Walking the Talk

The Soulful Organization

What would we ask of our organizations if they could grant us any wish?

OK, for starters a raise would be nice. So would six weeks of vacation and a full health and retirement package. And while the generosity is flowing, we'd take a sabbatical along with the healthy book budget, gracious housing allowance, and beautiful car.

Beyond those benefits, however, we are actually looking for something more. It isn't reflected in the budget; rarely is it sounded in our performance reviews and personnel committees. It is a longing so deep it is difficult to articulate yet so foundational it compels us to keep showing up: We want our organizations to live as we hope to live.

Faithful

We want our organizations to be faithful. We want them to be driven by mission, not by politics or personalities, nor by power or preservation. We want them to be faithful, which means to live into the high calling God gives every one of us.

We long for our organizations to make sense. On one level, to make sense means that there is a connection between what the organization says about itself - what it aspires to - and what it does. We want our organizations to have integrity, literally to hold together.

On another level, to make sense means to make meaning. We want our organizations to provide structure and opportunities whereby we learn and tell our stories. We want our organizations to help interpret our lives.

Is this too much to ask? Too naive? Wishful thinking?

Hope

Last spring I attended the annual convocation of The Alliance of Baptists in Vienna, Va. My associates and I facilitated a series of conversations, inquiring into the passions and aspirations of this progressive Baptist body. I heard many people say the organization gives them hope. Some suggested they would not be Baptist if it wasn't for the Alliance. One man said the organization was responsible for his staying in ministry. Another went so far as to say the organization saved him at a very low point in his life.

Wow! These are uncommon utterances, to be sure. We don't typically talk about our organizations this way. Instead, we put up with the organization. We try to do good work in spite of the organization. We "work around the system." But that doesn't ultimately satisfy, does it?

If we have experienced at all the beauty of organization, the simple acts of neighbors helping each other, a committee pausing in its work to pray for a member, a team running a long-practiced play, a daunting task pulled off with grace, even a supply cabinet that's stocked and a copier that works - then we know what's possible.

Our organizations can live as we hope to live. They can be better, healthier, stronger. They can be peopled rather than machine-like, which is to say rooted in the passions of their members. They can accompany us as we work out our salvation. They can enflesh what we yearn to see: the Reign of God in all its glory. We know this about our organizations. We truly believe it. That's why we continue to invest such energy and hope.

Relentless Reminders

What we need are relentless reminders about what matters in our organizations - not management fads, nor greater efficiency, nor even visions of the next big thing.

Theologian Walter Wink says it is the task of the church to recall institutions to "their divine vocation" - to their "first love," as the writer of Revelation puts it. "And the church must perform this task," Wink says, "despite its being as fallen and idolatrous as any other institution in society."

That's our task. That's our high calling. It is to say to our organizations, and so to each other, our greatest wish is not that you be successful but soulful, and faithful.

Daniel Pryfogle