“What Season Is My Church In?” Another Angle Of Your Church’s Life Stage (Part 1)
“What season is my church in?”
There are a lot of ways to answer that question.
We could answer it according to spiritual temperature. “My church is in a dry season” (for example) would be a statement indicating a church’s lack of spiritual fervor.
We could answer it according to liturgical planning. A church could be in a “journey to Easter” season which walks people from a particular day (such as Ash Wednesday) to Resurrection Sunday.
We could also answer it according to a church’s organizational health. “Growing.” “Plateaued.” “Declining.” These are three classic ways of outlining the overall reality of a church’s health through an organizational lens.
In this post, I want to offer another take on viewing a church’s season through an organizational lens.
Barbarians to Bureaucrats
There’s an old business book written by management consultant Lawrence M. Miller entitled Barbarians to Bureaucrats.
This book makes the case that organizations mirror civilizations by having a natural life cycle and that by accurately identifying the life stage of an organization and its associated leaders, one can apply the right leadership to the right situation for continued growth.
Miller delineates 7 stages and their associated leadership style in this way:
The Prophet Stage is marked by visionary leaders who create breakthroughs and inspire energy to propel the company forward.
The Barbarian Stage is about leaders who lead the march towards accelerated growth through crisis and conquest.
The Builder and Explorer Stage are those who develop specialized skills and structures required for growth.
The Administrator Stage is about leaders who create systems and structures to provide security rather than expansion.
The Bureaucrat Stage is when leaders impose a “tight grip of control” to the loss of creativity and expansion.
The Aristocrat Stage is when those who have most benefited from the work of the others operate disconnected from those doing the work. This inevitably turns the organization against itself as others rebel.
The Synergist Stage is about the needed solution leaders who maintain balance by uniting the prior leaders and motivating progress into the future.
I know the book was insightfully written for companies but I can’t help but see significant overlap with the life stages and associated leadership styles of the church. I’ve witnessed ministry areas and churches at large navigate roads that have felt somewhat similar if not identical to Miller’s framework.
So in light of Miller’s 7-stage framework, here are a few questions you can ask to understand your church’s life stage:
Question 1: What is the key initiative(s) of my church?
A church’s key initiative(s) is often the tell for a church’s season.
For example, if a church’s key initiative is to plant a new church, the church is likely experiencing a high volume of vision in the “Prophet Stage.” But if a church’s key initiative is re-tooling its volunteer structure and recruiting a certain percentage of volunteers, then it may be in the “Builder & Explorer Stage.” If there are no initiatives, that’s revealing in itself.
Question 2: What appears to be the recurring frustration?
If the recurring frustration is that "nothing changes” the church may be in a “Bureaucrat Stage” where a “tight grip” prevents necessary changes from being made. If the recurring frustration is that the church moves “too fast and too hard” then that may be a telltale sign the church is in the “Barbarian Stage.”
The recurring frustration often reveals the season and stage of a church.
Question 3: If you could fit your pastors/leaders into only one category, where would they be?
A church’s season is directly impacted by both the sovereignty of God and the style of the leader(s) who God has entrusted with leadership under His sovereignty.
The default posture and style of a church’s leader can and will often thrust a church into a particular season. If pastors, for example, want to remain far from pastoral action, the church will enter the “Aristocrat Stage.”
Closing Thoughts
Your church is in some kind of season spiritually, liturgically, and organizationally.
While it isn’t always popular to view the church through an organizational lens, I believe it is crucial because the organization has to step into stewardship (which is always spiritual) for the sake of the organism. The visible, physical organization stewards for the sake of the invisible, spiritual organism.
This is why it’s so important to pray for your church and for your leaders to be godly leaders who make wise decisions.
In the next post, I describe the leader’s growing pull towards aristocracy and how that can be so dangerous for a church.
