What did Peter Drucker think about religious organizations?
Peter once told me that when you look at religious organizations you need to look through three lenses or factors. The first factor is the eternal things that don’t change from place to place and from time to time, and which make perfect sense out of my having had a half hour’s worth of Bible study this morning in a document that was written 2,000 years ago. The second factor is the culture and culture changes moment to moment, place to place, and day to day. The U.S., for example, is a very different culture than it was at the turn of the 20th century. The third factor, Peter said, was the tools, almost all invented in the commercial sector where the money is, such as freeways, parking lots, air conditioning, architecture, video, sound systems, music, and the like. Peter said the churches have a tendency to want to “eternalize the tools.” An example would be the 1929 Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal Church of the nonuse of musical instruments in the Church of Christ. Leadership
