How do we adapt adrienne maree brown‘s emergent strategy book in a church or non-profit context? To explore this, I’ll be walking through nine principles of emergent strategy. (3/9)
Frankly, I don’t know if I believe this. Like several of the aspects of “emergent strategies,” they call me to have a relationship with the concept.
Usually, when I wrestle, I realize I am defining words in ways that aren’t helpful or the concept has operated as a provocation, inviting me to see things differently.
This particular principle makes me realize how much I fall into elevating efficiency as my ultimate goal. If the “right work” means a product created in the least amount of time, then efficiency is the right work.
But what if that’s not it.
Just what is “the right work?”
If the work, in churches, is creating space or containers for people to bring their whole selves, to be known by God and others, to know God and know others, and to bring about goodness. Stated another way, for people to orient themselves around the story of God and to be transformed by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
This work is not efficient. This work is messy. It ebbs and flows. It is difficult to measure. It requires people interacting with all of their histories, traumas, and connections.
“there is always enough time for the right work.” If this is the right work, the work of coming together with other humans, knowing and being known, transformation of self and our surroundings, then there is always enough time.
Jesus never put out a 5 step plan to get to spiritual maturity. There is no end destination during our lifetime. There is following. There is movement. There is the right work.
That’s what I have loved about the emergent strategy principles – they invite me to reflect on my assumptions and to better define what I am seeing and experiencing. The opportunity is to find places and contexts in which these would be true and helpful.
holly rankin zaher 