Bureaucracy and the Church.

It can be a potential threat to the church community, if we get bogged down by its pitfalls.

Bureaucracy is an organisational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks efficiently.

There are five key elements:
1. Specialisation
2. Authority is structure by hierarchy, lies with position not person.
3. Rules and regulations- operation is guided by rationally enacted rules and regulations
4. Technical competence -
5. Impersonality- rules take precedence over personal whim, formality and uniform treatment for each client and workers.
(adopted from http://www.sociologyntu.blogspot.com/)

If used wisely, bureucracy is helpful as the church expands. We need a hierarchy, to get information transmitted quickly to the ground level. So one leader is made to supervise a few people and these few people would then supervise some others under them. This is hierarchy.

It is also efficient for the church to carry out activities when everyone adheres strictly to black and white rules. It makes things easier to carry out, rather than judge situations on a case-by-case basis.

In the Bible, division of labour/hierarchy was not a bad thing. Remember the advice of Jethro to his son-in-law, Moses? "Appoint men for thousands, and men over ten thousands..." and so on? This was so, that Moses can rest without having to deal with every minute conflict.

So yes, it is efficient, but is it effective in maintaining a loving church community in today's context?

In a hierarchy, there is an obvious distancing from the one at the top. So say, if a normal church member wants to speak to the Senior Pastor, can he/she do it? Or do you have to be a leader before you can speak to the Senior Pastor? And in the Catholic church, can a devout, normal believer speak directly to the Pope, treating him as a fellow brother?

If the person within the bureacracy gets too engrossed in his position, he may develop what Robert Merton (another Sociologist) would call Bureaucratic Personality.

A bureaucratic personality entails strict adherence to positions. So much so that the person becomes impersonal and refuse to do things out of the stated rules.

In other words, law by law. No personal relations allowed.

Well, is this what God wants? Impersonality? Strict adherence to rules and regulations? A church organization in which the workers just have to perform their tasks and that's it?
A cold, cold organization, instead of a family?

I am not here to point fingers.

But as a Sociology student and a Christian, I just hope to remind expanding churches that a church is meant to be a family, not an impersonal organization, like the government.

I am not advocating that we dump bureaucracy altogether within the church. We can follow this model for administrative matters.

But when it comes to relationships and serving in church, dispense with the bureaucratic red tape and let's be flexible. Do we really have to be very technically competent before we can serve? Moses sure wasn't that competent when he served the Lord by leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

After all, we are a family and a family is characterized by genuine, sincere relationships, not by people bent on following the rules all the time.

Rather than extreme efficiency and competence, let the church be a community for mistakes, love and acceptance.