Tag: organisation

>Small pieces loosely joined

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Eavesdropping a conversation between Bishop Alan and Euan Semple I notice agreement between them about the strength of “small pieces loosely joined” (the title of a book by David Weinberger). They talked about the nature of churches and the degree of structure and institution needed to hold them together and that “dogma and rules are vehicles for power rather than entirely necessary for collective understanding”.
The “dramatic” viewpoint takes the standpoint of a participant in the drama while the “epic standpoint” is that of the external spectator able to see the whole play. Western Christendom has usually taken the “epic viewpoint” which has resulted in totalising and patronising theories of what is right and what is wrong. Hans Urs von Balthasar uses the dramatic viewpoint to look at what the church is. His dramatic theory is that there is no “external spectator”, and that in the “everyman” theatre even the audience is caught up in the drama as they see their own condition and dilemnas played out on the stage. They are caught up in the drama. There is only one “external spectator”, who is God. His is the epic viewpoint – though  there are other pretenders pretending they know what it’s all about.

Balthasar’s image is rather powerful when applied to what the church is. We don’t know what the church is. The church is there to find – to be received and not pre-conceived. For Balthasar the stage is set in Christ. From this viewpoint we all become players – church and non-church, caught in the act of being human, in  inter-play and the inter-action with all the other characters. Small pieces loosely joined sounds about right from this dramatic point of view where what is expected in terms of fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness ….. (Galatians 5:22) 

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Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively we shall hear, among the uproar of empires and nations, the saint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one, on the foundations of their own suffering and joy, builds for all.
Albert Camus – quoted by Dee Hock p310

>Gafcon

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>How sad is Gafcon?
But Father Christian has a good blog about the Big Pete and Little Pete Show – dummies for ventriloquist Martyn Minns.
Personally I think it’s a battle being waged by those who want a command and control church against those who want something rather more grown up and self organising, where people can be trusted to make spiritual judgements for themselves – not having to rely on a moral dictatorship.

>Lambeth

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>So the Bishop of Rochester has declined Archbishop Rowan’s invitation to the Lambeth Conference and has decided to join the alternative conference oddly called Gafcon (sounds to me like a hot air company). To me it seems rather a strange gesture coming a week after widespread demands for the priest who conducted the “wedding” of two gay priests to be disciplined have been heard. Surely, if we are to be called to be obedient to the church’s teaching – one of the leading advocates of which is the Bishop oif Rochester – then the Bishop of Rochester should be seen not to be undermining the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Homosexuality is supposedly at the root of the divisions of the Church of England and the Gafcons are apparently united around that one issue – that it should not be tolerated. I think I see it rather differently. I see it as a power struggle – and how shocking that the followers of the one – “who emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Philippian 2) – should be involved in power struggles. The issue of homosexuality is their rallying call and the point of vulnerability – the chink in the armour – of those they oppose. The way I see it is as a struggle between the old command and control mentality referred to by Dee Hock, founder of Visa and the chaordic type of organisation emerging as part of our information age. Lambeth represents the self-organising – this time there’s no resolutions, just bishops coming together in the hope that by so doing they will be better bishops. The Gafcons will plot and scheme, pass resolutions, flex their muscle, spit fire, trying to “command and control” which is a temptation Jesus steadfastly refused to submit to – and so make a story for the world’s media. The message will not be “God so loved the world …” but “see how these Christians love (is this where a “sic” should go?) one another” – hardly a compelling message.
And those people who are gay get squeezed out. They are the real victims. They are victims of prejudice – cast out into the realms of darkness – the the alleys where, it just so happens, Jesus walked (or should I say “walks”).
I have to say that two of the people I love most dearly are gay. They are both in loving, stable long-term relationships which have enriched them and both relationships shed love and blessing to others. One of them is a civil partnership which rang with as much holiness as any wedding I have ever attended – even though it could not be contracted on “holy ground”. When I think about it, I could be deeply hurt and offended. The offence is to the head – the hurt is to the heart. What those who are gay make of it I shudder to think – I am very sorry to be in an institution that so offends them – but will work to promote a community where people matter and where rules and regulations are seen as “sheer hell”. Dee Hock again:”Heaven is purpose, principle and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.” Pray that Lambeth prepares for heaven, and that the Gafcons realise there’s no future in hell.
Friend Katherine sent me this article from Newsweek on the devil incarnate – Gene Robinson – a different perspective.

