What Models Might Teach Us About Design

This is not a hypothetical topic.  It actually happened to me.

As I was learning about better models, I realized that what I learned about models also applies to the the systems that are modeled.  Better models provide insight into or approximate key characteristics of a system. So, if we are designing a system, these insights can be quite helpful.  I’ve said it before, but let me again claim that ministries are systems.  To justify these claims please let me go back to some basics.

The Google dictionary defines a system as “a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole; … an organized scheme or method.”  This definition makes it pretty clear that a ministry is an example of a system.  It also suggests that

1. a ministry is a collection of things,
2. the elements of that collection are somehow connected, and
3. a ministry is an organized way of doing things for the Lord.

In this blog we have talked over time of each of these suggestions in the context of a ministry, so the conclusion that a ministry is a system shouldn’t surprise us.

A key thing I learned from some of the better models is that there are only three types of relationship that can exist between the collection of things that make up a system.  (Some models have fewer.)  Since a ministry is a system, this is, then, true for ministries.  I think it can be very helpful for a design team to quickly go through a check list of three possibilities and not have to wonder if there are more.

So, what are these three types of relationship?  Their formal names are composition, collaboration, and specialization, but before you glaze over, let me describe them.

Composition.  Composition means that a ministry can be composed of other ministries.  This is familiar: a student ministry is often composed of an intermediate school ministry, a high school ministry, and a college ministry.  We have talked of this before when we said, “every part of a ministry is a ministry.”  It works the other way around, too: W can look for opportunities to “compose” a ministry that includes several parts.  This often simplifies design.

Collaboration.  Collaboration means to labor together.  A synonym is cooperation, which means to operate together.  Ministries are interdependent; one ministry can depend on another.  There are two (at least) ways of picturing this:

1. What I will call dependency by precedence. Here we simply note that sometimes we will want one part of the ministry precede another.  For example, we might prefer that someone take a Bible survey class before proceeding to an in-depth study of Romans.  We can show this graphically.  Suppose we have two ministries, A and B.  If we would like ministry A to occur before ministry B, then we can draw a picture with two boxes, labeled A and B, with A to the left of B.  To this we add an arrow pointing from A to B, emphasizing that A happens first.  Dependency by precedence is the dependency used by my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories.
2. What I will call dependency by assistance. Here we recognize that some ministries will need to be supported by other ministries; that is, helped by more than just precedence.  For example, a Bible class teacher might need the assistance of a church’s audio-visual department for some artwork.  In this case the teacher requests support from the AV department, and, in time, the AV department returns a finished visual product.  Graphically, if we have two boxes, one labeled “Teacher” and the other “AV”, we would show teacher on the left and two arrows liking Teacher and AV, one from teacher to AV to show the request and one back from AV to teacher to show the AV response, the artwork.

Interestingly, in its simplest form, the “precedence” approach can be represented under the “assistance” model with only the backwards arrow, showing that, to use our example, the AV work precedes the teaching.  Of course, this immediately shows the usefulness of the more powerful model.  Because there must have been a request for the artwork, the ministry design team should ask, “what caused the AV department to do the artwork?”

Specialization.  Specialization means to make something special, set apart from the ordinary.  For a design relationship it generally means to change something simpler into something that better fits a need.  Imagine, for example, the simplest form of worship service.  Let’s call it the 3P approach: Praise, Prayer, and Preaching.  Now let’s imagine that the worship team wants to add holy communion to the 3Ps.  The resulting worship ministry will include all three Ps plus communion.  This communion service will be a specialized version of a regular 3P service.   We might also say that the communion service inherits the 3Ps, and its design includes something more; namely, communion.

So, there you have it, a checklist for our ministry design team.  Every time we add a new ministry element to our design, it is very easy and helpful to ask,

1. Is this ministry part of the other ministries of our design or does it include some of them?
2. Does this ministry depend on other ministries of our design either by precedence or assistance?
3. Can we design this ministry by inheriting its design from a ministry we already have and making it different or better?