At SEARCH we’ve been inspired by the work of “regenerative coach” Carol Sanford. In her book 'Indirect Work' she writes:
[There are lots of] well-intentioned people who seek to make the world a better place through the instruments that are available to them, such as business, social activism, or creation of policies and institutions [but] most of these efforts are likely to be compromised or fail because they still operate from an old paradigm, within which the world is assembled from discrete pieces, each playing its part in a cosmic machine. Our machine-based metaphors are so pervasive that we hardly notice them: input, output, feedback, leverage, rewiring, reprogramming, metrics, ideal state, and on and on.
A living or regenerative paradigm has a very different character and uses correspondingly different metaphors. It starts with an image of the living, dynamic, and unfolding universe, in which each entity is endowed with the spark of life and an innate capacity for growth and evolution with regard to how it expresses itself. Working from this paradigm, one doesn’t attempt to push the world and its inhabitants to an ideal state—that would be coercive and life denying. Rather, one encourages and enables living beings to discover and express their innate potential as contributors to living communities. For those of us who truly want to transform the world, it is the regenerative paradigm that will enable us to do so.
This confronts us with an important question. Are the underlying beliefs, assumptions, patterns, and language that characterize my culture derived from a machine or a living systems paradigm? And if I want to cultivate a living systems culture, what must I do I to help with the shift?
In this brilliant podcast, you can hear Carol talk about how she has cultivated regenerative cultures in our groups and organizations and seen transformative effects :
Inspired by Carol Sanford, at SEARCH we want to live and work from a ‘living systems’ paradigm, recognising that we this wonderful creation we are a part of is made of up many vibrant, complex, dynamic systems, and is not an inert, cold machine-like place. It’s all part of our approach to “rewilding churches for changing times”. Our regenerative, living systems approach is summed up by 4 “Every” statements:
● Every thing is ALIVE, CONNECTED and INTER-DEPENDENT
● Every one has a PLACE
● Every person is UNIQUE and has POTENTIAL
● Every lasting transformation comes through COLLECTIVE change.
We are aware of how dominant the “machine” paradigm is. We refuse to engage in “fixing” or “problem solving” that’s grounded in unhelpful static, mechanistic views of the world, and instead. Instead, grounded in our “living systems” paradigm, we seek to work on “cultivating good soil”, influencing the webs and systems we are a part of, resourcing churches and associated ministries to develop the following six capacities:
6) COMMUNITY - collective action/co-creation/cooperation
Do you have a sense of whether your community group or church or associated ministry is working from a machine or a regenerative living-systems culture? If you want to cultivate more of a living systems culture within your church, what might you need to do to help with the shift?
To finish, here is a fascinating video by Otto Scharmer, author of ‘Theory U’ on working on the “social soil”:
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