Leadership for the moment is bound to context and culture. This is a bit of leadership thinking that I think remains relevant.
A
Dissipative Moment
Some say the church is dying, but I
am unconvinced. Rather, we are living and ministering in a dissipative moment.
Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, helps me with this idea. He won
recognition for his understanding of a new concept he called “dissipative
structures.”[i] In nature there is a contradictory
reality, and that is that disorder can be the source for new order. Margaret
Wheatley explains: “Prigogine discovered that the dissipative activity of loss
was necessary to create new order. Dissipation didn’t lead to the death of a
system. It was part of the process by which the system let go of its present
form so that it could reorganize a form better suited to the demands of its
changed environment.”[ii]
Our problem is that we in the
Church are formed by a perspective that is rooted in Western science. We
believe that entropy is the rule and that if we do not constantly work harder
and harder to keep pumping energy and resources into the system, then the
system suffers from entropy—it loses steam and dies. Yet even now life is
flourishing and new life is being born. Of course, you immediately can see that
this is a biblical understanding, but as Episcopalians, sometimes it is easier
to see it through the eyes of science.
Prigogine offers that in a
dissipative organization those things that interrupt and interfere are
essential to the health of the system. The system receives the communication
and decides if it is to respond, change, or ignore it. Change happens either
way. If the disruption grows so that the organization can’t ignore it, then
transformation and rebirth are possible. Wheatley says, “Disorder can be a
source of new order, and that growth appears from disequilibrium, not balance.
The things we fear most in organizations—disruptions, confusion, and chaos—need
not be interpreted as signs that we are about to be destroyed. Instead, these
conditions are necessary to awaken creativity. . . . This is order through
fluctuation.”[iii]
We are in a dissipative moment. We
cannot ignore the flotsam and jetsam of the future that is even now washing
upon the shores of the Episcopal Church. We can see partly what will only
become clearer in time. We have for too long suffered the sin of trying to get
it right, and the shame of coming up short. But in a dissipative era we must
have a greater sense of process and participation and experimentation.[iv] If we are to move outside of our
centralized structures and old exoskeletons, we must shed our skins and put on
new ones. Jesus says, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the
new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be
destroyed” (Luke 5:33ff).
A new urban and suburban world is
emerging. We will continue to see people move toward the cities of the future.
What we are experiencing across the Episcopal Church is globally true. People
are entering city life by the millions and will continue to do so for a long
time to come. The shape of our cities and the multiple possibilities for
Christian community are before us. We have an opportunity. The question for us
as we stand in this dissipative moment is, will we shrink from the challenge or
face it?
It is important for us to see
clearly the changes that are already affecting our congregations and
communities in order for us to see the future that is before us. It is time we
step into the future and begin to plant these new communities. What will they
look like and how will they make their way into the new missionary age? The
Christian in the new millennium will bring new challenges and opportunities.
For us to be successful, we will need leaders who are digital natives and who
can act within this new world. We need different kinds of leaders, and we need
to rethink ways of forming and training leaders. This particular task will
require that we revisit how we raise different vocations within the community.
It has been given to this generation to undertake the dissipative moment and to
answer these questions. We are a living church with a vital and necessary
mission in the world.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid., 21. Wheatley is getting her information
from the landmark paper by Prigogine and Stengers, published in 1984.
