The story of the Norse Viking people who settled Greenland is especially interesting to me as I think about the church landscape and ecosystem in the United States. Side note, this essay is relevant for other organizations besides churches and denominations.
The Norse Vikings that were banished from Iceland settled
the eastern and western most southern tip of Greenland around 980 A.D. In Greenland, they found their own Promise
Land full of plush green grass, plenty of water, a fishery that could sustain
settlement for generations, and trade routes with northern Europe that created
a sustainable gross domestic product or economy. So why did the Norse civilization cease to
exist in the early 1400s after centuries of very prosperous living? In short, they were not overtaken by any
external military or invading country, instead over time, they mismanaged their
natural resources and forgot they were in Greenland and not northern
Europe.
Diamond identifies several complex ecological and
sociological factors that contributed to their collapse, but there are
three factors in particular that should be on the dashboard of every
organizational leader to avoid a similar outcome of the Norse Vikings in
Greenland.
First, the Norse people arrived to Greenland with a
well-entrenched sense of European culture.
Put differently, they were deeply committed to transforming their new
settlement to mirror the culture, customs, and status of their much wealthier
and well-resourced northern European friends.
Over time, the Norse people constructed a very impressive cathedral at Gardar with massive church bells, beautiful stained-glass windows, bronze
candlesticks, Communion wine, linen, silk, silver, churchmen’s robes, and
jewelry to adorn their church, with its three-ton sandstone building blocks and
eighty-foot bell tower. In the end, the Norse starved to death.
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Second, the Norse people refused to learn survival
lessons from the Inuit people that were their neighbors. They had a low regard for the Inuit ways and
customs viewing them as natives instead of a resource. In reality, long before the Vikings settled
Greenland and long after their collapse, the Inuit people continued to survive
well. Unlike the indigenous Inuits that
understood how to hunt and harvest whales to burn oil for heat during the
brutal winters, the Norse decided to burn their own timber. Over time, the local deforestation would
render them without the timber needed to build boats necessary to sail to other
locations for resources. Also, the Norse
apparently had a too sophisticated palate that they preferred beef to
fish. The status of being a farming
community with cows was great in northern Europe but not so much in
Greenland. Because of the climate in
Greenland, once the grass was removed and the soil exposed, it became
increasingly difficult to regenerate grass.
Grass is important for grazing animals.
Also, since the Norse did not master more efficient techniques of
energy, they built their homes with large sections of sod as their
insulation. As the American southwest
would learn during the dust-bowl years of the 1930s and 40s, when dirt is
turned over too frequently for the sake of getting the quick fix of a wheat
harvest, the soil no longer has the natural covering (grass) that keeps the
dirt grounded. The windstorms that swept
over the plains literally picked up the ground and created apocalyptic dust
storms. Similarly, the artic conditions
in Greenland damaged the exposed soil rendering it useless to regrow grass
needed to keep a grazing livestock alive.
To add insult to injury, the Norse people starved to death with a fishery
that would have sustained them for many more centuries. Archeologist discovered embarrassingly few
amounts of fish bones in the trash of the Norse people. Diamond and others conclude that the Norse
people just didn’t like fish.
Third, the Norse people were more concerned with
living the fancy life of their European trade friends that they became
dependent on very bad habits overusing their resources for the purpose of
keeping their trade relationships intact.
For example, during the summer months when they should have been hunting
and harvesting new timber not their own, they were too busy hunting Walrus to
quench the European desire for ivory.
Also, they didn’t fully utilize the Walrus for survival purposes
discarding the blubber that could have been heated down for oil for heat and
cooking. In short, they wanted badly to
live like their catholic friends in Europe, but the problem is they didn’t have
the resources to sustain their standard of living. It has always been the case that importing fine
goods is always more expensive than learning to desire the goods in ones own
backyard. In this case, the bad habits
of mismanaging their own capital became a generational expectation for living. This is most evident in the Norse
civilization in their own descriptions of their cathedrals. In essence, the way they did church was a
microcosm of the way they did life.
Church was more about looking and functioning like church in Europe at
all cost.
Contemporary
Applications:
IMHP, every person interested in organizational
leadership needs to work through Diamond’s Collapse. Similar to the Norse Vikings, we are seeing
more church and denominational failings every year in our country. While there are certainly a lot of external
social factors working against a sustainable model of maintaining the way we
used to do “Church,” there are plenty of internal “self-inflicted” wounds that
will more than likely be the cause for the collapse. Using Diamond’s story of the Norse Vikings as
an analogy, churches and organizations need to call a timeout and do an
organizational triage and ask a few fundamental questions:
-Are
we attempting to maintain a particular custom, culture, or standard of living
that is not consistent with our resources?
