(I pulled this post and the next subsequent posts off Eric Swanson’s blog who took it from Marc van der Woude’s blog http://marcsmessages.typepad.com)
Unless there is a significant intervention from gifted leadership, the usual pattern of movements or organisations features the following steps.
Plateau and the beginning of decline.
There is a delicate balance required in the harnessing of creative energy to organisational skill. All too frequently, organisational skill will dominate over time at the expense of creative energy. As that takes place the watchword becomes consolidation. In other words, the message goes out that we need a more stable organisation following a period of rapid growth so that gains are consolidated. That is a valid argument provided that the consolidation genuinely clears ground for another period of chaotic growth to take place. However, the likelihood is that the bringing of order signals that the creative people who disrupt order are no longer able to survive within the organisation and have already left.
Decline and Conflict.
As decline sets in, organisations will generally polarise around two groups — the traditionalists and the radicals. These two groups have very different solutions to the problem of decline. The traditionalists wish to emphasise a return to the way we used to do things believing that this will restore growth. The radicals emphasise the need to adopt new methods and solutions for a new day. They are both wrong.
Division and Death.
Growing conflict will lead to some kind of division with either the radicals or the conservatives departing. The outcome of such division is usually the death of the organisation. The death may be long and lingering or much more rapid but in either case the organisation ceases to be effective in terms of its original life and vision.
The alternative scenario, difficult though it may be to achieve, is to attempt a process of renewal. Such processes can be accomplished at any point in the decline of an organisation although clearly the greater the decline the more difficult the process of recovery.
Renewal can come when creative leadership circumvents the conflict of traditionalists and radicals by asking a different question. The question
Why was this organisation / movement founded?
What was its original genius?
What was it that God entrusted to the initial participants?
What was the Divine deposit that was originally gifted and can that be recast in the present context?
The recasting of the original Divine deposit in a new interpretative framework can allow movement to be rekindled. Such a rekindling assumes a situation in which people are encountering God and coming to faith.
If the new vision (interpretative framework) makes sense to these new believers and becomes once again transportable, then movement can be reignited.
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