And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles’ feet, and they would be distributed to each to the extent that any had need. Acts 4:32-35

In my life I have been involved in... more than a few churches. I have been involved in very small English-language churches in Germany, military chapels, large vaguely Protestant churches, small and medium non-denominational churches, extremely doctrinally distressing Reformed churches. Every single church, however, claims this passage as an icon and example of the kind of church they want to be.

I am here to tell you why this is wrong. You do not want to be this church.

I am not saying this is a BAD church. This is an early church, this is a church plant, this is:

A Startup.

You know, like a tech startup. Like when Google or Apple or PayPal or Facebook were first new and exciting and awesome. When everybody was working 60+ hours a week, wearing every hat as needed, and giving their all to this high-risk, high-reward project that had a truly energizing culture.

You might ask, "but wait, that sounds fun, startup culture is so exciting, why wouldn't we want that?"

Here's why: 90% of startups fail. There are a million reasons why they fail, but startup culture, with its enthusiasm, high-trust culture, and passionate believers, is not sustainable in any way.

The classic startup culture is based on an idea, a single focus and goal that a flat, non-hierarchical team works toward together. Roles come out and self-define naturally, but everybody is willing to chip in wherever there is need. The same person whose name is on the lease is writing Jira tickets and stocking the ramen. They may be working out of the (largely mythical) founder's garage with no real office space, but the camaraderie is better for all this. There's no HR, no Finance department, just energy and vibes and a willingness to learn and adapt to new skills as needed.

If you see this as not only classic startup culture and the early church but also a lot of other things, you'd be right. This is how early cults form, how newlyweds experience the first glow of marriage, what college life often feels like when you really click with your friend group. It's an incredible place to be. The joy, energy, and companionship are unmatched. These days become the foundations of a company's mythology that old hands will later call "the good old days" that new hires "missed out on".

In the same way that startups overwhelmingly fail, we start seeing the cracks in the early church... *flips pages* two chapters later.

Now at this time, as the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint developed on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. So the twelve summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, “It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Instead, brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task. Acts 6:1-3

People have been giving generously, there are no poor people among the early Christians (and no rich people), there are just people being served to meet the needs they have... until there isn't. There's innate bias in the system, there are newcomers (Hellenistic Jews, or Gentile converts to Judaism who have accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah) who aren't as welcome and aren't being shown the same generosity. Complaints arise, and with those complaints comes a solution that is often not super popular with founders: Administrators. This is Human Resources. This is Project Management. This is Finance. They're absolutely, critically necessary to the continuation of the system. In the instance of this very early church in Jerusalem, we do not yet see any pushback to this, like sometimes happens in startups that are beginning to transition to self-sustaining businesses, but just wait.

In Acts 15 we face the first church council. The church has spread, its central leadership is in Jerusalem, but there are branch offices (sorry) all around the region, and there is no longer alignment in the vision. Stakeholders are called together to say, "What do we actually do here, and where should our priorities be?" The answer is not so much a whole other blog post as a lifetime of writing, so I won't go into details, but the fact is, the stakeholders (such as Peter and Barnabas) were sent back out to their various branch offices (those two went to Antioch) to make sure that work went on according to the founding values.

I know my thoroughly churched friends will be possibly a little taken aback by corporate language applied to the church but as soon as we replace stakeholders with bishops and priests, administrators with deacons and pastors, and founders with Apostles (and obviously Jesus), it really does fit pretty well. The Apostles also gathered around a generally agreed-upon central authority, and it may surprise some of you to know that this is neither St. Peter nor St. Paul. This central authority, the patriarch of the situation, was actually St. James, brother of Jesus (see the dust-up in Galatians 2:11-14, in which probably-this-St.-James sent St. Peter out to Antioch).

This is not a thorough examination of church history, however. Suffice to say that after the whole affair in 70AD when the Romans razed Jerusalem and banned people of Jewish ancestry from living there, the head office relocated, first to Rome, and later to Constantinople.

The fact is, the startup culture of the early church did not last, could not last, because of the things that get in the way. These are things like the demands of real life. People have all things in common until they find out that there are people simply showing up to stuff themselves and contribute nothing (2 Thessalonians 3:10, 1 Corinthians 11:21-22). This is not to say we shouldn't give generously and devote ourselves to caring for others, in fact Christians are beneath unbelievers if they refuse to care for others (1 Timothy 5:8), but the halcyon days of the very first church, bonded by swift and violent persecution (St. Stephen is killed in Acts 7, St. James the Great, brother of St. John, in Acts 12), begin to suffer under the strain of maintaining continuity and purpose while expanding rapidly.

This is the make-or-break point for many companies. This is a place where Zappos, a company renowned for fabulous customer service, adopted the dogmatic Holacracy method of management, which rejected traditional management hierarchies in favor of self-managing teams. This ended up being disastrous, with a huge percentage of the workforce leaving, significant time wasted in coordinating alignment, and difficulties in communicating and understanding where to take problems when they arose. The story of Zappos and Holacracy is complex, as any such situation is, but it's a classic example of removing any official administrative and management class (on paper) and finding out what happens. In practice, hierarchies formed, people still had to be accountable, and somehow alignment had to be found. Zappos was and is an Amazon company, which is legally significant. Amazon requires certain reporting structures to exist.

Another breaking point is the failure of the culture. The high-intensity environment of a small startup is like a drug, thrilling and warm and exciting. There are many ways to break this, but the fact is that growth is going to change things. Hardly anyone hasn't had the experience of being in a small group of friends, having a new person join, and seeing the group dynamic alter. Maybe this destroyed the group and everybody went their separate ways. Maybe it took time for the group to adapt. The loss of startup culture, however, does not have to be the loss of good culture. But if it isn't protected, defended, supported, and monitored, it can fall over without anybody noticing until it's too late. It's important in those situations to define what a good culture is (is it a certain level of professionalism that smooths over contrasting personalities? Is it consistent expectations? The list could go on forever).

In the church in particular, because nobody is excluded on the basis of past or personality, even very rough and challenging personalities have to be accounted for. It's unfair and unkind to force everybody who has been doing their best to make way for somebody who is wholly abrasive, but it's also necessary to make sure that the abrasive person has ways in which they are also part of the community. There are no performance reviews in the church until the Big One At The End. Formal structures within the larger church allow everybody to participate in a set, almost scripted format–nobody is denied access to God. Then the day-to-day life can be broken down into the places where people can most handle challenges and the mutual support is system organized to make sure nobody feels like they're meeting needs but never having theirs met. (<- note: this seems almost impossible and it consistently feels like 10% of the church is carrying 99% of the weight.)

I am not writing this to present clear solutions to the issue. I was raised in Protestant churches that mostly seemed to be fighting for startup energy with pretty poorly organized leadership, ill-defined roles, inability to integrate new people except as bodies in seats, and a constant air of burnout hanging over the people who were really involved. They had achieved a lot of the negative effects of startup culture without ever capturing the joy and energy of the early days of a startup... because those happened nearly 2000 years ago. Church plants can recapture this energy, but then struggle, even or especially if they have significant growth, as leadership continues to operate in the "we wear all the hats" mentality, leaning on the same core of people to accomplish an increasing barrage of tasks, and failing to provide clear direction, doctrinal and missional alignment, and dropping huge tasks through the cracks because there's no clear assignment of duties.

That said, while I present no solutions of my own, I think the history of the Church, the part known as Holy Tradition, does in fact provide a wealth of solutions if we will bother to go read about them. The documents exist, the structures are still standing, having ridden out many terrible storms, and we can embrace the fact that we aren't in the startup any more and there is terrific wealth and joy to be found in this stage of life within the Church.