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Flat Hierarchy
Are flat hierarchies tenable in the real world? The Superbowl XLVIII Champion Seattle Seahawks think so ... Danny O'Neil, Mike Salk and Dave Grosby discuss the outlier relationship between coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider. What are your thoughts regarding top-down vs. flat models of power distribution? Is consensus building worthwhile? What, if any, are the implications for the church? Leave a comment - let's have a conversation!
After reading through a number of comments about mutuality and consensus building and collaboration, I chimed in with this:
Organizational Management is my corner, in degree and work experience. One of the most powerful experiences I had was during a management workshop, where we were divided up into group of four or five and given a list of 100 tasks that must be done to start an organization. We each had to work alone to put them in order -- what came first, etc., all the way to what was the last thing you go. It took a bit of time to get your head around all 100 items and think through the process.
After everyone was finished, the group was tasked with negotiating a group order. The kicker was that everyone had to agree. No one could sit out and no one could give in. Everyone had to share why they picked the order they did and be convinced that they were wrong or convince others that they were wrong in order to come to a true consensus of which steps should be taken in which order.
Then, once that process was finished -- which took about twice as long as our personal ones -- we were given the "correct" order. We "graded" our individual efforts and then our "collaborated" effort. The results were striking.
The group got 95 out of 100 in the correct order. I got 95 out of 100 in the correct order. The interesting thing was looking at the precise ones each missed.
The five choices I made that were wrong were catastrophic. Like, what I put at 45 should have been at 3 and so on. They would have been difficult to recover from. It's not always how much you get right, but the nature of what you get wrong, eh?
Well, the group's five errors were all just one place off. Like 4 and 5 were transposed, or 33 and 32, or 73 and 74. None of those were even remotely catastrophic. It took the group to see where my five were so far off (and I had the best stats of the group) and negotiate together to see why a different order was better. We had one quiet person -- with great intuition but not much confidence -- that we had to remind many times not to cave to peer pressure...and it was this person's ability to articulate why they thought the way they did -- and the requirement that the rest of us HAD to listen and consider -- that brought us to the better decision almost every time.
That's a long example, but it has been a powerful lessons to me, almost 24 years later.
When Jesus, Creator and Sustainer of ALL, chose to be first among equals, it was the most important (and regularly the least recognized) example he set.
And he is still to be first. He is the source, the head, the initiator...but he includes us in each step of the process. He leads...so that we can follow and exercise all our gifts together. If we don't follow, he doesn't fire us or punish us or have a tantrum of blame and guilt. Because, in the end, he knows that it is our participation that is the real point.
This is the reality of perichoretic hesed -- the interpenetration of selves with one will, without loss of self, that moves with gracious loving-kindness for the best interest of the other...this is the Great Dance of the Triune God into which Jesus has brought us through his life, death, resurrection and ascension.
Jesus said we are to call no man "Father", because we have one Father in Heaven -- so the prestige and iron rule of patriarchy was set aside.
Jesus said we are not to be called "Teacher" or "Lord", because he is both Lord and Teacher ... and after his ascension, he sent the Spirit to continue educating the human race concerning our adoption as joint heirs with Jesus. [It is a long process, because we are not always apt students, eh?]
Jesus said we are not to lord it over one another. We are to participate in the Perichoretic cHesed of God, so that we might see each other in that same light and learn to dance in that same manner together in all our dealings.
It is breath-takingly simple, but also the most difficult of things to do, because it seems so counter-intuitive to those who have come to rely on experts to tell them what to do, instead of using their gifts and brains and hands and feet and hearts to see and hear with the Spirit is teaching them...so that they might be able to share it with the rest of The Body of Christ.
It's simple. But it's not easy...at least not at the start. Not until you have experienced your own five single-point failures, and have learned about your own blind spots, and have embraced with your whole heart that every person has an important perspective to contribute...but Jesus, with the Spirit, is the quiet voice of the Truth that we must train our eyes to see and our ears to hear and our heart to resonate with and follow.
James asked where he might read more about Perichoretic cHesed...so this is what I said:
I started thinking about perichoresis from the early days of Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog, back in early 2007. There were pieces of it floating around in my mind, but always just out of focus. I played with it, but just had to wait. The number of times I blogged about "I'm getting ready to blog about perichoresis" is pretty funny.
My long study of cHesed took an interesting turn in June of 2009, when I met Wayne Jacobsen at a weekend retreat for my small house church...and we talked about cHesed a bit and he said I had the order wrong...that cHesed is not something we do, it is something that we receive from God. My whole world began to spin as I pondered how I had managed to miss that we are to live loved by God first and foremost before we can ever respond to that love appropriately -- either to Love God or to Love Others.
Then, I had been introduced to C. Baxter Kruger and his Perichoresis organization, but it was not the right time yet...until his book, The Shack Revisited, came out in the Fall of 2012. It was then that the other shoe began to drop -- both for getting perichoresis to focus in my mind, and for cHesed to be married to it. I had not seen, previously, that they are interconnected.
That's when I coined the term Perichoretic cHesed as the reality of the Triune God, into which Jesus has brought all of creation through the Incarnation of the Father's Eternal Son.
It is as though Perichoresis is the Music of the Great Dance (as it has been often called, and Baxter has a book called The Great Dance), whereas cHesed is the steps of the Dance itself. The melody calls forth the footwork, as it were.
* * * * * * *
So, there it is...the work on sharing Perichoretic cHesed begins in earnest. I ran it past my Hebrew scholar cousin the other day and he thought it was on track. Not that I need approval, but it is nice to have every once in a while.
Of course, none of this will be new to those of you who have been hanging out in my wee purple corner of the interwebs, but I wanted to share the conversation with you.
Slowly but surely the concepts are beginning to gel well enough to be able to talk about them in a free-flowing manner. This is good. It means it is making itself at home in my heart and mind.
Enough for today...off to do neurological exercises....
Be blessed!
Abi
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