Organization or Organism?

A few weeks ago, I attended a church leadership meeting at our pastor's house.  While there was plenty of business to discuss, Pastor Mark allowed time to connect with myself and the families of those on our leadership team on a more personal level.  He grilled American-style hamburgers and chicken, and the people who came all brought something, too.  While we had our 'official' meeting afterwards, it was equally valuable for everyone to just talk and get to know one another better.

This is a perfect illustration that the church is both organizational and organic.  Churches, like any other institution, have a business side.  Programs, initiatives, problems, committees, leaders, and a host of other things are all required for a church to function effectively, especially as a church begins to grow and expand beyond a few dozen people.

At the same time, the church is not merely another organization, business, or institution.  The church is God's bride, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.  Jesus gave us a command and a promise before He went to the cross, which is to love one another; the promise of this is that all people will know that we are His disciples.  This is one of the reasons why the theme for The Lighthouse this month is "Love One Another." 

As a teacher, I have meetings.  A lot of meetings.  All the time.  These meetings are critical for the instructors to be aligned with our students, other instructors, our tests and our curriculum.  However, though there are occasional casual discussions and jokes in these meetings, they are not bathed in love like they are in the church. In every church, there needs to be a balance.  Smaller churches tend to focus a lot on the love and connections, but may lack the business aspect.  Larger churches have the tendency to have a good corporate structure, but may need emphasis on loving and caring for one another. 

Our Jabriya worship service is a bit of both.  We are part of The Lighthouse Church, which is a large, multi-congregational international church.  Under the leadership of Pastor Warren, our senior pastor, and the rest of the pastoral team, The Lighthouse has been growing by leaps and bounds in terms of church structure and alignment across all congregations.

The Jabriya service itself has grown significantly from around 20 people at its start to averaging around 150 people.  This growth has challenged our service to also grow in our organizational structure.  What a few people could do in a 20 person congregation translates to a lot more in a 150 person congregation, along with procedures, processes and a chain of command.

One example of this growth and challenge would be outreach.  When our service started, a few of us could connect with all of the newcomers and tried to take them out to lunch or coffee with our families.  That was pretty easy in the beginning.  However, this is now nearly impossible with all the people we have each week.  With the growth of the service and the increase in responsibilities and time constraints for each leader, we realized the need to delegate to ensure everyone was reached. That's when the greeting ministry started, where we asked volunteers to be in charge of looking for new people, connecting with them and following up with them sometime during the week. Our service continues to do well at connecting people, but we are back in the growing pains of growing structurally while maintaining this love and care for one another. 

Please continue to pray for us as we go through this process of becoming a larger church service, and that God would raise up more volunteers and leaders to help with all the great things that He is doing in our midst.