Structured vs. Unstructured

Discipleship with no structure lacks intentionality. It's too easy to get sidetracked. Too easy to become chitchat. Too easy to lose focus. Conversely, discipleship with too much structure becomes stifling. It lacks relational development. It lacks space for the Holy Spirit to move and teach outside of our plans. It puts the control on our shoulders.

But flexibility does not inherently oppose intentionality, and plans do not inherently stifle opportunity.

We need both.  

We need the Sunday morning worship that leads us into the sermon. That sets our hearts. That brings us into rest and centers us on Jesus. And while we need space for the Holy Spirit to move in these structures, the structure carves out space for intentionally seeking God in our weekly schedules.

We also need unstructured times of worship. Where our hearts can flow to the sound of praise for as long as the Spirit moves us. Sometimes that's through the structure of a scheduled worship night, and sometimes that's through the spontaneity of a life that pours out into praise amidst daily tasks. 

Structure and spontaneity are important for ministry too. Neither is less beautiful, but their reach is different. Structure has the potential to get lost in the monotony of rules and expectations, losing the point. But it also mobilizes us to do more than we could accomplish otherwise, giving us greater scope and resources. Unstructured ministry gives a different kind of mobility though; it allows us to move to the need before us instead of relying too heavily on systems in place, which might not even hold space for that particular need, before we act.

We need a framework for worship, discipleship, small groups, Bible study, etc., but if we let it, that structure can become a benchmark for achievement instead of an access point to growth, community, and intimacy with God. We need flexibility for these things too, moving with the Spirit instead of being committed to our plans, but if all we have is flexibility, it's difficult to cultivate rhythms of focus and deepening in areas we need to grow. 

The fact is that both structured and unstructured time are essential to the Christian life. In fact, for all of life. So why do we so often pit them against each other, raising one up as better and debating those who fall on the other end?

God designed structure and order in the very fabric of the universe; those patterns are often the very thing that pave the way for us to move in unstructured ways. Jesus lived amongst the structures society formed, but He also knew when to break them. Knew when they were stifling or contradictory to the Spirit of God. 

We are designed to have both. We thrive when we have both. But most people tend to fall on one side or the other, and so the opposite becomes a threat. If I connect to God through liturgies and find freedom in consistency, and my church experience is completely free-form, I won't feel like I have access to God. Conversely, if I connect to God by letting His Spirit create space and having the freedom to follow His lead, and my church experience is rigidly structured, I also won't feel like I have access to God. But this lack of access is not because either form is bad but because they have become only. We have limited God through holding rigidly to one side instead of pulling apart where sin has quenched the Spirit.

Sometimes structure does stifle, but it's not the framework of structure but the people who take away the freedom to stand, to sit, to dance, to be quiet, to be loud, to be really uninhibited in whatever expression that takes. But it's those who know how to be flexible that can breathe life. Who can see when structure has become restrictions and expectations. 

Sometimes completely unstructured time can leave people lost for how to move forward, seeking but without tools, distracted by lesser things instead of drawing into the greater thing, but it's those who care about structure who can breathe life. Who can see when the time has become more about how we're feeling than about who God is and how to ground it so that we might seek Him and not a spiritual experience.

We want seeking God to be easy for us. We want our way. We're worried about missing Him in an environment that feels inhospitable. And it's so easy to blame the surface level difference instead of getting to the root. So instead of uplifting both forms of knowing God, we look at the perversions of the one we don't like and advocate for the one that suits us better. And we call it the better. We can decide that how we best connect with God is how God best moves in the world and in individual hearts, and that those acting contrary to that are not creating space for Him.

But God has given us an opportunity to join the two while also going deeper into community. We get to teach each other. We get to make the rigid more comfortable with unplanned space. We get to show the spontaneous the life that can come from planned time.

It was never supposed to be one or the other, but we've too often created a false dichotomy between the two. Our victory is not in winning the debate of one or the other but in embracing the balance and diversity of the two joined together. We can interrogate our resistance to one form instead of interrogating the people who like it. We can embrace the area we feel more comfortable and pursue growth in the other instead of defending our position. We can find what inhibits our praise while also seeing how to uplift the praise of the whole Body. Because we are different, but it's our differences that create the most powerful expressions of unity.

Our lives are so much richer in the balance of the two, thriving in what feels natural and growing--discovering the beauty and the gift--in what doesn't. Being blessed in both because that is the fullness of design and creation.

That is what God has for us to discover. He's not satisfied with praise in half measures, so He invites us into the fullness of the human experience--that which is easy for us and that which is difficult--so that we may know Him and know each other and be fully satisfied and filled. 

We're made differently, and it's those differences that reveal more and more of who God is. As Jackie Hill Perry said, "the diversity of friends gives you a fuller picture of God," and I believe that we will see God more when we embrace the both/and of who He created us to be and leave the either/or that keeps us comfortably in our preference. We were not made to be the same; we have life in the differences. It's when we embrace those differences and honor each other in them that we see God in the ways which are not only obvious to us but also in the ways we'd otherwise miss.