Church Organizational Culture

Life Around the Cross

The dawn of the 21st century brought a focus on organizational culture. Every organization is characterized by a culture, including churches. In fact the culture of a church perhaps does more to contribute to her success or failure than corporate culture contributes to a business in the secular realm. Various characteristics combine to form corporate or church culture. David Byrd stated that values, beliefs, habits, and goals form corporate culture. (Byrd, “Communicating Your Corporate Culture,” 08 Aug. 2008)

So what characteristics combine to form the culture of a church? Personally, I prefer the metrics used by Christian Schwartz in Natural Church Development when considering the combination of characterics that form the church culture. Admittedly, this is a risky discussion, as I may be accused of being unspiritual since I am describing the way a church feels and functions in rather technical terms. I don’t particularly like it either. As a pastor, I like the feel-good side of the church. However, if you as a pastor or leader desire to drastically improve the culture of your church, you may need to get somewhat technical in order to improve the spiritual. Church leaders sometimes consider dealing with business or technical aspects of the church as unspiritual or that those things will take care of themselves. Sometimes these very unspiritual aspects have great effects on the growth and success of a church.

Now back to the Natural Church Development (NCD) quality characteristics that have great effect on church organizational culture. NCD lists eight:

1. Empowering Leadership
2. Gift-Oriented Ministry
3. Passionate Spirituality
4. Funtional or Effective Structures
5. Inspiring Worship
6. Holistic Small Groups
7. Need-Oriented Evangelism
8. Loving Relationships

For NCD the focus is on the adjective preceeding the characteristic. The reader might easily understand all but one of the metrics listed- Functional Structures. All of the other characteristics may receive a high quality, but if the (FS) measurement is low, the church may be unhealthy. Within (FS) characteristic are things that support the growth culture or inhibit it such as:

1. Constitution and Bylaws
2. Personnel and volunteer selection policies and proceedures
3. Explicit and implicit policies
4. Official and tacit influencers
5. Schedules and calendars
6. Programs, silos, and turf mentality
7. Confining mental models
8. Proceedural practices such as how meetings are conducted
9. Buildings, facilities, property and how it is managed

Church planters acknowledge that there is tension between the need to establish structures to provide protection and stability and the need to maintain a spontaneous empowering growth culture. Many church planters desire to delay establishing structure as long as possible, or at least for two years or the point where the new church has received as much as possible from the initial launch momentum. For instance, Saddleback Valley Community Church waited for years to purchase property and build, while another church plant bought property within a year. The latter church may have short circuited their growth.

I believe church leaders must be intentional about these factors that greatly affect the culture of the church. Leaders can establish structures with the emphasis on “functional” or “effective.” Herein is the connection to Simple Discipleship, which will gradually shape the church culture to be one that is disciple-making and transformational. Like corporate metrics for micro-culturescaping, SD also deals with the church’s values, beliefs, habits, and goals. Within the SD process, the leaders remain focused on the spiritual growth of people, while the members subscribe to “chosen accountability” through self awareness using the SD 360 Survey.

Think about it. What do the structures say to present members as well as new members and guests? What might your church look like if the structures were redesigned to be empowering, effective, and functional? Simple Discipleship can help.

Blessings,

Dr. Tom Cocklereece