Apostolic Genius and Organic Systems

In chapter 7 of The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch discusses the next dimension of apostolic genius, what he calls organic systems. This is a dense chapter which I found intriguing and from which I will highlight a few of what I think are the most interesting and important ideas in it.

Hirsch discovered what is called the living systems approach as a model to understand and apply to the church. He writes,

A living systems approach seeks to structure the common life of an organization around the rhythms and structures that mirror life itself. In this approach we seek to probe the nature of life, we seek to observe how living things tend to organize themselves, and then we try to emulate as closely as possible this innate capacity of living systems to develop higher levels of organization, to adapt to different conditions, and to activate latent intelligence when needed...(p. 182).

His discussion about the living systems approach is congruent with Bandy's books like Building Spiritual Redwoods and Christian Chaos.

The concept that I found especially interesting and exciting is that of distributed intelligence. According to the living systems approach, all living things have innate intelligence, the ability to adapt, survive, and reproduce; and this ability extends not only to organic systems, but to systemic organizations like the stock market, cities, etc. So distributed intelligence has to do with the "capacity for developing higher life forms" (p. 182). The function of leadership, therefore, "is to unleash, harness, and direct distributed intelligence by creating environments where it can manifest" (p. 183).

This model is good news for the church because it takes seriously the gifts and calling of the laity, and trusts that by the power of the Holy Spirit and the presence of appropriate leadership the laity of the church will flourish. Rather than waiting for the clergy to do all of the work or to assign roles, etc., the Spirit can move in the congregation and use the unique gifts and callings of the congregation to emerge in ways that no one--especially the clergy--could have foreseen.

Another important concept in this chapter is that of movements. He defines a movement as

a group of people organized for, ideologically motivated by, and committed to a purpose which implements some form of personal or social change; who are actively engaged in the recruitment of others; and whose influence is spreading in opposition to the established order within which it originated (p. 191).

He argues that the apostolic church which turned the world upside down qualifies as a movement and he advocates for the church to be the church it must regain this movement ethos. He makes an interesting observation about the genesis of such movements: "new missional movements almost always begin on the edges of society/culture and among the common people. They are nonelitist. and they have the ability to excite and enlist others as leaders and participants" (p. 194). I think the history of rapid expansions of the Christian faith and awakenings bear this out for the most part.

The last part of the chapter discusses the importance of networks as opposed to institutional hierarchies. Borrowing from the sociological theory of Zygmunt Bauman (no relation to me), he discusses liquid modernity, a term that Bauman uses to describe the increasingly fluid nature of our current age. In order to address liquid modernity, according to Hirsch, we need a liquid church. "The defining element of this is church as a living, adaptive network highly responsive to the deep spiritual needs and hunger expressed in surrounding society" (pp. 197, 198). He has much to say about networks that I think are important and make me wonder how he views denominations in this model.