structure & organization

One of the things that NCD - Natural Church Development measures is Functional Structures

Earl Creps in Off-Road Disciplines writes

... missional leadership derives not from methods or strategies but from the work of the Holy Spirit to rearrange one's interior life.... the off-road disciplines, both personal and organizational serve to decenter me and my ideas by freeing up the place where Christ rightfully belongs... [p. xiv, xvi]

Alan Hirsch in The Forgotten Ways writes

God's people are more potent by far when the have little of what we would recognize as church institution in their life together. [p. 23]

In the west we tend [both from my experience and my observations] to spend a lot of time, money, and energy on the institution. And much of the time that expenditure is on maintaining the organizational institution, the by-laws, the voting, the decision-making process. We spend little time on asking how do we live out this thing we called the church - our life together in Christ, empowered by the Spirit of God so that God's kingdom is manifest [as we say we pray in the Lord's (disciple's) Prayer].

As Creps says... we [personally and the church] need to be decentered.

It's been an interesting journey for us these last, almost 3 months now since we left Trinity. I've never been in a place where we were free to visit a variety of churches to see what God was/is doing. I know that "visiting a church" [what a wierd, North American, consumeristic, non-participatory, non-biblical term] doesn't tell you everything that God is working in that place. But...

• ...shouldn't there be some evidence of the presence of God?
  
• ...shouldn't there be some evidence that what is happening on a Sunday AM is a result of the presence and power of God's Spirit working in a people?

Yes, there needs to be structure in order for there to be freedom and health, but organization and institutional stuff never replaces what the Spirit longs to do.

We visited a church in England, many years ago. Janice was going to Capernwray Bible College near Carnforth, I was hitchhiking through Europe and Maroc. We were able to spend a couple of weeks together over Christmas - New Years. Everything that happened in this church we visited was about a move of the Spirit many years earlier. It was so sad. As sad as people today, when asked, what God is doing in their life, go back to a conversion experience many years previous... that's wonderful, but the God I worship and long to know increasingly more, is changing, transforming me now.