Church leaders love the feeling of an organic church service. “Organic” goes by several other names, such as “authentic,” “vulnerable,” “real,” and “Spirit-led,” an authentic church experience. I love these, too. Unfortunately, church leaders feel they need to neglect planning and organizing in an effort to be more authentic and organic. It’s like we are forced to choose one or the other.
This conversation isn’t an anti-spirit-filled diatribe. As you may guess, though, I am, by nature, more organized, systematic, and strategic than organic. For a long time in my journey, it felt like these options were binary. Our church services were organized. Our nights of worship, on the other hand, were highly organic. I was highly involved in the planning and execution of our church services. I remained away from nights of worship planning, allowing our music director and others like him to create these more organic experiences.
Intentionally Planning an Authentic Church Experience
Over time I found that organizing the organism of the body of Christ isn’t antithetical to the organic nature of the church. And it’s not working against God’s vision for the church.
In this conversation, I’d like us to address how your church can have a more authentic church experience without losing its organic nature. I Didn’t Expect Auburn Community Church (ACC) to be so Organized! I wrote about my recent experience at ACC in this post.
I’ve known Miles for a little while. He’s a wonderful pastor, communicator, and leader for ACC. Yet, my initial impression of thee church was that it’s a “church as an organism” kind of place.” Before I attended a service at ACC, I stopped by while passing through to visit with him and his leadership team. While there, this topic came up.
Talking with his team helped clarify my approach to church leadership a bit more. I love the local church. And I love the organic nature of the organism. Yet, I also knew from years of pastoral leadership experience that a disorganized church cannot be a growing church. Growth requires scale, and scale demands organization.
At Woodstock City Church, we were highly organized by choice and requirement. As a campus location of North Point Ministries, our multisite matrix organization demanded skilled orchestration. Our campus hosted 6,000 – 8,000 attendees per Sunday pre-Covid. I’m unsure how many people a church can have on Sunday without some amount of organization, but it’s much less than 6,000. Heck, it took 1,000+ volunteers coordinated across 8 ministries to execute a church experience for 6,000 attendees!
