Federal Governance And Its Discontents

This is sort of ran­dom, but I find it fas­ci­nat­ing so please bear with me:

When­ev­er pow­er is split between one cen­tral and sev­er­al region­al author­i­ties, we are talk­ing about a fed­er­al sys­tem of gov­er­nance. The most obvi­ous Amer­i­can exam­ple is the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment (Wash­ing­ton, D.C.) ver­sus the state gov­ern­ments.

In a fed­er­al sys­tem of gov­er­nance there is a built-in ten­den­cy towards ten­sion between the cen­tral author­i­ty and the region­al author­i­ties.

Each side is try­ing to do the best they can from their per­pec­tive, yet each side keeps mak­ing deci­sions that don’t make sense from the oth­er side’s per­spec­tive. This results in a lack of con­fi­dence in the oth­er side. Most region­al author­i­ties prob­a­bly have a 85–95% con­fi­dence fac­tor in the nation­al lead­er­ship (which is rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed by the nation­al author­i­ty). This dis­trust cen­ters on two areas: com­pe­tence and char­ac­ter.

• incom­plete trust in com­pe­tence: I believe that you mean well, but that you lack the nec­es­sary atten­tion to detail/big pic­ture perspective/fundraising knack/writing ability/knowledge of the issues/etc.
• incom­plete trust in char­ac­ter: I don’t think that you’re evil, but I do think that you’re oper­at­ing with a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues than I am. You define hon­esty dif­fer­ent­ly than I do, or you have a per­son­al as well as an orga­ni­za­tion­al agen­da, or you lack the courage to dis­ap­point peo­ple, etc.

I’m not talk­ing about a com­plete lack of con­fi­dence, mind you. I’m mere­ly talk­ing about a lack of com­plete con­fi­dence. A com­plete lack of con­fi­dence calls for dras­tic action. A lack of com­plete con­fi­dence calls for mid-course adjust­ments.

Some spe­cif­ic exam­ples of a lack of com­plete con­fi­dence:

• “Will this real­ly hap­pen or is it just a big todo about noth­ing?” (char­ac­ter)
• “This is what they say here and now, what will the emails say in three months?” (char­ac­ter)
• “This is what they want to do, but can they real­ly pull it off?” (com­pe­tence)
• “Are they will­ing to actu­al­ly enforce this pol­i­cy or it real­ly going to be the same-old same-old?” (com­pe­tence and char­ac­ter)

The Assem­blies of God tends to use a fed­er­al sys­tem of gov­er­nance:

• Spring­field, MO ver­sus Dis­trict Offi­cials
• Dis­trict Offi­cials ver­sus Sec­tion­al Pres­byters
• the nation­al youth depart­ment ver­sus the dis­trict youth depart­ments
• Chi Alpha (see my notes on a Chi Alpha lead­er­ship team meet­ing)

Since we have a fed­er­al sys­tem of gov­er­nance we should­n’t be sur­prised when the same ten­sions emerge in our move­ment that we see in oth­er fed­er­al orga­ni­za­tions. But we are sur­prised. Not only are we sur­prised, we tend to diag­nose it as a spir­i­tu­al prob­lem such as dis­uni­ty, a fail­ure to sub­mit to author­i­ty, an exam­ple of uneth­i­cal lead­er­ship, or the politi­ciza­tion of a spir­i­tu­al orga­ni­za­tion.

While a spir­i­tu­al prob­lem may be present and exac­er­bat­ing the sit­u­a­tion, it’s not the causal fac­tor. The ten­den­cy towards ten­sion is pro­duced by the struc­ture itself.

Is the fed­er­al sys­tem a bad sys­tem of gov­er­nance? No. It just pro­vides us with chal­lenges that we need to over­come: oth­er sys­tems pro­vide oth­er chal­lenges and there is no panacea.

So what should we do if we real­ize that a lack of con­fi­dence is hin­der­ing our effec­tive­ness?

A few things occur to me:

1. Remem­ber that this is a nat­ur­al prob­lem, not an intrin­si­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al one.
2. Remem­ber that this is not evi­dence of a fail­ing orga­ni­za­tion or fail­ing lead­er­ship. This will recur over time regard­less of the orga­ni­za­tion’s health or the lead­er­ship’s com­pe­tence (although the fre­quen­cy and dura­tion of the cycles of mis­trust will tell you some­thing sig­nif­i­cant about the orga­ni­za­tion and its lead­ers).
3. Real­ize that you would prob­a­bly agree with the oth­er side if you had their respon­si­bil­i­ties and resources. You’ve seen it a mil­lion times: some­one who pre­vi­ous­ly agreed with you changed posi­tions and all of a sud­den became unrea­son­able. You would do the same thing.
4. Be reluc­tant to crit­i­cize where you are not will­ing to help. I say “be reluc­tant” rather than “refuse” because some­times you’re asked for feedback–giving it hon­est­ly is a mat­ter of integri­ty.
5. Be frank about the ten­sions and their rea­sons. Forth­right­ness is the long-term key to health. Pre­tend­ing that they aren’t there exac­er­bates the ten­sion.
6. Focus on the issues and not the per­son­al­i­ties (and most assured­ly not on the his­to­ry).
7. Pray.