One way to answer the question, “For whom does this church exist?” is to contend that every church exists to glorify God. But it must also be asked, “For whom else does it exist?” We say that it exists for “us” when we direct all of the resources, energy, volunteer, and staff time ministering to those already on the inside.

Pastors, for example, must decide whether they are pastors only of church members, or if they also pastor a town or neighborhood where the church exists. Churches will either recognize and value members who use their spiritual gifts to serve communities, or they will notice and appreciate only those who serve members.

On the other hand, some churches will respond that the church exists for “them.” In this case, “them” means a macrocommunity of people who do not fit our criteria of being followers of Jesus. In such churches, resources are directed outward, moving the macrocommunity toward the inside, that they may become like us. In extreme cases, community is reduced to fellowship, and fellowship is reduced to a byproduct of evangelism.

We need to ask ourselves some serious questions at this point. Do we individually and as microcommunities of those closest to us choose to intentionally engage our macrocommunities? Does our concept of the work of God allow us to focus more on the holistic transformation of our macrocommunities, or are we comfortable confining our activity to the wellbeing of our local church communities? The answers to these questions factor into design decisions.

Macrocommunities and Neighbor-Spheres

A few years ago, Linda and some colleagues surveyed their city and found among nonreligious people a common theme: traditional religious institutions that owned buildings were seen as “parasites” to the community. The accusations were based on several observations. First, they knew that churches owned prime business properties; benefited from police and fire protection, roads, and other public amenities; and yet paid no taxes.

Second, sometimes people who had previously served the macrocommunity with their time and money stopped their significant civic engagement when they became church or synagogue members. Instead, they gave everything to their religious organizations. These same people gave money through their church groups to broader religious causes, like world hunger or other relief needs, but it just did not transfer into local awareness.

How can we change this negative perception? Page Street Center offers one example. Part of Eric Bergquist’s job as director of the center is to help Christians overcome their tendency to huddle. When they assemble in large or small groups, they become aware of biblical perspectives on things like injustice, poverty, and service. They visit Page Street to practice those values, feeding the hungry, showing kindness, being generous with time and resources, and advocating for the needs of others.

Eric is reminded that during football games teams are called together, as necessary, to form huddles. In these huddles, the players communicate important information, strategize next moves, and celebrate victories. The point of the game, though, is not the huddle. The measure of being “called together” is largely seen as the players are “sent out.”

The emerging value of collaboration

Coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, the Human Genome Project was a worldwide collaborative project that mapped all the genes and gene sequences in human DNA. A collaborative encyclopedia called Wikipedia was launched in 2001. This massive effort was possible, in part, because of Linus Torveld’s “Linux Kernel,” the key to a computer operating system that would propel the free software movement conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman.

The free software movement protected the rights of users to study, modify, copy, and share programs in ways that benefit the whole community. Out of it the Creative Commons movement was birthed. This includes portals, aggregation, and archives such as Flickr, Internet Archive, and Wikipedia Commons – plus free Creative Commons blog hosting services such as Wordpress.com, Blogger, and Typepad.

These are all symptoms of what Thomas Friedman wrote about in his 2005 bestseller The World Is Flat. He believed that is was globalization that leveled or “flattened” the playing field in business and economics. This leveling or flattening has been observed in all aspects of society and culture. There is a demand for new leadership structures and new ways of working together. A flat world demands a more level playing field, a reality that has huge implications for how organizations, including churches, structure themselves.

One of the new design tasks of today’s church is to learn how to create contextually relevant, biblical structures that serve this new kind of world. Maybe together we will discover an even more biblically consistent paradigm in the process. Are you in?

Adapted from Church Turned Inside Out by Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr. Copyright © 2010 by Linda Bergquist and Allan Carr. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.