are largely trusted to work out their own local strategy. The point of these examples is that AA and al-Qaeda are vital, constantly growing movements rather than centralized institutions. This is the reason for their effectiveness and their ability to grow with relatively modest amounts of capital. The key to the success of the vision is its simplicity and availability, often in the form of content that transinits, expounds, and applies the vision.
By contrast, though institutions almost always have a purpose statement written down somewhere (e.g., schools are there to educate, businesses to produce their product, hospitals to heal the sick), the glue that holds the institution together is really its rules, regulations, and procedures. In a movement, a shared vision is what guides the day-to-day choices; in an institution, it is typically the rules and established patterns.
2. The unifying vision in a movement is so compelling that it leads to a culture of sacrificial commitment and intrinsic rewards. Individuals put the vision ahead of their own interests and comfort. In the early days of any movement, the main actors often work without compensation, constantly living in the threat of bankruptcy. The satisfaction of realized goals is their main reward. Some refer to this as “intrinsic” reward—internal, personal fulfillment that comes from knowing you have been instrumental in bringing about so much good. In an institution, however, every position has highly defined rights and privileges, as well as clear compensation and benefits. The main incentive in an institution is centered around these “extrinsic” rewards. Institutional members certainly know there is a job to do, but their work output is balanced carefully against concrete rewards. There is no more practical index of whether your church has movement dynamics than examining whether you have a culture of sacrifice. If the top leaders of the church are the only ones making all the sacrifices, then you don’t have a inovement culture.
3. Movements are characterized by a stance of generous flexibility toward other organizations and people outside their own membership rolls. Movements make the what the accomplishment of the vision-a higher value than how it gets done and who gets it done. The vision encourages sacrifice, and members of a movement are willing to make allies, cooperating with anyone who shares an interest in the vision. Institutionalized organizations, on the other hand, are more committed to the importance of inherited practices, right procedures, and accredited persons. They often choose to not achieve a result-though it may be strongly desired - if they can’t get it done in the prescribed way and with the properly accredited parties.
The spirit of flexibility that we find in a movement means there is a great deal of unity—within the movement as well as in relationship to other organizations. Institutions do not typically encourage this type of unity, even internally. They tend to consist of a set of turf-conscious silos, each more concerned for its own welfare than for the good of the whole. Often, institutions lack organizational unity and may even be hostile toward other organizations.
4. Movements spontaneously produce new ideas and leaders and grow from within. Institutions by their very nature are structured for long-term durability and stability and are prone to resist risky new ideas. But movements are willing to take new risks because the members are already making sacrifices to be part of the work. A movement also tends to attract and reward leaders who produce results. Again, the reason is that accomplishing the vision is so important. Institutions however, because they value stability and durability, tend to reward leadership according to tenure and the accrual of accepted qualifications and credentials.
Summarizing the important differences between movements and institutions in their strongest forms helps us more clearly see the distinctions (see the table on the next page).
As we see these contrasting characteristics, we begin to better understand why movements are spontaneously generative. A movement is able to generate new ideas because it encourages people to brainstorm and is more willing to experiment and try out new ideas. Movements are “flatter”-less hierarchical and siloed than institutions - and therefore new ideas get traction more quickly. Movements also are better able to generate new leaders because they can attract the most ambitious and creative people. Because they are results oriented, they can quickly identify emerging leaders and promote them. Movements grow faster because their testing of new ideas keeps them adapted to the changes in the environment.
HOW MOVEMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS CONVERGE
Young church leaders can get excited about movements and speak long and loudly against the blindness and deadness of the institutional church. Indeed, anyone skimming the left-hand column of the table on the next page knows that too many churches are too institutionalized. David Hurst, a Harvard scholar, nicely sums up how movements become institutions-vision becomes strategy, roles become tasks, teams become structure, networks become organizations, and recognition becomes compensation.?
| INSTITUTION | MOVEMENT |
|---|---|
| Held together by rules and procedure | Held together by common purpose, vision |
| A culture of rights and quotas; a balance of responsibilities and rewards | A culture of sacrificial commitment |
| Emphasis on compensation, “extrinsic” rewards | Emphasis on celebration, “intrinsic” rewards |
| Changes in policy involve long process, all departments, much resistance and negotiation | Vision comes from charismatic leaders; accepted with loyalty |
| Decisions made procedurally and slowly | Decisions made relationally and rapidly |
| Innovations from top down; implemented in department silos | Innovations bubble up from all members; executed by the whole |
| Feels like a patchwork of turf-conscious mini-agencies or departments | Feels like a unified whole |
| Values: security, predictability | Values: risk, serendipity |
| Stable, slow to change | Dynamic, quick to change |
| Emphasis on tradition, past, and custom; future trends are dreaded and denied | Emphasis on present and future; little emphasis on past |
| Jobs given to those with accreditation and tenure | Jobs given to those producing best results |
Remember, however, that it is wrong to draw too sharp a line between the two forms, or even to pit them against each other so starkly when we look at actual examples. While there are good reasons for Christian movement literature to be highly critical of institutionalism, the impression often left is that all authority, centralized control, and formal processes are bad for ministry. The reality is far more complex. First, though new churches and ministries work hard at remaining informal, noncodified, and noncentralized, institutionalization is unavoidable.
As soon as we make a choice- the creation of a new policy, administrative structure, or consensus of value and belief — and begin carrying it into the future, thus shaping people’s routines, expectations, and allowable preferences, we have begun to institutionalize that value or belief.
And some institutionalization is even desirable. As pointed out earlier, a unified vision-held by every member of the movement-is critical to movement dynamics. But this vision cannot change every day, or even every year, or it will create chaos in the movement and retard its growth. Ironically, this means the vision itself requires some codification and control. In other words, maintaining the engine of movement dynamics - a unified vision – necessitates adopting some of the aspects of institutions. The vision becomes, as it were, a “tradition” that the movement guards and passes on.
In addition, we noted that movements rely heavily on the sacrificial commitment of their members, especially when they are just getting started. In this start-up mode, members may max out their credit cards and tap into their savings to get things going. But this way of living is unsustainable. Any vision that is compelling will be a big one, and big visions require long-term effort—an effort that will require, for example, bringing in enough revenue so the founders can pay off their credit cards and eventually have enough to live on and raise their families. In other words, a movement must eventually settle into a sustainable business model that generates enough resources to cover expenses. If it fails to do this, it will end up burning out the best people and failing to progress toward the vision.
A strong, dynamic movement, then, occupies this difficult space in the center - the place of tension and balance between being a freewheeling organism and a disciplined organization. A movement that refuses to take on some organizational characteristics - authority, tradition, unity of belief, and quality control — will fragment and dissipate. Movements that fail to resist the inevitable tendency toward complete institutionalization will end up losing their vitality and effectiveness. The job of the movement leader is to steer the ship safely between these two perils.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION
- What would happen if your organization suddenly had to leave its building, was cut off from denominational support structures and deprived of endowments and bank balances, and experienced the loss of its senior leader? Would there be a resilient institution remaining that could pick itself up, start over by the grace of God, and raise up new leaders from within? If not, which of the three types of stagnant structures (subsidized from without, managed by endowment life support, or propped up by a small overworked core) best describes your congregation or organization?
- This chapter suggests four key characteristics of a movement: vision, sacrifice, flexibility with unity, and spontaneity. How have you experienced these in your own ministry or church setting? In your experience, how do each of these characteristics contribute to the dynamics of the movement?
- Review the table contrasting institutions with movements. As you consider your own church, what characteristics of a movement do you see? What characteristics of an institution are present? What might you do to encourage additional movement dynamics in your church?