In other words, are we spending way more than we are making necessary
for stability? Are we over committed to
being “beef” eaters instead of having a willingness to consider “fish” in our
religious diets, vis-a-vis our historical commitments to our church customs
that make us distinct but have become irrelevant, our church culture that is no
longer sustainable because the vast majority of people are disinterested in
maintaining a political brand or bureaucracy, or just the temptation of keeping
up with the “Jones'” in our building campaigns and extravagancies? Are we starving to death because of
commitment to a religious lifestyle that was never endorsed in the New
Testament anyway?
-Are
we unwilling to learn from others out of pride or brand loyalty? I recognize the dangers of syncretism when it
comes to faith matters. I am not
suggesting that every church needs to blend with the next church that seems to
be doing it better or more effectively.
There has to be some theological/doctrinal guideposts to protect against
syncretism. But, there are plenty of
ways our churches can learn from communities that are different in brand,
custom, and even theology. In order for
this to happen, there first has to be a conduit for communication. I suspect history is full of examples of
segments of people refusing to openly share and respect other segments of
people because of superficial differences.
The lesson from the Norse's unwillingness to connect with the Inuit
natives is pride comes before the fall.
Unfortunately, the institution that seems to breed more pride and ego
are churches in this country. Of course,
we are somewhat innocuous in the way we posture in our pride. It occurs in our church membership numbers,
budgets “Our weekly collection is____________,” and programs. While all of these are not necessarily
negative, when they become the source of identity ego they take the focus off
of Jesus and ministry and on ego-driven status.
-Have
we developed some bad habits over time that have become part of our
organizational DNA? The challenge of conducting a self-triage in this area is that it is almost impossible to
accomplish without the help of feedback from outsiders. Are we willing to listen to people that visit
our churches but then decide not to stay? Do we even ask them why they left? Or, are we scared that we might hear that we have some blind spots that need
immediate attention? I suspect there are
hundreds of churches right now that are asking themselves the same sets of
questions: “Why are we not growing?” “Why are we constantly chasing the bank
note?” “Why do thousands of people drive by our church, and yet, we continue to
look at the same 65-100 people every week?” “Why are we not experiencing
spiritual growth in our congregations?”
These questions are not exhaustive, but they help illustrate the
trajectory that leads to a final closing of the doors.
Conclusion:
I do not pretend to understand all of the social
and religious complexities that lead to collapse; however, I do think Diamond
makes a strong case that more often than not churches are engrossed in game planning
against that “other” church down the road that they ignore their own internal
strategies of being a healthy church/organization.
While the church down the road may be bigger, nicer, and more
attractive, the message of Collapse is they are probably not your
biggest threat. You are your biggest
threat (My tone is really nice in making that statement. 😊)
There is one particular aspect of the way we do
church in this country that I see has shifted from previous decades. The millennial generation are not interested
in building campaigns for several reasons.
They are not as heavily resourced as the Boomers and Greatest
Generation, they are not going to church much anyway to validate a multi-year
bond purchase for a new building, and they much rather see their money and
church budgets go to help people and not for a country club membership.
My conspiracy theory is there is an organization
that already has the building capital in every city in every state in our
country that, if they decide to, could close thousands of churches in a single
week. I am waiting for Chick-fil-A to
decide to open their places of business on Sunday for early morning faith
conversations. They can continue to be
“closed” on Sundays for business, but creating a meeting place for those
interested to share faith and some nuggets seems more like what church will
look like in the future. Chick-fil-A is
a metaphor for the shifting that has been long underway in our country as it
relates to faith matters. For a lot
reasons, people today are looking for a meeting place that is low-church and
high-relationship. Discard all the work
and effort put into the Sunday morning program and aesthetics, and focus more
on creating casual meeting spots that lead to meaningful conversations about Jesus
that are resistant to gender and generational gapping. Something happens when people in small groups
share healthy food and life. In the
midst of food and life sharing, sermons will occur organically. Sad for the full-time preacher, but your days
may be numbered in the capacity of commercial Christianity. People today can find great sermons, sorry, but much better than what you are delivering anyway on Sunday morning, on their
devices. Lots of them, and you know
what? They are listening to way more than one a week.
I tithe a lot to my local Chick-fil-A’s because they
provide manna for our family. Every
morning I get my yogurt parfait, I see groups of people in Bible studies. This is a foreshadowing of what may be
coming. I suspect they are providing
more than just physical manna as well. I already have the slogan: "Reed Mor Bible"
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