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I saw an interview recently with Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System. It was shortly after the death of Steve Jobs and she was commenting on what she imagined might have been a problem that he would have had if he were a young student taking a contemporary standardized test. She visualized him being asked to pick the right answer in a multiple choice question and responding by asking whether the question was the right question!
Back in 1985 Jobs was pushed out of his position at Apple by “organization” types who felt the need to impose a tighter business model on the creative environment that he had nurtured.
It’s an old story in American business: creative founder of a company later removed by “better business minds” to “grow” the company in predictable ways.
It made me think about Acts 2. The founder of the Christian church is the Holy Spirit. It would appear that He was left in charge for a while, but little by little others became displeased with His leadership and eventually moved Him out with all the best intentions. You can almost hear them now: “You did a great job getting this movement off the ground, but now we need more reliable leadership to move the organization forward!” Certainly by the time Constantine made the church a wealthy and powerful official arm of his kingdom, the Spirit had been displaced by a more worldly model of management.
All around us in the 21st Century critics within the church are saying that the existing leadership has failed the church and it’s a time for new leaders with a better and more reliable organizational model to take over.
Eleven years after pushing him out the door, Apple brought Jobs back and his iconoclastic perspective brought the company to undreamed of heights.
Do you think it’s time we invited the Spirit to come back and take over our churches? Are we that smart?
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