I had a conversation with a good friend last Friday morning that made me want to go ahead start this discussion. They told me how the pin finally dropped for them on this “complexity theory” thing. So - we are going to open it up for consideration as I think it’s one, if not the most, important area to explore and understand to really build an understanding of what’s going on with movements (from a sociological, scientific, human perspective).
Alongside of the missiological discussion, I think it’s worthwhile to consider some of the different dynamics of movement. One important dynamic to consider is their intrinsically complex nature. It isn’t practical or even possible to fully understand all of the different variables that make movement happen. As leaders, missionaries and catalysts we might try to, and perhaps sometimes we pretend to know more than we actually do but the reality is that movements are just too complex. Knowing this, I’ve found a lot of interesting overlap when considering the relationship of movement to the science known as complexity theory.
Complexity theory is a branch of mathematics and physics (primarily) that deals with the ways that chaos tends to produce some semblance of order when all is said and done (in spite of this process being too complex for people to actually understand). One significant aspect of it is investigating the ways that structure seemingly happens all by itself in really, really complex systems (self-organization). Alongside of this, we have to accept that some systems are so complex that all of the variables needed to describe it will never fully be known to us, now.
Take a city as an example. Streets form. Homes pop up. Shops are opened. Things seem to work together. But every city looks different and every city expert has a different understanding for how different cities “work.” The reality is that it is nearly impossible to fully describe what is going on, no matter how hard we try. City planners plan streets structure and zone accordingly but quickly things seem to take a life of their own as industry comes, moves and goes, business pop in and out and neighborhoods form and change and re-form with time. There is significant truth in what Jane Jacobs writes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities:
The pseudoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.
I think God movements, or church planting movements, are important examples of complexity theory in action. Relationships with Jesus are ignited where they weren’t previously known, small groups of these people begin coming together, separately engaged, and as critical mass begins to be reached, more intentional structures and systems begin to emerge within the growing web of relationships and groups. We try to plan for it and control it most often by copying and pasting specific actions (“Do X, Y & Z and then A, B & C and you’ll get 4 generations of disciples!”) but more often than not this is simply “imitat[ing] empiric failure” as Jane Jacobs writes about rather than understanding what’s actually at play in the various interactions and developments.
That might sound a bit hopeless but I certainly don’t want it to. Instead its a push to understand the underlying dynamics of movement, how complexity theory can speak to it and intentionally work towards something better: a contextual approach that enters humbly into the chaotic flow and gently nudges what seems like a chaotic mess in more orderly directions, allowing necessary patterns and structures to emerge around it.
To make this really practical (hopefully), it’s a call to break out of our shell of considering movements to be solely static variables (like, baptisms that have occurred, discovery groups started, time spent in abundant Gospel sowing) and instead look at and consider the flow of people and the environment around these variables. It’s allowing the metadata around it all to offer deep insight. I plan to gingerly step into that discussion with a consideration of self-organizations and feedback loops next.