Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves

The current issue of Newsweek magazine includes an article about how GM was unable to allow Saturn to live up to its initial vision of being a totally separate and different kind of car company. This is a terrific case study that illustrates the point made in Christensen's book The Innovator's Solution that companies cannot change in a disruptive manner within existing businesses. The company culture will always treat a disruptive change like a virus and the corporate immune system will attack it. This can only be overcome by setting up a completely separate entity with separate funding, separate management, etc. Saturn had to compete within GM for product development resources, human resources, etc, so the GM immune system attacked it, as did the UAW union immune system. It was doomed from the start by not being a totally separate entity from GM.

This strikes me as similar to what goes on in churches when an existing church tries to make a disruptive change, like moving from a traditional worship approach to contemporary (or vice versa). Unless it does not compete for resources, does not force people to change their style, does not create competition against what was already there, it will be attacked by the immune system. Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves. They can only launch separate entities without creating a cultural crisis.

Should this be? What does this say about the possibility for revival? I think that it is just human nature, and that we should be prepared to launch separate entities or at least separate services for large changes. One of the reasons that America has remained much more religious than Europe is that by not having a state church there have been few barriers to creating new churches or denominations in order to carry out big changes. The Catholic Church is equally (some would say even more so ) unable to disrupt itself and where it is the state church there is no option for disruptive change. So it has just died. But is change necessary in the Church? Isn't the church supposed to be timeless? As our church repeats often, the message is timeless, the methods changable. Nonetheless, human nature doesn't change and disruptive changes in church will continue to be hard to swallow.

For that reason I think it is wrong for a new pastor to come to a church and try to force disruptive changes on a local congregation. If he feels that strongly about a particular approach then he should be prepared to launch a new congregation, not nearly destroy an existing one. To accept the call to a church and then try to disrupt it is not really honest. However, the flip side is that those who refuse to change must be prepared for their congregation to slowly die. In most cases it should be possible to launch new approaches in completely separate services without creating a crisis. It is more work, but it certainly can be done.

The Church is not free from the problems of human nature, but it should be led by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can revive in either contemporary or traditional settings if we allow it. But new congregations will be needed at times.