Israel Galindo’s book, The Hidden Lives of Congregations: Discerning Church Dynamics, is in three parts. The first two address the congregation and the forces behind it. The third part is about being a leader in a congregation. When reading it in one setting Galindo seems to repeat him self somewhat when it comes to the third part, as he tries to apply the first two parts to the function of pastoral leaders.
One could call Galindo’s book a book of labels. He goes through various ways of looking at congregations and makes overall assumption what it means for a congregation being of certain size, having a particular history, being in a certain setting, living out a specific spirituality and so forth. However, his labels are not an attempt to say how congregations ought to be (prescriptive), but rather an attempt to understand how things tend to be (descriptive).
Galindo gives us a good starting point of his ecclesiology, when he writes:
While a congregation is a legitimate and authentic expression of Church, at the same time it is not equivalent to it. The local congregation is subject to hidden life forces that affect its temporal and contextual setting. As such it is both a limited and self-limiting relationship organism rather than an eternal organization. (2)
The tension between being an organism and being an organization is constantly ongoing. Galindo addresses this in various ways, describing the difference between high-touch and high-organization styles of congregations (25) and reminding us that organizational structures are to be seen already in the New Testament (22). Galindo claims that leaders must understand the congregation to be “more community than organization in nature” (27).
According to Galindo, the church does not exist to “serve itself or its own” (39) and “neither is it the purpose of the Church to ‘serve others,’ as so often is believed. While the congregations do engage in ministries and actions that are for the benefit of others , the primary purpose of the Church is to serve God. This is a fine distinction but a meaningful one…” (40)
Galindo uses as I said earlier different ways of addressing the Church and its hidden dynamics and in the Appendixes he gives an overview of those labels, so I will not go into that here. It is though worth mentioning how he emphasizes the volitional aspect of effectual faith, as a critical issue in faith development, using James Fowler’s stages of faith (99)
(The wonderfully arrogant comment on top of page 101 is worth mentioning as I laughed out loud when I read it and the same goes for the mentioning of pseudo-Celtic Rituals on page 109.)
I am not sure I understood what Galindo meant with Culturally conservative and Culturally Liberal on page 125.
When Galindo moves into part three, he is very much in line with Marcuson’s Leaders who Last, at least in broad strokes. However, I wonder a bit about one assumption Galindo seems to have. Why is it that the pastoral leader, or the one with the priestly functions must be the congregational leader? Is it not possible to separate those functions of leadership? (see Galindo’s take on this on p. 139,140,148,149,152,157,159) This emphasis on the pastoral leader is somewhat “corrected” in chapter 10.
A FINAL NOTE – Even though I am not convinced by Galindo’s assumption about the pastoral leader, his book is a great tool for congregational understanding and perhaps one of the best books I have read on the subject of congregational life.