I’m not a fan of rules.
During the last decade or so of my career as a classroom teacher I discovered that the reasons behind a lot of rules were “it’s just common sense,” “that’s how I like to do it,” “we’ve always done it that way,” or “because I said so.” Those didn’t seem like they had much to do with helping kids learn.
Schools are organizations. Organizations must be organized. Maintaining an organization, therefore, is about maintaining order. No order, no organization. Gotta have rules.
Last time I described an AHA! moment from last week’s Global Leadership Summit.
Jesus didn’t lead an organization. He established a movement.
A movement, by definition, is about going somewhere. Its entire purpose is action, getting to a destination. Every aspect of a successful movement is directly related to advancing the mission. Leadership emerges organically from within as people join and become increasingly committed to the community and the cause.
The challenge, I think, is that humans inevitably want to transform movements into organizations. They impose rules and appoint managers, and ever-so-subtly the focus shifts from sustaining direct action to sustaining the organization itself.
One symptom: in a movement, the main figures (MLK, Jesus, Gandhi) are directly involved in the main actions of the case. In an organization, senior leaders are primarily focused on running the organization. They’re rarely involved in on-the-ground activities.
As I said, I’m not a fan of rules. I’m also not a fan of chaos.
A successful movement is structured around eternal principles. When people work to advance those principles, the community, and a cause bigger than themselves, everyone benefits.
I think a lot about this stuff because I don’t want RICH’S RIDE or FREEDOM TOUR to become organizations. If that happened I’d likely become the kid in the back row who kept asking why we had to do it this way when doing it another way made just as much sense. I’d end up in the principal’s office.
In a way, that’s who Jesus was. He wasn’t a fan of rules, either.
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