So Many Books; So little Time

The Future of Religious Organizations

The Future of Religious Organizations: There is a Better Way Than Holding on With White Knuckles Until Whatever This is Goes Back to Wherever it Came From

By Arthur Jaggard

Per Art’s request (don’t let this discourage anyone from offering their own review)

I admit, I expected someone to have reviewed this work before now as many of you were reading it long before I received my copy.

A couple of points to make first off:
1. Any math more complex that multipication tables makes me dizzy.
2. I have never taken either a chemistry or a physics class even though I have substitute taught both.

Art spends the first third of the book laying out mathematical and scientific diagrams for his thesis which looks at the Central Region of ABC/USA and more specifically the Southeast Area as a model for how religious systems work. Once you digest (rather dizzily in my case–no I’m not blonde YET) the first two chapters, the reading becomes much easier and the ideas much simpler for us non-mathematical minded.

The basics are that religious organizations of all sizes are like families and like families they go through changes. During times of stability or perhaps good times where money is plentiful, large structures or large families with a central core work well. During times of instability or “poor” times, smaller groups work well. It felt to me as though he was saying that as long as we all have money, we are the family who reaches out to each other no matter where or when or how far apart we are. (Think of a 2nd or 3rd cousin 3000 miles away in the hospital with pneumonia. Well, you get on a plane and go see him simply because he’s family and it’s the right thing to do and you do it.) In hard times or unstable times, we band together with the family who is the closest to us, or the ones it doesn’t cost us anything to see and may in fact be to our benefit to see them. (Think of your sister who lives two houses down and will babysit while you work for half the price of the local day care or perhaps free just because she needs something to do.)

Art’s point of course with all his figures and models and equations is that all things must come to an end or at least to a conclusion and be reformed into something new. He points out the prosperity in terms of per capita baptisms (see multi-page chart in the back of the book) that the Southeast Area has enjoyed and suggests that hard times, they are a comin’. It’s time to reform the wagons and tipis into smaller circles and brew coffee for them invaders and show them the better way of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

He ends the work with the five stages of mourning that all must go through to afford change. For change is what his final conclusion is. We go no where without change. We cannot just keep doing what we are doing. It’s time for all of us to realize that, no matter whether we are a layperson, a pastor or the General Secretary. We must change, we must form smaller groups to work together more closely. While we should not ignore or toss the entire infrastructure out with the bathwater, we must make it more user friendly. We must become like the pioneers who founded this country who left the complex large family and started over with only the immediate family as they made their way west. They didn’t forget the old family, they most likely sent letters and maybe even received care packages but the larger family was no longer able to support them the way it had when they were close. In the same way, the old family must re-form without the smaller group close at hand.

Change is different. Change is difficult. Change must happen. How we deal with that change will reveal the character with which we reflect Our Lord.

Personal Footnote:

Thank you Art for letting me know what you were doing during the time you were helping us with our pastoral search. You started this research almost exactly at the same time we started our search. Ironically, you finished the research and much of the writing about the same time we finished our search. It was so interesting to note that while we were on a journey that sometimes felt as though it was going nowhere, you were on a journey as well. I wish it did not look as though those journeys would take us on divergent paths.

Change is hard.

As I finished the book today, I spoke with a cousin who is near, taking care of her mother, my aunt, who has for the past 40-60 years been the matriarch of my father’s extended family. She is now 93 and has suffered with the aftermath of pneumonia and hospital testing for more than 2 months. I find that no matter what, I MUST go see her soon as I may not get another chance. I found myself relating my father’s family and the possible loss of this aunt to the demise of the larger structure of the Central Region. Families do certainly seperate as the matriarchs and patriarchs leave this life and new ways of being family come about. No longer are there family dinners there or maybe even at all. It is a closure and it hurts even when the time has come.

I can hold on white-knuckled to an aunt, but I pray that in the grand scheme of things in the Southeast Area, I just do mission.

God Bless You Art

“Two roads diverged in a wood,
And I, I took the one less traveled by.”
Robert Frost