In Jesus’ parable of the growing seed, the farmer tends the field, but it is God who brings the growth. “All by itself [automatically] the soil produces grain…” (Mark 4:26).
The Ten Laws of Systems
Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. Behaviour grows better before it grows worse. The easy way out usually leads back in. The cure can be worse than the disease. Faster is slower. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Small changes can produce big results, but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. You can have your cake and eat it too, but not at once. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
Paul speaks likewise of the cooperation with God in the extension of His kingdom: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3:6).
Schwarz developed a church growth model known as Natural Church Development based on what he calls the ‘biotic principles’. He based these principles on what he called the “logic of life”. When the logic of life principles are applied to a church then the “all by itself” growth factor occurs, resulting in natural church development.
The biotic principles become the filter or screen by which strategies are selected.
The Six Biotic Principles:
1. Interdependence: The decisions you make in one area of church life will impact, for good or ill, other areas of church life. Question: does this step benefit other areas in the long term?
2. Multiplication: For sustainable, healthy growth, like produces like. Question: does this step multiply growth or just add to it?
3. Energy Transformation: Focus all energy expended in the church on generating growth in the church’s health. Question: does this step use or fight energy relationships?
4. Mutli-usage: Energy spent can be re-invested to make this ministry, program or process increasingly self-sustaining. Question: this step – does it help the ministry sustain itself? 5. Symbiosis: The intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship. Question: does this step promote “fruitful co-operation” or “ecclesiastical monoculture”?
6. Functionality: Every detail in God’s creation has a specific function…All living things in God’s creation are characterised by the ability to bear fruit….where there is no fruit, life is condemned to death…We are able to check on the quality of an organism by examining its fruit….Where no fruit appears, something is wrong.” Question: this step – producing fruit or missing purpose?
The biotic principles encourage leadership to look at the whole church and its environment and not just “the fruit” as an indicator of health. They focus on the way a church “does church” by:
• the way planning is done
• how decisions are made
• the impact of administrative processes
• the way ministries are defined and developed
• the interaction between ministries, including the use of resources
• how delegation and facilitation occurs
• the way the church handles change
• what messages are communicated and how, etc.
While the quality characteristics indicate what needs to be addressed, the biotic principles are concerned with how a church addresses the quality characteristics through its fabric of operation.
The more biotic that an objective and strategies are, they will achieve. The biotic principles help leaders to reduce the number of strategies needed, which increases their likelihood of achieving their goals. In other words, biotic strategies usually achieve greater outcomes than non-biotic strategies.
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