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June 29, 2011
Blessed Redundancy
Engineering a ministry around a single leader is inherently dangerous, but what's the alternative?
I like airplanes, and given the amount I travel that is a good thing. Seeing these incredible machines--aluminum and composite monuments of human ingenuity--makes the atrocities of most American airports almost bearable. (My genetically tanned, ambiguously ethnic appearance must scream “al-Qaeda!” I get patted down more than Donald Trump’s mane on a windy day.)
Modern airliners, as one author put it, are “the most complicated machines man has ever built.” But they are still regarded as the safest form of transportation. There are over 20,000 commercial flights every day in the United States. If you were to drive rather than fly one of those routes, you would be 65 times more likely to be killed. Perhaps more surprising, since 1980 the number of airplanes, flights, and passengers has doubled, but accidents per year have been declining. Flying is five times safer now than 30 years ago.
How is that possible? There are many factors that contribute to air safety, but a significant one is what the industry calls “redundancy.” Modern airliners are engineered so that everything necessary for flight has a back-up--engines, control systems, computers, fuel lines, hydraulics, even the pilot. As a result no single failure should cause an aircraft to crash.
The brilliance of redundancy was displayed last year when a Qantas A380, the world’s largest passenger jet, experienced what the industry calls an “uncontained engine failure.” One of the airplane’s four engines violently exploded in flight sending metal shrapnel through the wing and fuselage. (I’m guessing what the passengers experienced at that moment would be called an “uncontained underwear failure.”) You can watch a video of the incident online.
The A380 was severely damaged. The engine was destroyed, numerous control systems had been cut by the flying debris, fuel was leaking, flaps on the left wing were inoperable, and the landing gear damaged. Still, the pilots were able to fly for almost two hours before landing safely. Redundancy saved the day.
This lesson from civil aviation may be relevant for the church today.
Many churches, both large and small, seem to engineer their ministries around the antithesis of redundancy--singularity. A single leader becomes the focus of nearly everything that happens, and I’m not just talking about on Sunday morning. I’ve seen some churches become paralyzed when the senior pastor is on vacation or even just out of the office. He is expected to provide guidance on every decision, every committee, every tiny detail of the church’s life and ministry.
When it comes to the daily operations of an organization, many of us can recognize the dangers of singularity and say, as Jethro did to Moses, “What you are doing is not good.” (Exodus 18:17). But what about the issue of singularity on a longer time horizon? For example, earlier this week we posted the video of John Piper and Tim Keller discussing their churches’ succession plans. Keller shared how Redeemer Presbyterian is establishing a redundancy of leadership so his retirement won’t send the church into a tailspin. Even now Redeemer is “engineering” multiple congregations, multiple leaders, and multiple teachers.
At the time the video what shot, Bethlehem Baptist, John Piper’s church, didn’t yet have a plan. If Piper’s critical role in the ministry suddenly failed or became vacant, it may have put the whole organization in jeopardy. Apparently they now have a three year plan in place to transition Piper out of the senior pastor role. But will they simply replace him with another superstar, or re-engineer the ministry toward greater redundancy like Redeemer?
The danger of singularity is increased by the recent trend toward video-based multi-site congregations. Rather than mitigating the risk of having a single teaching pastor, it actually compounds it by making more people and congregations dependent on one person. Now if that one pastor leaves or “fails” many more things are put at risk.
But whenever I’ve discussed this inherent danger with those operating video-based multi-site systems they invariably mention the efficiency and effectiveness of their model. Who can disagree? Utilizing one highly gifted person to impact thousands of people in multiple cities is unquestionably efficient. And trying to operate a multi-leader, multi-teacher, multi-congregation network is very complicated--as Tim Keller admits in the video.
But who decided that efficiency and effectiveness were the highest values for ministry? Building airliners with multiple engines, fuel systems, computers, and flight controls is very complicated. And all of those “redundant” parts add a lot of weight to the airplane. More weight results in burning more fuel to move it through the air. Burning more fuel costs the airlines more money to operate the airplane. Those higher costs are transferred to passengers in the form of higher fares. It might be possible to build a very inexpensive airplane with only one engine, one pilot, one computer (powered by Windows 7), and charge only $9.99 per passenger--but would you want to fly on it?
