Get Those Muscles Talking

As fitness experts have advised us a strong core is essential for a healthy body. What they will also tell us is that when one set of muscles are working they are talking to other sets of muscles. So, if I stretch my arms over my head, the muscles that are stretching are talking to the muscles around my waist. What are they saying? "Get moving"! If my waist muscles refuse to budge, then the chances of me pulling a muscle just went up about 1,000 fold.

Think of the committees and boards in your church as sets of muscles. Do these muscles work in concert with one another? When one moves, do the others follow in order to keep the whole body healthy and without injury? Or, is it more like each committee or board is an isolated muscle unconnected to any other muscle. No one talking to each other until one of the other muscles/committees gets strained?

Christian Swarz in his church growth series talks about how churches grow organically using basic biotic principles much like plants do. The first principle is interdependence. Bascially what this means is that the way each part is integreted into the whole system is more important than the parts themselves. (Sound like our muscle analogy?). So that whatever happens in one area actually has an effect on all other parts. A poor root system will determine the beauty of the bud.

To put it into church language...the heads of all boards or committees should be talking to each other because what happens in one group will effect the others and the whole. Too often all we do in this regard is "report out" what each board/committee has done and then spend time answering questions about how this decision will change another committee's decision, putting out fires that flare up, and facilitating a string of after shock meetings.

I can hear you asking "but how much more time will that take to get everyone together, isn't that what the committee's are supposed to do on their own without having to get everyone involved, AND I am not attending another meeting." Fair questions. And I wonder just how much time is spent cleaning up the aftermath of an isolated decision that effects everyone else? Or, perhaps the bigger question is how effective is the structure of your church to promote interdependence? Could there be a better organizational structure that would allow the "muscles to talk to each other?"

I know some of you have done this. Let's hear how it works in your congregation.