Where is your team lacking structure and organization? (98-3)
God’s created order is replete with evidence of intelligent design. Even the simplest living system is more complex and subtle than the most sophisticated computer yet designed. God is the architect of structure and organization. Read 1 Kings 4:1-28.
Solomon created an organizational structure led by hand-picked chief officials and district governors. The Biblical accounts of his extensive building projects and fortifications demonstrate the organization and effectiveness of his military and administrative systems. It should come as no surprise to a leader that the God of the Bible uses structure and organization to accomplish His many purposes through leaders created in His image.
Structure and organization allows a leader to gather multiple resources and focus them on the desired outcome. Well-led organizations can accomplish far more than any individual can hope to accomplish alone.
So what kind of structure should a leader bring to an organization in order to make it function effectively? Solomon gave us one example, Moses another, but scripture doesn’t provide us with any one rock-solid system that serves as the universal ideal organizational structure. Why? Because no such structure exists! Organizational structure is not an end in itself but is designed to channel resources to meet the task and mission of the organization. To be effective a leader must allow structure and organization to change as resources and tasks ebb and flow.
Genesis 1 tells us that God turned chaos into form, structure and resplendent beauty. He also calls upon those He has gifted as leaders, all created in His image, to order and shape their inner and outer worlds. Effective leaders use discipline and skill to bring structure and harmony to their social, personal and work environments.
Where is your team lacking structure? Is it time to stop putting band aids and temporary fixes on a broken system and go back to the drawing board to consider what an ideal organization and structure would look like with current resources?
Tags: Intelligent Design
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In the beginning, God said, “Let us make man after our image. In the image of God created He them. Male and female created He them.” The simplest implication arguably seems to be that Man (male/female) reflects the nature of God in singularity and relationship, unity and plurality, or union and hierarchy. The apostle Paul bases the male/female hierarchy on the order in which Man was created, male before female. Hierarchy is a means by which the one Man Adam/Eve could act in organizational unity. So too the Father and Son and Spirit act. The Son submits to the Father; they act as one and are one (grammar aside).
Interestingly, Jesus prays that His disciples may be one after the model of Himself with His Father. Union and hierarchy are to be the way the church acts and exists. Those particularly who labor in the church are to be respected and obeyed. Elders are first to manage their own households well, and secondly to manage, as it were, the family of God. (Households of certain classes would often have included slaves and freedmen and their assorted relations –cf. Cornelius and the Gaius who hosted the church at Corinth.)
One is left to wonder if organization is built into the warp and woof of who we are … and who God is. That the union and hierarchy in every sphere is warped by sin does not change the ideal and the origin and, for those Jesus came to save from sin, presumably also the destiny.