Daring to Risk

I've just finished reading 'The Starfish and the Spider' by Brafman and Beckstrom. It's all about leaderless organisations, or, more accurately, organisations where the leader is willing to forgo centralised control for the benefits of networking and influence.


Anyway, it occurred to me that this is exactly what Jesus did. As a pastor I'm constantly receiving teaching and training on how to run my local congregation better, and generally the principles are based on solid management practices. That's ok, because a church has to have structure and there are elements of the church that need to be managed well. But Jesus didn't seem to operate with the same paradigm.


After three years with the disciples he trusted them to get on with the job. Now I know that Christ is the head of his church and that the Holy Spirit leads, guides and empowers the church, but the reality is that Jesus was willing to trust that these men would fulfil the mandate to go and make disciples - and they did. I also note that in the book of Acts the disciples did exactly the same that Jesus did. They went from city to city, made disciples, formed gospel communities, and left them to it. Admittedly they checked back on these communities in each city, and wrote letters to fix the problems that developed, but they were willing to risk (or should we say trust??) that the Holy Spirit would ensure the health and strength of these new ventures.


Obviously things didn't always go according to plan (the epistles are proof of that) and things got a little chaotic and out of control at times, but that was ok because after all, it's Jesus' church, not ours. So I guess my observation is that with the growth of networks and loose affiliations in our post-post-modern post-Christian culture we need to risk and trust more.


As I was reading this book I got a little excited because it sounded very much like the church in the first couple of centuries. I don't think we can go back to that, but I do think that since the modern western world looks very much like that of the early church we could remember to risk more, trust more, believe that getting the credit for what happens really doesn't matter. What is far more important is that the gospel is communicated through people and communities in relationship and that ordinary people really can be salt and light in their world.


The subtitle of the 'Starfish and Spider' book is, 'The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organisations.' The real power that was evident in the 'starfish' that was the early church was that it was really leaderless, it's leader was Jesus, and he's still able to do remarkable things with people who dare to risk.