The Starfish Effect: Why Our Decentralized Approach Is Our Strength

By Scott Kenworthy

A few years ago, I attended the International Conference on Missions with a friend from a different church tradition. As we entered the exhibit hall filled with hundreds of missionaries promoting their various initiatives, I said to my friend, “This is the strength of our movement.”

When we left the same hall a couple hours later, he turned around, took one last look, and commented, “That is the weakness of your movement.”

Where I saw innovation, entrepreneurship, and bold risk-taking for the sake of the gospel, he saw chaos and the lack of a centralized strategy.

So, which one of us was right?

THE STARFISH AND THE SPIDER

The difference in our perspectives is explained in Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book The Starfish and the Spider. The authors note that spiders are centralized organisms. They may look intimidating with their pinchers, segmented body, and eight hairy legs, but they are relatively easy to defeat. If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies.

Starfish, on the other hand, have no head. They function as a decentralized network of cells. Though not as intimidating as a spider, a starfish proves much more difficult to eliminate. If you cut off an arm, another will grow it its place. If you cut a starfish in half, you’ll soon have two starfish. In short, starfish are resilient.

My friend looks at the Restoration Movement and asks, “Where’s the head?” He wants to know “Who’s leading this thing?” and wonders, “How are decisions made?” Since he comes from a church tradition with a more hierarchical, centralized structure, like a spider, his questions make a lot of sense. From inception, however, our movement has more closely resembled a starfish.

THE ESSENCE OF MOVEMENTS

In an essay titled “The Church as Movement: The Neglected Alternative,” Restoration Movement historian Robert O. Fife outlines three postures a community within the church can take. The first he calls the “sectarian posture.” Those who choose the sectarian option argue that only the people who subscribe to their particular set of doctrinal beliefs are true Christians.

The second, a “denominational posture,” is less rigid than sectarianism but still sees some level of separation as necessary even if not ideal. In this approach, the best believers can do in the pursuit of Christian unity is have each denomination effectively function as its own church.

Fife, however, offers a third alternative: a “movement” within the church. The key difference between a movement and a denomination, Fife contends, is that movements don’t set themselves against others, nor separate from what already exists. Instead, movements aim to produce change from within the present structure.

One implication of this is that movements are inherently self-identifying. There’s no application to become part of a movement and there are no dues to pay. Neither does anyone vote on who is in or out (although there will always be some who say certain churches aren’t “one of us” for various reasons). A body of believers becomes part of a movement like ours by embracing the vision, acknowledging the distinctives that fuel the vision, and working to produce change from within.

As Fife explains, “A movement is an intentional community of understanding, concerned to serve the Church in her calling.” In other words, the movement is about the mission of Christ. The movement itself isn’t the mission. Movements recognize the bigger picture and order themselves toward the end goal rather than making their order the goal.

None of this suggests that “anything goes” within a movement. The Bible can certainly be made to say what it doesn’t mean. Likewise, churches and mission organizations can, and have, lost their way. The genius of the early catalysts within our movement is that instead of setting the rules, they charted a course. They adopted sayings, such as,

We are not the only Christians, but Christians only.

In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, love.

Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.

These ideals still guide today.

MOVING THE MISSION FORWARD

My friend and I may have disagreed about the merits of the Restoration Movement’s decentralized strategy, but he was right about one thing: Ministry within a movement is often messy. Take heart, though. It has been this way from the beginning. The earliest adopters of the Restoration Movement represented a mixture of Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians from places like Ireland, England, Scotland, and the United States. You think that was always clean and easy?

A self-identifying movement ultimately becomes a self-policing movement. In a centralized system, those elected to be in charge do the policing, which inevitably increases the risk of power grabs and backbiting. However, in a decentralized system, the network policies itself. Any church or organization that elevates itself as the only Christians, refuses to operate in a spirit of loving unity, or stops accepting the Bible as their authoritative guide soon finds they have little to offer or benefit from being part of the movement. They remove themselves or are effectively removed as the movement pushes forward. Just like the starfish, however, when one leg is removed, another comes to take its place.

As we strive to reach a post-Christian world with the gospel, I appreciate that our forebearers opted for the starfish approach. Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, Thomas Campbell, and Walter Scott wouldn’t have used starfish-spider terminology. Yet by setting aside the baggage they had inherited, choosing influence over power, and embracing others who shared their vision, they set the groundwork for a movement rather than another denomination. In doing so, they also built-in a natural resiliency for which, in many ways, we are just now seeing the full benefit.

Scott Kenworthy has served as the lead pastor of Owensboro (Kentucky) Christian Church since 2013.