The Collapse of Denominations

Fast Company is one of my favorite magazines. In the latest issue there's a great article entitled "Mayhem on Madison Avenue" about the future of advertising. Now, you might wonder what that has to do with the church, but there's a quote in the article that struck me. It's related to tectonic shifts happening in the advertising world but has echoes for the church. Here's a snippet:

"Earlier this year, technology observer Clay Shirky argued that 'complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes those societies have become too inflexible to respond.' Societies like the Romans and the lowland Mayans fell because further reductions became too uncomfortable for those in power. 'Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification,' writes Shirky. After disintegration, he explains further, the members of a society disperse, experimenting with new ways of doing things. 'When the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity,' he writes, 'it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future'."

So that got me to thinking about the current state of denominations in the Western Christian Church. Has the church ecosystem stopped rewarding complexity? Is the church tottering toward collapse (or already there) under the weight of centuries of theological thought, doctrinal treatises, hundreds of thousands of books, sermons, commentaries and more that have rendered simple scriptural truth nearly indecipherable? I'd suggest that pastors, seminarians, theologians and others who've made study of Christian doctrine and dogma their life's work are people who have mastered the complexities of the past. And are, by and large, happy to live there and wish others would come back and join them.

They are the ones in 'power' who are finding any further reduction of the complexity of religion too uncomfortable to bear. They insist on maintaining the complexity in an ecosystem that no longer rewards it. People are leaving the church in droves while still claiming faith in Jesus. According to Shirky, "collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification."

Here's what I think, the Church (all believers regardless of denomination) is an ecosystem (organism not an organization) that has stopped rewarding complexity. And I believe Shirky is right when he says, "the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future." Further, I think in some ways we are experiencing the earliest post-disintegration days of the church as members of the society disperse, experimenting with new ways of doing things. Those folks experimenting with new ways of doing things are meeting withering hostility and criticism from those who have mastered the complexities of the past and feel power slipping away from them. That won't stop what's happening. But it certainly makes for an interesting era we live in. As Aaron Reitkopf, North American CEO of ad agency Profero, is quoted in the Fast Company article as saying, "ohhh, the carnage is going to be awesome."