Engineering a ministry for redundancy is not efficient, but that shouldn’t stop us from investigating its other benefits. Consider the story from The Next Level Church that Leadership Journal published back in 2008. TNL opted for a team-based leadership structure with no senior pastor, no superstar singularity. In the interview they admit the inefficiencies of the model. But the redundancy also created stability.
At one point, Jared Mackey, TNL’s ministry pastor, was facing a rough season in his marriage. The rest of the team decided the best way to care for them was to give Mackey and his wife time away from the church to focus on healing. Dave Terpstra, TNL’s teaching pastor at the time, said, “If Jared had been the senior pastor, the church couldn’t have handled the crisis. the entire church would have been handicapped by his inability to lead and shepherd during that season.”
The redundancy built into The Next Level’s structure allowed both Mackey and the church to maintain stable flight. Mackey recalls the entire time as “really healthy.” His marriage was strengthened and the church didn’t falter.
Realizing the church can survive, and even thrive, for a season without them might give more pastors the courage and honesty to seek help for themselves or their marriages. But if the entire system is built on the premise of singularity rather than redundancy, it may keep more pastors in denial about their needs or reluctant to share their problems. In short, singularity may be more efficient in the short run, but redundancy may keep more leaders serving and thriving in the long run.
Maybe if the church learned a few lessons from the aviation industry we wouldn’t see so many pastors and congregations crashing and burning. And with a great many Baby Boomer-led megachurches facing transitions, the risk may only be increasing. So many of these large churches were engineered on singularity--one very dynamic leader/teacher at the center of the ministry. How will they transition? How will they re-engineer their ministries? Will singularity continue to be the risky norm? Or will more congregations come to embrace the wisdom of blessed redundancy?
Comments
Excellent article, Skye! You express many of my own concerns and thoughts very well. Thank you for addressing this topic. I know it may seem counter-intuitive to some, but this is a serious issue that needs to be thoughtfully considered and discussed by church leaders.
Posted By: Curt Parton | June 29, 2011 11:22 AM
If "success" is defined by how many people you get to show up for 90 minutes a week on a Sunday morning, than video venue is not only efficient, but successful.
However, if "success" is defined by a church's ability to make disciples who can make disciples (a producer culture vs. a consumer culture), it would be hard to find a metric that would say video venue is successful.
It's just that we value, count and call the wrong things "successful."
Posted By: doug | June 29, 2011 1:24 PM
I have to say Skye...nicely done.
I see the problem in that efficiency is great for engineering and work projects, but when we get down to the nitty, gritty of what Christianity is all about...efficiency falls apart.
Relationships, which is what Christianity is about, is highly inefficient because it takes time to build a relationship, time to get to know one another, and time to trust, and if that trust is broken...yikes...even more time for reconciliation.
It would seem to me that we should accept that efficiency in the church should be minimized...and spread the relationship so that no one person is the entire focus...keeping Y'shua the focus should be our goal.
Posted By: sheerahkahn | June 29, 2011 1:31 PM
It reminds me of an African proverb I heard once:
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Posted By: Theophilus | June 29, 2011 1:41 PM
I grew up and was brought up as a minister in a church, which enjoyed four-five guys preaching on three-four services a week. There was always enough room for practically anybody to share a testimony, a prayer, a song or some poetry. Last genre is very popular in Russian, Ukrainian or any other Slavic culture. The church went growingly through the perilous times of Soviet atheistic campaigns and persecutions and produced tens of capable dedicated ministers and thousands of dedicated disciples, who alreasy established many new churches. Off course, we always had large families. And our family lost our father, who led the church counsil through many years, experienced all the hardships of a leading minister. What can I see now? Beleivers struggling with themselves, their mariages, their shallow relationships... Passive, steadily declining congregations across the country, "successfully led" to complete failure by still impressively ambitious singularity.
What is a good news, however? Articles, like this one. Give some hope.
Posted By: Vik Feodorov | June 30, 2011 12:54 PM
I think Mark Driscoll nailed it on this one. Going multi-site (when done well) actually increases the amount of redundancy. When the guy up on the screen dies, retires, goes on sabbatical etc. almost the only thing that will change is the Sunday morning teaching. Campus pastors will still be the primary pastoral presence at most church sites, the campus pastor will still be welcoming, praying for, and running the local services, and the more distributed network of ministries and small groups is less dependent on one guy at the top.
