What church administration can learn from the secular world

Conclusion

In many ways, it could be argued that the Reformation was a fight for a theology of administration. Whether one is speaking of Luther in relation to the Pope or Calvin and the Anabaptists, tremendous attention was given to the administrative relationships.

In our day, we need to recover the awareness of the Reformers that the way we organize our structures perhaps says more about ourreal theology than the sermons we preach. Church order is, in this sense, the heart of the approach to theology. There is evidence that business is beginning to take “order” seriously. There is equal evidence that the church, too, is beginning to ask the real questions. Unless the church is to be just in the ghetto, or business is to lose the benefit of disciplined questions about meaning, we cannot say that the church and business can be in dialogue. We can say that theymust be.