Organizing your religion - What Would Jesus Do?

One question is to ask how a Savior would organize his daily routines, establish primary relationships among a band of disciples, and make use of the many ways to communicate in writing and orally in person, by telecommunicating, or online with mobile devices and services. If the goal of reaching out to people most ready to hear his message (usually downtrodden, ill, financially broke or socially broken) remains unchanged, then amid the many distractions the message would also remain the same: to love God and to love one's neighbor.

    But another question, the one weighing down many church bodies, is about the organizational culture of expectations, standard practices, and administrative burden for record keeping and decision-making in a collective way. Clearly there are some matters that remain the same today as with the earliest groups in the Jesus Movement: things like attracting interest of outsiders to seek and learn and participate, cultivating care and responsibility for one another across the life cycle, worshiping together to praise God and to give thanks. Other things are vastly different then to now: religious persecution vs. freedom, house church scale and scope vs. traditional congregations of 30-150 (or the massive Seekers churches), segmented and mobile lives vs. days mostly lived out in a small circumference, households of multi-generation as social identity versus rugged individuals divorced, separated or married with considerable gender equality now vs. then. Against the few unchanged parts and the many different conditions for knowing God and relating to one's neighbors, the question remains: What Would Jesus Do if doing God's work involved an organized church, rather than his ad hoc band of believers?

    The church that I usually attend has a monthly meeting of elders/elected leaders whose discussions touch on the three layers of governance: budget (operations and administrative duties), executive (decisions to make), and vision and learning (thinking ahead, seeking the Spirit, caring for each other and the larger church of members and friends). Thanks to literacy and electronic communications the number of documents circulated before and after the face to face meeting seems to expand with no natural limit, sometimes amounting to a dozen or more items totalling 20 or 30 pages, some of which is dense or requires careful reflection and eventual discussion. Surely nothing like this took place in the itinerant orbit of early church leaders. They had no bulletin boards, monthly newsletters, webpages and Facebook sites, weekly email notices and the many communications of modern infrastructure: utilities, repairs, grounds maintenance, occasional wedding or funeral event, shopping and ordering supplies and curriculum materials, coordinating schedules for use of the building's rooms and equipment, updating office equipment and computer software, keeping up with email and voicemail messages, and so on. Again - how can all this busyness be reigned in and the entire experience of being a body of believers by streamlined to more closely look like Jesus and a handful of disciples? Looking at the matter from another angle, among contemporary church groups what is the "lowest maintenance" example of minimal organizational functions, while keeping the emphasis on praising God, loving one's neighbor and growing in one's service to the Creator?

    There is a spectrum of experiences among church goers from the ones who show up for weekly worship and then go home, on the one hand, to those who find themselves engaged in small groups, volunteer activity, and other work at church throughout the week. Paid staff shoulder much of the operational busyness, but the governing body (budget, decision making, vision and learning) seems increasingly to spend their energy with the myriad details of guiding and expanding the organization (rather than taking individual spiritual health and growth as the unit of analysis and object of efforts). All is conducted with good intentions, but then the road to perdition is paved with good intentions, too. So as the burden of entertaining talk of church matters gets heavier, the remaining time and interest in matters of the heart is diminished. Big and well-managed organizations can do things that small groups or individuals cannot. And yet the small group seems to be able to do things that organized bodies cannot; namely, abide with God's word and in one another's presence. Perhaps that is also what Jesus would do: eschew big buildings with their priority of perpetuating themselves, sapping the participant's vision and hearts. Instead he would stick with the love or one person at a time and therein find God.