Posted By: Rob | June 30, 2011 10:10 PM
Whoops, forgot to mention the link for the above.
From the Gospel coalition: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/09/28/dever-driscoll-and-macdonald-on-multi-site/
Posted By: Rob | June 30, 2011 10:12 PM
@Rob--I think you make a good point. However, even in multi-site churches I imagine that there will be numerous congregants who do most of their connecting through the Sunday morning service, unfortunately. It often takes time for believers to become a deeper part of a church community. Moreover, depending on where a person is in his/her faith journey, what happens on Sunday morning might be one of the key aspects of his walk. Yeah, it's not how it should be. Hopefully, it's just a first step in growing as a believer. But because this service is such a key part of so many folks lives, I think it's generally pretty risky to center it around one high-profile person.
Posted By: Ooii | July 1, 2011 11:14 AM
My criticism of this article is that this sentence should have been in all caps and bold: "But who decided that efficiency and effectiveness were the highest values for ministry?"
For the Church in N. Am today to make it in a healthy way into tomorrow, this questions MUST be pondered.
And Rob's comment made me giggle. Thanks for the laugh Rob!
Posted By: Brianmpei | July 2, 2011 7:33 AM
"Maybe if the church learned a few lessons from the aviation industry we wouldn’t see so many pastors and congregations crashing and burning."
You got this all wrong. The Bible is the only source for direction for the body of Christ. What is so insufficient with the Bible that you would make a statement like this? Is the Bible not clear enough to you or to the monolithic clergy? Any and every church that has one pulpit and many pews lined up for all the non-clergy to sit and listen has a severe problem with "singularity", even if that singular pulpit is shared between two or three men. It's all so monolithic compared to intense every member participation God designed for us.
Traditions of men has been trumping truth for a long time. Thinking of amazing airplanes will not solve it.
Posted By: Tim | July 2, 2011 3:05 PM
Tim, the Bible establishes hierarchy in the church, it is not something man-made. The Bible mentions elders, preachers, teachers, deacons, etc.
Posted By: Barbara | July 2, 2011 10:18 PM
Barbara
Elders, preachers, teachers, etc are not points of elevation on a pyramid of power. They are functions, gifts, and maturity points shared among many. We are all royal priests. We are all brothers and sisters. We are all "members of one another". The Catholic church has a basis for hierarchy, not the Bible. The term "rule" in the Bible is one of several bogus translations along with the term "office". The whole web of Biblical deceit on this issue wrapped around the house hold of faith cannot be resolved in one blog post.
It may be the hierarchy thing is all you have heard as you sit in the pew. To have a "noble" faith, you must examine what your are told and compare it with the scriptures to see if it's true. Acts 17:11. That is what I have done. Everything on leadership must be filtered through Jesus teaching in Matt 20 & 23. Nothing Paul said can be interpreted to contradict Jesus words.
Posted By: Tim | July 3, 2011 12:06 AM
There is a hierarchy, and people had to meet certain qualifications to hold certain positions. Paul scolded the church in Corinth in 1Cor chapter 5 for not throwing the immoral brother out of fellowship. This means that certain people had positions of leadership and were told to exercise that leadership. It's funny that so many people claim things are mistranslated when it doesn't agree with their own positions. I know that a lot of scholars have gone through the texts and I don't look to things as being mistranslated if I disagree, I conform my beliefs to the Bible as much as I can, instead of thinking that I have the correct idea, not the scholars through about 2000 years. Jesus didn't speak to every single issue, and I believe that all of the Bible is true, not just the "red letters". Paul specifically said he was not using his own words, but the words given to him by God. Paul told one church to pay their pastor, and so yes, everything was not a roundtable discussion among themselves.
Posted By: Barbara | July 3, 2011 1:02 AM
Tim is right, hierarchy does not exist in the church, functionality does. The twelve acted as apostles/judges, look at the OT as to the functionality of the Judges in the OT, same, same here...well, there, but here, today as well.
The reason Paul went to town on the Church of Corinth is because the church, not the hierarchy, but a majority of the people in the church were tolerating the fellow(s) indicating a "compromise" between faith and the world when it should have been a no-holds-barred-kick-to-the-curb.
Paul, at the time, was dealing with a nascent and ascending gnostic incursion in the gentile church's dogma which wouldn't be resolved for another two century's because of the "tolerance" issue that the people had with those who had a syncretic faith.
