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Old Testament Hero Jonah
In Jonah 1, the sailors were fighting for their lives. The storm was threatening to sink their ship and they were desperate to “find out who [was] responsible for this calamity” (v. 7). The responsibility lay with a man they’d never met and with a decision he’d made before the journey began…but he became part of their system, and they were dramatically affected.
Systems thinking opens our eyes to the fact that decisions we don’t make will dramatically affect us, and decisions we do make will influence people we may never see.
Jonah refused to carry God’s message to Ninevah. Instead, he ran in the opposite direction. His decision to disobey God threatened the lives of these unsuspecting and innocent sailors.
Fortunately for the sailors, they threw Jonah overboard (Jonah 1:15) and the sea became calm. In verse 17, God provided a “huge fish” to swallow Jonah—where he remained for 3 days and 3 nights…
Corpus Christi (Body of Christ)
I grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas (Latin for Body of Christ), so this metaphor is particularly meaningful to me in light of that…
In 1 Corinthians 12:12-29, Paul observed that even though Christ’s body is comprised of many members, it is—like the human body—still one body. And even though the body encompasses great diversity, every member is equally a part.
Paul wanted to ensure that every follower of Christ will feel important and be assured that their contribution is crucial. No one has the right to act as though they are separate from the body. While we may wish that we (or others) were different, the bottom line is that God created each of us just as He wanted us to be (v. 18).
Additionally, in Colossians 1:18, Paul points out that Jesus Christ is “the head of the body, the church.” While the church has many distinct and unique parts, their origin and unity are in Christ.
How do you feel about your role on your current team or on teams with whom you’ve been involved in the past? How do you feel about the roles of other team members? What could you do to demonstrate that you value each member and want to strengthen their relationship with the rest of the system?
An Integrated System: The Vine, Branches, & Fruit
Jesus often used nature to illustrate spiritual truth, and the metaphor he used in John 15:1-8 speaks of reproductive life. The vine, branches, and fruit constitute an integrated biological system as follows:
- The Vine gets its nutrients from the soil—just like Jesus always remains connected to God
- The Branch must receive its life from the Vine—just like believers must depend on Jesus and look to Him to find spiritual vitality.
- The Fruit nourishes others and contains seeds of its own reproduction—just like the outward manifestation of the life of Christ in us.
If any part of the system fails, there will be no fruit.
In his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge writes, “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static ‘snapshots.’”
Out of This World Leader, may you see the systems at work—those interrelationships that you’re directly and indirectly impacting—in your life…and may all your systems be “go”, as you shoot for the stars!