Chasing taillights…
Can a local church’s structure survive without a strong central leader? Traditionally, the answer is a resounding no! The pastor is the one who casts vision, motivates the congregation, is “free” to do the things that the average person cannot do (i.e. “teach the word,” “study scripture,” “pray,” etc…) because of their busy schedules. Whenever a group gets too large, someone has to step up to lead and coordinate–or, so the logic goes.
But this analogy of “chasing taillights”, attributed to Jim All, and mentioned in a document about open-source software paints an alternative picture:
The easiest way to get coordinated behavior from a large, semi-organized mob is to point them at a known target. Having the taillights provides concreteness to a fuzzy vision. In such situations, having a taillight to follow is a proxy for having strong central leadership.
To see an example of how successful such a leaderless group can be one can turn to open-source once again. KDE is one such project. They are doing remarkable work with an open-source structure.
It seems to me that the historic, Christian faith has left some very bright taillights. If we would stop fighting for ownership over it and start stewarding it we would be a lot better off. The question is can we afford to make that choice?
Can we afford not to?