Kind of like today with regards to the issue of ordination of actively homosexual people...it's not so much the ordination rather the tolerance (read: compromise) with the world's view about how "it's kind of archaic/medieval to be so exclusive/discriminatory" towards homosexuality. Like those in Corinth, today's church doesn't want to look "weird" because one person expresses themselves differently, and besides...shouldn't we be "tolerant"?
Read Paul's shake-down again of Corinth...it is quite eye-opening.
Context can be just as illuminating to our present situation as to what was being addressed in Paul's day.
Posted By: Sheerahkahn | July 3, 2011 11:39 AM
So-called hierarchy in a church is nothing more, but a myth, "Pagan Christianity"(from F.Viola's great, but not complete, book on this subject). A type of control system, borrowed form the world, a famous Egyptian pyramid, famously adopted by Moses then copied. This is not of the Gospel, and that famous passage from Ephesians does not suggest any hierarchy at all, Barbara, but distinction of calling, work and offices. Singularity produces only anemic, inactive consumers, not Christ's, but man's followers. That's what is evident in the American church. It's time to cry out for deliverance from this type of system, not to defend what works only for a very limited group of people - clergy, in abundance manufactured by many theological institutions of this country! There is also a lot of room for individual leadership, stewarship and responsibility in a Gospel-type of church, when it's led by the Holy Spirit.
Posted By: Vik Feodorov | July 3, 2011 3:48 PM
@Ooii
Fair enough. But that's more a problem with the proportion of preaching being done by one guy, being multi-site or video-based doesn't really change that.
@Brianmpei
Your comment was honestly a little hurtful to me. I don't mind if you disagree, but doing it in such a dismissive a way is not how brothers should act.
Posted By: Rob | July 4, 2011 2:23 AM
It doesn't matter all that much - 5 pastors or 1 pastor - if you only have 5 members of your body functioning, your body is dead - or at best on permanent life support.
The real purpose of the institution is to support the staff - not the people.
Posted By: Jerry | July 5, 2011 6:30 AM
@Rob, my apologies. I thought you were being ironic.
When you said, "...the only thing that will change is the Sunday morning teaching." I'm afraid I thought "only thing" to be tongue-in-cheek. Isn't the whole purpose of "multi-site" because we're convinced that one guy really can do a better job of teaching - even by video - even in remote locations - than anyone else? I mean, we don't say that but isn't that the implication? So when you said, "the only thing" I honestly thought you were being ironic. It wasn't my intent to be dismissive.
Posted By: Brianmpei | July 5, 2011 9:40 AM
Thanks for the apology; all is forgiven.
And yes, I guess that is the implication (either that, or it frees up other pastors' resources to be used elsewhere), but I still don't see how one gets from there to a disastrous effect when the senior pastor leaves. I guess someone considered less qualified takes over, but it's the same situation in any church. I guess it makes sense if we consider the hour of Sunday morning teaching to be the most important part of a church's role, but I think many people would disagree with that.
Posted By: Rob | July 6, 2011 12:04 AM
Outstanding article Skye... the age of the celebrity super star pastor, even in small town settings, has got to give way to a healthy use of the whole body. Too many churches explode when the senior leader explodes and the shrapnel is horrifying. If the churches were not reliant on one person to be their 'representative of God' then everyone would begin to take responsibility to represent Him in their own contexts.
Posted By: Bev | July 6, 2011 1:17 AM
@Rob. Thanks for your grace!
I think it seems like the "beginning of the end" in this scenario because I'm part of a T.V. generation. To me it's like replacing the lead in any successful T.V. show that tends to limp thru one more season and then die. Like it or not people are identifying with a personality.
I think you're right, most people would disagree that it's the most important part of the church's life and yet how can we then explain broadcasting that speaker to all these other sites? Why not let the area pastor speak each week? Or why not forgo the one man and pop in a classic message from a DVD by various speakers and save a whole salary?
I don't think this is the biggest issue for the Church but I do think the guys running these multi-sites that broadcast one main speaker aren't really being honest with themselves about it. There are multi-sites that share resources but don't broadcast one main speaker and I think those models will stay healthy into the future.
Posted By: Brianmpei | July 6, 2011 9:41 AM
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