>The Information Age

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>Listening to friend Carol’s presentation yesterday made me realise how church is tied down by the industrial age. Perception of church is stil very much building based and the church building boom seems to have been part and parcel of the industrial development of the 19th century. Often funded by industrialists churches were places to be seen and seemed to cement people’s place in society.
We have hastily moved from being an industrial society to being an information society, and is it the nature of information which has had such an effect on society and how we organise ourselves into social networks. Yet while factories have closed (and communities coped far better that they thought) our church buildings remain and remain furnished with the trappings (and pews) of the mindset of the industrial age.
According to Gregory Bateson “information is a difference that makes a difference”. Dee Hock makes these points:

Unlike finite physical resources, information multiplies by transfer and is not depleted by use.
Information is a miser of energy. It can endlessly replicate, move ubiquitously at the speed of light, and massively condense in minute space …
Information breeds. When one bit of information is combined with another, the result is new information. It will become the slave and property of noone. Efforts to make information conform to archaic notions of scarcity, ownership and finite physical quantity – concepts that grew out of the agricultural and industrialised age – merely lock humankind into old, mental boxes of constraint and exploitation.
Information is ethically neutral.
Products, services, and organisations in which the value of the mental content begins to dwarf the value of the physical content require wise people of deep understanding.

Dee Hock writes this:

Thinking about a society based on information and one based on physicality requires radically different perspective and consciousness. However, we prefer too often to ignore the fundmental differences nd carry over into the Chaordic Age of managing information, ideas and values, concepts and assumptions that proved useful in the mechanised Industrial Age of machine crafting, the age of managing things; concepts such as ownership, scarcity, spearability, quantifiable measurement, statistical economics, mathematical monetarism, hierarchical structuralism, and command-and-control management.
The birth of the Chaordic Age alls into question virtually every concept of societal organisation, management, and conduct on which we have come to rely. Clinging too rigorously to old concepts, dismissing new concepts too lightly, protecting old forms that resulted from those concepts too fiercely, imposing those forms on a changing society too resolutely, are a certain path to failure.

>Mr and Mrs

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>I think I take after my son Leo. From the day he started school he waged a campaign for the freedom to wear his polo shirt outside his trousers. He triumphed by wearing his trousers round his hips – too low for everyone else’s comfort but his own.
Our school governors put in a not so earth-shattering request that minutes of meetings referred to our Christian names and surnames, rather than our titles. As Chair I see it as a nice process issue to break down stuffiness. Guess what. The clerk’s manager says “you can’t do that because the minutes form a historic record”. Can’t do that – to me that’s a red rag to a bull and a reminder of Dee Hock’s theology of chaordic organisations: “Heaven is purpose, principle and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.”
“Can we challenge that?” I said loosening my metaphorical trousers. “Save it for more important battles” was the advice of the clerk. Reaching for my metaphorical gunbelt I have to say that I suspect that these days most people prefer not to be known just by their clan name, but also the name that marks them out as special and as individual, that we want to have power over our name calling (don’t call me that please …) and that we want to see our-self as part of that historic record. So, I’ll reach for the phone to return fire. Now shall I begin “Hello Ruth” or “Hello Mrs Agnew”? It’s good to take after your children – once in a while isn’t it?
Below – too far below – the hazard of low slung trousers.
http://www.youtube.com/get_player

VISA

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Today, before any audience in the world, I can hold a VISA card overhead and ask, “How many of you recognise this?” Every hand in the room will go up. When I ask, “How many of you can tell me who owns it, where it’s headquartered, how it operates, or where to buy shares?” a dead silence comes over the room. The audience realses something extraordinary has occurred and they haven’t a clue how it happened. Nor, in my opinion should they. The results of the best organisations are apparent, but the structure, leadership, and process are transparent.
Dee Hock – Birth of the Chaordic Age p189

>Now can you see over the wall?

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How we need each other! This celebration of cooperation is enacted in Catalan at various festivals.Besides the people who actually climb, many are also needed to form the the base of the castell. They help sustain the weight and act as a sort of safety net. How about this as a team building exercise for our clergy conference, or something for our all age worship?

Dee Hock agonised over what makes an institution or organisation and has this to say: “Healthy organisations are a mental concept of relationship to which people are drawn by hope, vision, values and meanikng, and liberty to cooperatively pursue them.” (p120) Healthy organisations induce behaviour whereas unhealthy organisations compel behaviour and are destructive. He adds: “Without a deeply held, shared purpose that gives a meaning to their lives …. communities will disintegrate, and organisations become instruments of tyranny.”

“People deprived of self-organisation and self governance are inherently ungovernable.” (p121)

A free image from wikimedia commons