Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

We're all familiar with the metaphor of a church as a body (as in 1 Cor. 12). Corporations, from the Latin corpus ("body"), also draw from that metaphor. What do churches and corporations have in common?

• Just like human bodies, churches and corporations are distinct, recognizable, and unique.
• Just like human bodies, churches and corporations go through identifiable stages as they age.
• Just like human bodies, churches and corporations may suffer injury. They may or may not recover, and may or may not bear long lasting scars.
• Just like human bodies, churches and corporations have necessary inputs and expected outputs.
• Just like human bodies, churches and corporations are composed of various parts that each have distinctive functions. (Here's where the skeletons come in!)

The Brand/Yancey classic Fearfully and Wonderfully Made brings together a renowned surgeon and a prominent spiritual author to present thoughtful insights connecting the human body and the living church (or other corporate structures). Here are some of their insights:

• Skeletons are buried deep within the body and associated with framework, hardness, growth, and adaptation. Brand and Yancey parallel those bones with the hard legal rules of a church (or other organization), necessary but perhaps scary if that's all we ever saw.
• By contrast, skin is the most visible body part, responsible for sensing, loving, confronting. What people or practices in your church -- or corporation -- form the gentle, personable, flexible outer interface?
• Healthy cells give insight into specialization, diversity, and unity, while cancerous cells warn of individuals gone rogue to create a counterproductive movement. How do the individual "cells" in your church or business work to advance individual or corporate goals?

These parallels and more are developed through stories of Dr. Brand's work in leper colonies in India, and the entire book makes for fascinating reading.

What does this mean for strategic planning? In order for your organization to move forward, you'll use your same well-defined inner "bones" of core mission and belief but perhaps position them in different ways. Operations ("muscles") that have been rarely flexed may need to be exercised, perhaps rigorously and painfully, in order to build strength. Communication pathways ("nerves") may need to be developed so information is shared reflexively. Your corporate "face" may need a new style. Is your organization "feeding" on inputs that lead to corporate health?

The next time you develop a strategic plan, approach your organization from the standpoint of a body with all its many parts. Your ministry, like your body, is fearfully and wonderfully made. Here’s to your health!