THE LOCAL CHURCH & ITS ENVIRONMENT : A CASE STUDY ON A METHODIST CHURCH

Abstract

This study, based on the single case-study of a local Methodist church, is intended to be a contribution to the local literature on religious organizations. The lack of local sociological literature in this field may be attributed to the general unwillingness to treat religious organizations as human arrangements, amenable to socio-scientific analysis and classification. Essentially, this study adopts the position that ideas from organizational analysis derived from research on business and governmental firms may be fruitfully modified and applied to the realm of religious organizations. The focus is on the relationship between the local church and its environment from an open-systems perspective, whereby it is argued that there is the need for the local church to make strategic responses. The study confirms that there is indeed an adaptation process at work between the local church and its environment. However, the process of adaptation brings about both benefits and tensions. In making organizational adaptations, the church may create disjunctures and tensions between its ideological goals and its organizational growth goals. The resolution of such discrepancies involves the element of organizational politics within the church. One interesting response found in this case-study is the modification of the organization's ideological goals to bring it more into alignment with organizational-growth goals. Finally, from the results of this study, a typology of three possible of organizational adaptations observed among local churches is proposed and presented.