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Meta level of church organization

Saturday, 04 September 2010

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Meta level of church organization

My continual consideration on the mechanism of social community groups led to the following revelation: any successful organization will need its best strategical minds on the meta-level of how to set rules for the group. This has critical implications for any church or caregroup, as well as the larger Body of Christ.

Business model:

while the primary focus is the central aspect of the business, the core function that defines the existence of the group

for business, it is the design and making of the product
for a church, it is the pastor's sermons and the key programs of the church without which the church would no longer be unique

the next critical component is a component that decides on a Meta-level how people will interact in the group, that defines culture, quality, and rules of internal engagement

in a business IT setting, it is the setting of rules and definition of methods by which we interact, cooperate, grow the organization into a community, interact effectively, and do things effectively
this is often lacking in church, small group, etc, because we can get away when the group is small. As groups get larger, this component is critical

after this, we have the less essential groups of business units, front and back office, and legal, in order that the organization functions.

In the Business Model context, the best coding talents are invested to:

create tools that everyone uses for productivity
implicitly defines corporate culture, large scale collaboration within the company
acts as gateways to define quality, filter in the hiring process to induct only the best candidates
quality control on the products produced, to enhance customer experience

We all talk about the pursue of excellence and innovation. But few knows the secrets to generating them. While a few recent authors start to recognize the importance of the environment and culture surrounding the innovative leaders and designers, none understands the connection to the need for the meta-level component that nurtures such environment and culture.

We see the essential nature of this component, in various models and disparate social contexts:

designers of the US constitution are brilliant at designing the system of interaction, but also calls for the law making/improvement body to be critical
IT and interaction within the Business Model context
internet social network success due to good interaction rules
small groups that work
marriages (this is an area of what is lacking!)

In the church setting, we have yet to see such a component becoming prominent, but the best and fastest growing innovative churches are implicitly putting such a component central to the organization, with the lead pastor often a champion for such ideas. The 2nd generation AA churches can really take off and fly with this recognition (the need for the meta-component), because inherent in its cultural heritage is the pursue of excellence.

So any groups that makes a priority for periodic review of itself

metric to measure progress
meta-component to discuss ways to improve on how to do things
make collaboration and communication/interaction a priority

will be sure to succeed

Applicable to marriage, care group, church, business, and all forms of organizations.

Direct applications to a church, the meta-component should optimize on how to:

conduct possibly boring long meetings: how to make them NOT
run retreats and internal growth activities
interact with other churches and organizations in joint activities
evangelize and outreach
interact with internal members, care for, nurture, and train them to be agents