The Problem of Complexity

Is the church supposed to have complexity? Or should it be simple and organic?

The problem of complexity rise out of the previous 3 problems:

1. Clergy led Ministry
2. Church Buildings
3. Consumerism

When all 3 of these happen, you’ll get complexity.

Here are some of the things that complexity does to the church:

It goes from being an Organism to being an Organisation

When you read about the church, primarily it is an organic thing. It is the body of Christ comprised of real people with real gifts. It is malleable and changeable . But traditional churches function more like an organisation. There are elements of both in a church , but gradually organisation will start to dictate the organism. Organism has life, Organisation puts strangleholds on life.

It goes from being a Family to being a Business

The church can be explained in familial terms, such as father, brother, sister. But complexity pushes that family part out of the picture into a business.

Some people will notice this when you have a smaller church. When it was smaller, it felt more organic, it felt like a family. Once it became bigger, the family needed to stop and become a business.

If the makeup of the church changes into a new identity, then the behaviour of the church will follow.

If you think of the church like a hotel, then you check in and check out. If you think of church like a restaurant, then you’ll expect to be served, pay your money, and let someone else do the dishes. If you think of church as a hospital, then you’ll only come when you are sick. You won’t have relationships with the leaders because they are like the professional doctors.

If you think of it like a business, then you will see programmes and dollars before people and relationships. So things like budgets, policies, procedures, and board meetings dominate the communication in a church. Why? Because it is a business.

Big churches naturally lead to Complexity

We all want disciples to come to Christ and be plugged into the church, but complexity arises when churches become bigger in number. But this is one of the untouched assumptions that we all have, that a local church needs to keep increasing in people, with no end in sight. Some churches continue well past 10,000 people. They may split into different services, but it may come under the same ministry team and structure.

Just the sheer amount of people alone will add complexity. Communication lines dramatically get complex even beyond 15 people. The early churches were probably small gatherings of people in various houses. Even with the day of Pentecost, they did have larger gatherings at the temple, but primarily church-life would have been done on the smaller scale.

But any church that increases in size will start to come in contact with complexity. Adding size adds complexity, which makes discipleship complex and eventually forgotten.

Complexity makes change hard

With an organism, there’s a sense that change will naturally happen. Things will grow and divide. But with an organisation, change does happen but it isn’t a natural occurrence. Systems, policies, and procedures need to be put in place. Committees and budgets need to be created, along with spreadsheets and data. It makes the whole thing complex.

Now change is going to happen to any church. The more complex a church is, the more difficult change will be. Some churches, due to the difficulty of changing in an organisation, prefer to change as little as possible. They become static. They may even create complex procedures in order to make change hard to accomplish. Churches do go about changing things but because of the complexity of things, it is extremely hard to pull off.

For example, if the church increases in size, there will be a domino effect of change. You may have to make a new service, a new building, hire more staff, have a larger car park, adjust your finances. This all adds complexity.

The same could happen the other way. If your church was built on a certain amount of people, and the church dwindles then you are trying to figure out how to deal with less money or paying off certain things or letting go of staff. So decrease can lead to complex situations if you are a large church.

If things are complex, the ability to reproduce what you have is a very difficult thing to achieve. A church needs to think about what they are doing and ask,

“Can we reproduce this somewhere else?”
The more complex it is, the less likely.

Complexity taints our picture of church

If you think of what “church” is, you start to think of things like a buildings, people in pews, this sort of “event”. You dream about the best church and you may think of great lights and cameras. Great singers on a big stage with big screens.

But who said that this is the only way to do church? Who says that an event that goes for one hour, in a building, on a particular day, is what church is?

Therefore, because we think church is to be done a particular way we need the money, building, organisation and business to make church happen. Complexity taints our picture of church.

Some people are called “church-planters” because they have gone out and bought a piece of land. Maybe they have even built a large facility. How is this planting a church? It is planting a building. Are we supposed to plant church or plant disciple

Complexity assumes Healthy

Many churches have this assumption that in order to do church properly and biblically and lovingly, you need to make it complex. That is what a healthy church looks like. You need to have special systems in place to look after the money or the teaching needs to be done by a professional.

When you suggest that church can be simple, people think that that is not church. If it’s just in your living room and people chatting about Jesus, then there is no complexity to it. Church is to have complex buildings and arrangements.

I do believe that we should have order, but the modern church has squeezed out the simplicity of church.

I think much of our picture of church has been affected by the business world. We should get back to the basics and make it an organic thing rather than an organisation.