What I Learned from Organic Community

What I Learned from Organic Community by Joseph Myers – November 5, 2014

Organic Community: creating a place where people naturally connect by Joseph R. Myers

This book pits the idea of master planning against organic order. The overarching analogy (in my mind) is that of a city whose architects have a master plan. They design parks and business districts, they map out neighborhoods and roads and for everything to be successful, everything must submit to the master plan.  Organic order is not chaotic but follows the flow of what is happening naturally. So it is about building the playground close to where the kids live rather than forcing the families to move to the neighborhood with the playground.

The master plan is paint-by-numbers; organic order is the blank canvas of the artist.

 In organic order, patterns are descriptive not prescriptive. In the church world this relates to the oft referred to passage from Acts 2:42-47. The early church was devoted to the Apostle’s teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. That is descriptive, it is telling us what they did. It is not telling us that we have to do that or more specifically it is not telling ushow we have to do that.

 As a side bar Myers throws in something that he learned from Edward Hall’s theory of proxemics, which is that people relate to others in terms of their spaces. We have public, social, personal and intimate relationships with others.

Public connections would include people who root for the same sports team. We may not even talk to one another but when they pass by someone in the mall who is wearing the jersey of their favorite team they know they are a part of that invisible community of fans.

Social connections go a little deeper. here we start to share little bits of information about ourselves and exchange small favors. This would be the neighbor you borrow sugar or a rake from but whom you would still not consider a friend.

Personal space is for friends with whom we share even more of ourselves and lastly, the intimate space is reserved for only a few who get to know all of who we are.

These definitions are not made so that someone would create a process for moving another down a relational assembly line until they are intimate with everyone in their group. This is just about having an understanding of the different ways that people do relate to one another.

 Participation is key to organic community. In the church programs and systems (master plan tools) are often relied on to get people involved. There is a sense of safety there and less risk. But ultimately this system sees people as commodities and limits people’s ability to really participate and contribute. It puts more trust in a program than in a person.

 In organic community the groups health is not measured linearly but narratively. Look again to the book of Acts. There are certainly times in which we are told about some numbers of people who were praying together or converted on a certain day. The power in the book of Acts however is not via linear measurement, it is the stories of the Holy Spirit working on and through the Apostles to birth the church and spread the movement througout the world. It si about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. It is about Paul and Silas and the Philippians jailer. Linear measuring makes us anxious, depressed, panicked or proud and self-reliant.

 Growth should be sustainable and not sterile (Myers uses the term “bankrupt”). How I understood this chapter was in line with what we are trying to do with this church planting effort. We had a problem at the Utica church: a full parking lot and a building that could not handle further growth. We had to consider building an addition or relocating to a larger facility but in the end those would (hopefully) only be temporary solutions. Let’s say we a bigger building and parking lot were made and the cost to the church is $200,000. In 3 years we are filling the new lot but because we are still in debt from the last project we cannot continue to grow that way – we will have to wait to build bigger. Momentum is lost and this growth strategy becomes sterile or bankrupt. That’s not to say other solutions cannot be found, we could then go to a second service, etc. But what if we could grow and keep growing in a sustainable way? I believe it was this type of thinking that made the cell-celebration model of church so attractive to me.

 In regard to power, Myers says that organic community has power that is revolving rather than positional. Positional power is a noun, something to be obtained and had by an individual. That typically brings responsibility, stress and eventually lonliness (because the power is not shared). Revolving power uses power as a verb – empower. Power is shared and whoever makes the most sense leading does so not because they step up and tell everyone to follow them but becasue the group recognizes that in that venture they are the best person to follow. Power is a shared experience.

 I like this quote in the next chapter on coordination (moving from cooperation to collaboration)

“we can be as intentional with community as we are with going to sleep. It is almost impossible to make yourself go to sleep. In fact, the more intentional you are, the less likely it is that you will fall asleep. A more helpful way forward is to create an environment in which there is a good chance you will fall asleep.”

 This was a great book for me. I actually read through it back in June but I’m just writing up this post because of summer camp work I was doing at the time. If anyone is interested in gaining a deeper appreciation for community you should get the book and read it through.