At wrote in response to my request in LO27559 for stories of successfully
navigated organizational bifurcations, of churches in South Africa:
> Then in the middle nineties a few churches struck the spiritual gold.
> Rather than trying to involve the entire church, those having the free
> energy and commitment began to organise themselves into Small Communities
> Of Practice (SCOPs) with between 6 and 10 members. Members of a SCOP began
> to care for each other by reaching out with deeds of love. They met once a
> week, studied scripture, prayed to and praised the Lord, helped each other
> with material and especially spiritual progress. They focussed on the
> quality of all actions within a SCOP rather than increasing the number of
> its members. Most importantly, the leaders of each SCOP met once a month
> to school themselves further in leadership.
> When a SCOP grew to about 12 to 14, another member would begin to attend
> the leadership meetings so as to become schooled in leadership. Eventually
> the SCOP would divide into two SCOPs each with its own leader. Two local
> churces which have succeeded in transforming themselves, began initially
> with some 10% of the their church members involved in SCOPs. Each took
> about 3 years to get more than 80% of their church members involved in
> SCOPS. At about the 60% mark the whole local church began to transform
> rapidly, often by way of bifurcations. They are now functioning as Living
> Churches (LOs) in the true sense of Scripture.
> Don, I have been particularly impressed how the organisation into SCOPs
> solved the problem of synchronicity. In both these local churches the
> SCOPS functioned exactly like biological cells. They would take in only
> members willing to commit themselves to God's ROL and to give rather than
> to take. They would divide into two cells once the cell has become to
> large to maintain uts internal consitency and coherency. Thus the
> "organisational bifurcation" needed was distributed over these cells and
> took some 3 years to become largely completed.
It seems then that there were two levels of organizational transformation,
which we might write as the individual+small group level and the small
group+whole church level. Your description leaves me wondering how the
groups in the second level "began to care for each other" in order to
avoid drifting (or tearing) apart.
I can offer some similar experiences in troubled companies, where small
groups of individuals began to try to work out problems they encountered
at their level. Unfortunately, in most cases, the management hierarchy
regarded these SCOPs with indifference until and unless they actually
began to accomplish something; then they were regarded with hostility, and
often formally disbanded. It seems to be absolutely necessary, in order
for such a solution to succeed, that there must be sponsorship from the
top of the organization (it also seems necessary, as in your example, that
the actual transformations be driven from bottom-up or at least
middle-out).
Best wishes to all for a season devoted to thoughts of peace,
--Don Dwiggins "The best way out is always through" d.l.dwiggins@computer.org -- Robert Frost
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