Churches
Dubai: Sony α6000
“A church is not the building, and it may not even need one.”
(Clyde Meador)
Our expectations of ‘organisation’ are being tested.
‘The church is not the building; it’s the people’ is a frequent refrain and, as we begin to rethink how we live and work, it feels like our ‘organisations’ are in trouble.
Whenever I travel within our more dramatic built environments, with their sky scraping churches to progress and grandeur, I’m struck by how alienated I feel and the simple question that arises within me:
What is that all about?
Of course, after a few days, I acclimatise and find awe and wonder in rooftop views or canyon-like streets but the ‘unreality’ haunts me. The aggressive architecture of these modern churches makes me feel insignificant, irrelevant, a mere speck in the organisation of our society.
And that’s what they are designed to do.
As I stare upwards, I see the tussle between ‘organisation’ and ‘organising’; the former more constructed, more material, permanent, a ‘thing’; the latter describing patterns of shifting relationships, fluid, living, endlessly poetic and creative.
When we find ourselves asking questions of work, purpose and vision, we might choose to embed creative structures that encourage generative relationships. We might organise in ways that are mutually supportive; with security, love, happiness and community at the centre of our efforts to relate together.
If we stay open to the emergence of a new future, our contemporary ‘organisations’ become an anachronism; an expression of past relationships, set literally in polished stone and glass, reflecting the assumptions of the old order back at us.
I’m reminded of Ellen Goodman’s pithy maxim:
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
As the nature of our work shifts, the old order will try to make itself felt in a new world. Looking at our tall buildings, I see with new eyes how so many of us are subtly (and not so subtly) coerced into structures which don’t serve us. I’m not sure these churches will survive this social evolution and I wonder if we will see through the power, status and profit motives that provided their foundations.
We might even realise that we don’t need them at all.
Notes:
I’m endlessly fascinated by the tensions between structures of thought and the architectures, both built and social, that we encounter as a consequence. Any facilitator will relate stories of ‘moving the furniture’ as they structure a room for a conversation that might disrupt the usual patterns of relationship and conversation. David Bohm says, “The point is: thought produces results but, thought says it didn’t do it. And that is a problem".” Take a look at ‘On Dialogue’ for a fabulous consideration of how we think and impact it has on us. Alternatively, download a copy of ‘Dialogue - a proposal’ by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garret.
Ralph Stacey brings complexity theory to his understanding of organisation and uses the term ‘cult value’ to describe how we forget the ‘as if’ part of our thinking and behaviour. Cult values include ideas like democracy, treating others with respect, regarding life as sacred, yet they can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. National pride and ‘loving thy neighbour’ could become cult values, as might racist purity and ethnic cleansing. Complexity and Organisational Reality is in its second edition and looks at the need to rethink management and investment capitalism.
In a sobering message, Magaret Wheatley tells us that “We create glorious buildings, cities, transportation and trade routes, music, aqueducts, dance, poetry, theater, sewage systems, canals, pottery, fabrics, farms, statues, monuments. And yet, these magnificent cultural manifestations are guaranteed to disappear….” She asks us to adopt ‘sane leadership’ and invest in the unshakable faith in people's capacity to be generous, creative and kind. ‘Who do we choose to be?’ is a grounding and inspiring read.
See also:
