Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed?
We try to concentrate knowledge in our Seminaries, Boards and Agencies, and power in those Boards, Agencies, and key leaders. We need to do better at giving them away. Is the organization flexible or rigid? We’ve started talking about being flexible, but it’s hard to make the shift. Our Book of Discipline still reads like a mid-20th century bureaucratic manual. Can you count the employees or participants? We act (mistakenly, I believe) like counting all the employees/participants is a good thing. Are working groups funded by the organization or are they self-funded? Funding varies from level to level. Most Boards and Agencies are funded by the organization. Each local church is self-funding. Because of tax laws sub-organizations in the local church often are pressed to be centrally funded. Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries? In my (limited) experience most groups communicate through intermediaries. In the current Texas Annual Conference structure, we have
