Centralization Before Decentralization
by Ben Sternke on April 2, 2012
Why do some missional ventures that look so good “on paper” fail so miserably in real life? Why do some of the best-laid plans for mission end up not actually accomplishing all that much? Because of how I’m wired up, I have a propensity to believe that an efficient system, a simple plan, an elegant strategy should automatically yield good results. But this just isn’t the case sometimes. Why is that?
One answer, I think, has to do with the relationship between discipleship and mission (yes, I know we shouldn’t bifurcate those two things from a theological standpoint, but from a practical standpoint I think it will help us). Last year my friend Tim Catchim wrote a little blog post that got me thinking about this. (Incidentally, Tim has also recently published a fantastic book with Alan Hirsch called The Permanent Revolution.)
In the post, Tim quotes Karl Weick, who writes, in his book Making Sense of the Organization,
whenever you have what appears to be successful decentralization, if you look more closely, you will discover that it was always preceded by a period of intense centralization where a set of core values were hammered out and socialized into people before the people were turned loose to go their own “independent, autonomous” ways.
Think of decentralization as mission, and centralization as discipleship. It seems to me that when we push for rapid mobilization for mission before taking the time to build a solid foundation of discipleship, we see ineffective or short-lived mission. The way Tim put it was “decentralization before discipleship equals dissipation. Decentralization after discipleship equals movement.”
Discipleship is the “intense centralization” process that happens before the “decentralization” of mission. Discipleship is where the core values are hammered out, where people are socialized into a new way of life before being “turned loose” to join Jesus in the renewal of all things. The disciples were trained extensively by Jesus for three years before being sent to “make disciples of all peoples.”
The problem is, as Tim points out, that most of the centralization/discipleship that occurs in churches is purely information-based. We expect a sermon/Sunday service to be sufficient for training, equipping, forming God’s people as disciples of Christ. As most of us know, it ain’t working. This is not the kind of centralization we need.
We ought to take our cues from the way Jesus “centralized” his own disciples. He did teach them, of course, giving them a theology of the kingdom that took awhile to digest. He wasn’t light on information! But he also lived out his mission in front of them, and then invited them to do what he was doing. In short, the disciples were able to imitate the things Jesus was doing, and this formed a key part of their training regimen in missional living.
3DM has a useful tool for talking about this process, shown below:
“Innovation” is the goal (disciples living out their missional calling, making more disciples of Jesus). But we can’t get there if all we do is give great information. We also need to offer our lives as an example to imitate. So Jesus gave them the Sermon on the Mount (information), but he also sent them out two-by-two do cast out demons and heal the sick (imitation). Imitation is the missing ingredient in most of our discipling (centralization) processes.
Thus one reason missional ventures fail, whether they be church plants or missional communties or training programs, is that we attempt to decentralize before we have sufficiently centralized. We try to send folks out on mission without really discipling them into a way of life that will sustain mission. We try to get them to move into missional innovation without giving them adequate experiences of imitation first.
Does this resonate with your experience? Can you think of examples of merely information-based discipleship/centralization? Examples of dissipation (decentralization before discipleship?) I would love to hear your thoughts.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Ben,
Great thoughts and very timely for me and our church plant right now. This definitely resonates because we are nearing the end of our "information" period and moving towards imitation.
I tried a missional/discipleship oriented movement about 4 years ago with our Jr./Sr. high youth group when I was a Youth Pastor. It didn't totally fail, but one of the major issues we had was I poured all this information into them (the leaders and students) and then decentralized almost overnight. I literally pulled the rug out from underneath their feet and yelled "Now Go make disciples!" and a few months in, the momentum was really dying down because I didn't create any space for imitation. It was a valuable learning lesson, however, I wish I would have grasped this Biblical philosophy back then.
Aaron
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Fantastic example Aaron. Thanks for commenting!
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This is really good stuff. Wish I had been thinking this way a few years ago. Thanks.
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Spot on, friend. Thanks for posting!
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This post (and Tim's) highlighted for me the importance of availability. A life worth imitating is worthless if it isn't available. Both structured and organic rhythms of availability are essential if imitation is to realistically occur. Sally Breen recently shared that availability is most easily realized when we invite others into the life we're already living (i.e. meals, errands, movies, trips out of town etc.)
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Definitely! Availability is key.
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Really good thoughts, Ben. In our 3 year planting journey, we've experienced the "too-soon" movement out, and we've been in the process of shoring up foundation and identity over the last 6 months. Excited for what God will do with a strong missional center!
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Great to hear Zach! May God give wisdom and guidance as you go.
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Yes, the centralisation component is long and hard when what you long to do is decentralise and 'get things going'. But until you change people's default setting then nothing is going to stick. Thanks for the reminder.
By the way – 3DM is seriously overusing triangles imho! Off the top of my head I can count 4: Lifeshapes Triangle, Covenant Triangle, Kingdom Triangle, Info-Imitation-Innovation. Just because there are three points it doesn't mean you have to draw it as a triangle! UP/IN/OUT works because the triangle demonstrates a kind of balance between the aspects. But Information–>Imitation–>Innovation does not seem to merit a triangle. What image would help fix this in people's minds? Something like a stick figure – with an arrow flowing from head (information) to hands (imitation) to feet (innovation)…? I know this seems minor but I think the right image is worth searching for…
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Ha! Thanks for your comment Richard.That is a common comment (about shapes being everywhere). There is something weirdly sticky, though, about putting information on a shape, even if it doesn't seem to correlate 1:1 to the concept being illustrated.It's just really difficult for people to forget any three points when you draw them around a triangle. So we'll go with it for now
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On the money, Ben.
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Thanks Jason. Hope all us well!
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Ben,
I think this is exceedingly helpful, both conceptually and with good language to frame it all. I, like you, most of the time believe that a good plan 'works itself out' but as your post is pointing out, the plan must still be worked out intentionally…the work of centralization/discipleship… Gonna be thinking about this for a while.
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Good stuff Adam. Great to hear from you.
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Good stuff Ben. You're tengentially touching on something I've been thinking about lately and will be blogging on later this month.
The short of it is this: I agree there is a need for what you're calling centralization, and I agree that is a necessary correction to the anti-institutional sentiments that often run strong in the last decade's Gen-X expressions of church, but I suspect many church startups fail before the need for centralization actually arises and they fail for a more essential reason than lack of formation.
Namely, the market for what we're selling is rapidly decreasing. More pointedly, if nobody is buying what we're selling then there's no need for an organizational structure to sustain the sales effort.
I'm going to suggest that after ten or so years it's become apparent that the missional/emerging church in the U.S. is largely a movement without followers – or, at least, it doesn't have enough followers to justify spending very much time, energy, or money on the centralization stage where systems of sustainability are created.
I'll be blogging about this after Easter.
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I'll be interested to read about it, Jason. Especially to hear how you define “what we're selling,” and how it relates to the good news of Jesus Christ.One possible further exploration (to extend the market/selling metaphor) would be the possibility of “creating demand” for “what we're selling” by concentrating on living out the good news (Newbigin's “embodied witness”).
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I made the mistake of decentralizing before discipling. In the first two years of our church planting, we started 4 new churches in our network and grew by leaps and bounds – but didn't have a discipleship foundation. As a result, those four groups eventually plateaued then withered. A couple died.
Now we are discipling at the foundation with huddles and the groups are growing back up as healthy, vibrant expressions of mission.
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Fantastic story of how this stuff plays out! Thanks for commenting.
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Stumbled on this blog and post from down here in Paraguay. Timely for us in our restarting of an almost dead church. Good point and one that my wife framed "we need to have something to take them to".
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God's blessings on Paraguay and your church there!
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