Somewhere in our tradition, the idea of the autonomy of the local church was hatched. We know what gave rise to it. Local autonomy was a response to the hierarchal denomination model in which bishops and the like directed the decision making from some lofty cathedral to local congregations. Someone thought, “What if we empower each fellowship to entrust its own leadership and back its own calls.” Brilliant. So, initially the movement flourished. Initially.

Think about the developmental stages of a human being. We begin as infants in a place of utter dependence. We eat, sleep, and the best we can accomplish is to do our business in our pants. As we grow, we move to a place of independence. The adolescent years are a painful transition as we explore not only the world but we test values, ideas and beliefs that have been handed to us. This testing moves us towards a sense of ownership; what I wish to embrace because I choose this for myself. (This is where we could have an interesting dialogue about how children raised in a church environment require permission and freedom to develop an “adult faith”, but we’ll save that for another time.) We long to be in a place in which we can operate as a fully functioning adult, to fly from the nest as it were, to be autonomous.

However, this is not the highest stage of development; there’s one more move to make: Interdependence. Interdependence is when adults freely choose to cooperate and surrender some of their freedom in order to enter into a meaningful partnership. Does the idea of marriage come to mind? When the concept of interdependence is applied to teamwork, it means willingly aligning oneself with others for a common purpose in order to achieve exceptional results. Think of a relay team in track. Four good runners can achieve a faster time than any one member running on his/her own. However, the downside is that if someone drops the baton or pulls up hurt. When one fails, we all lose. Question: Has our movement of churches both the will and desire to engage in this stage of interdependence?

There’s an old mentoring saying “If you’re doing ministry by yourself, you’re not doing ministry.” How many of our churches are doing ministry alone and are proud of it, convinced in the rightness of their position not realising that we’re trapped in some extended adolescence. Ministry in the 20th century will be remembered for the rise of the entrepreneurs like Bill Bright with Campus Crusade; Bob Pierce with World Vision; and Loren Cunningham with YWAM who recognised a vacuum and established a ministry in order to address the need. However, the 21st century will not be about the proliferation of new ministries but the networking and partnerships of existing ones.

We’re busy planting new churches. How well will we do in linking existing congregations for the common goal of the kingdom purposes of Jesus Christ. Will we be little empire builders or kingdom seekers? How will healthy existing churches liaise with the emerging churches movement that will look and feel so different to church as they have known it? More to the point, if we continue down the line of autonomy, how many of our congregations will still be viable on their own? How many will simply vanish? Perhaps, it’s time to think carefully about the next stage.