Falling out of love with strategy: A fractal theological word crisis

A fractal tree based on Luke 9 & 10

I love a good strategy game, whether it be chess, Risk, Stronghold or StarCraft. But the thing that bothers me about most strategy games is that once you've won, all that you've built and all that you've worked for is of no further use. The winning strategist never gets to live in the world they have conquered. My strategic relationship to the Kingdom of God is different to that in so many ways.

Today, I had the joy of engaging in a challenging conversation with Rev Tom Stuckey (Former president of Methodist Conference) after hearing him talk about his new book ‘Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land’. He suggested that the Methodist Church had too many strategists. Even though I agreed with him on pretty much everything else he said, I have always felt that we have too few strategists. I have for some time considered myself a strategist. After some discussion, Tom suggested that perhaps we had a different idea of what strategy meant - and I think perhaps he was right.

The trouble with the word ‘strategy’ is that it implies that there is a top down plan to put into action. Strategy suggests to many people that someone is in charge; a captain, a general or perhaps a business manager. It is a word with its origins in ancient Greek military talk and has at the core of its meaning the deployment of troops to the battlefield. Whether for military or management speak, it is largely a word that is about taking control of the situation.

In addition to the usual problems with deploying military speak in a theological context, the more specific problem here is that strategy can be heard as something too practical, too linear and too hierarchical. It is too much about the straight line between where we are and where we intend to be. It has the potential to make us sound like we know where we are going – which we certainly do not.

Tom’s suggestion is that we need to stop domesticating God and trying to fit God into a neat box that fits our expectations; that we need to stop trying to be in control of what is, after all, God’s mission. Tom pointed out how the Methodist Church has become weighed down with bureaucracy. I agree to a great extent and I realise now that we need to find a language to speak more specifically and with more discernment than simply talking about 'strategy'. We have more than enough people pushing the metaphorical troops around the map.

Where I differ from Tom is that I think we need to be strategic about how we structure church. The one to one engagement between people is great and to a certain extent that is where the great moments of faith happen. However, when things are going well things will grow and systems will develop as they always have. In order to do the corporate, connexional thing well, we need to be able to engage with and discern how God is calling us to act together. When the systems grow so the imperfections of humanity become immortalised in the structures of our organisation.

I think we need strategy, or something with a different name, that speaks more of the abstract and the aspirational. We need patterns that help us to embody a more Christ-like nature and enact the Gospel narrative within our structures. I still want a strategy, in as much as I want a plan, but I have no intention of setting the destination, or of putting myself or anyone else in charge of getting us there. I want a plan that contains the essence of all we have learned collectively as ‘Church’. I want a plan that gives space for the diversity of humanity within the body of Christ. I want a plan that brings fluidity and life to our structures, and structures that reflect the living Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want a plan that admits we know nothing and frees us to fully submit to the mystery of God. 

This is why I believe we truly need a fractal understanding of God’s creation and of God’s plan for us. We need to be a fluid, organic system, growing in the image of our creator. We need to be bold enough to be more Christ-like in our corporate, collective, connexional way of being – but we need to do that in a way that leaves space for us to turn around when we’ve got it wrong. We need to be able to implement the theological learning we do on a daily basis, simply by being one of God’s creations, in the way that we function together as Church.

The fractal theological way of thinking is to see the patterns of God’s love and justice, echoed in us as individuals and at all scales of what we call Church – at all scales of human community and in our engagement with creation itself. The fractal theological way of thinking is not about a commander setting a destination for the troops, but about setting Christ-like patterns at the heart of who we are as community and as individuals - and allowing those patterns to shape who we become – allowing them to guide us to unknown destinations.

The only word I had to describe this kind of planning was strategy, but I suddenly feel like this word is no longer enough. So, what is the word I am looking for?

(N.B. I’ve not had time to read all of Tom’s book yet but what I’ve read so far looks very good – he describes it as dropping pebbles in the pond of the conversation and watching the ripples, rather than a book that gives the answers.  More about the book here: www.tomstuckey.me.uk/ )