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September 13, 2011 | We often associate growth with adjectives like thriving, transformative, generative and sustainable. If we want Christian institutions and Christian communities to be signs of God’s reign, surely they will be marked by consistent growth, won’t they?

Memphis’ Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare faced this question a decade ago. Gary Shorb, the system’s CEO, decided the answer was “no.” To become more mission-driven as a church-related health system, Shorb’s institution needed to decide what to stop doing and reallocate its resources.

This reallocation of resources was based on discerning the “soul” of the organization -- the heart of its mission -- and clearly identifying the needs of its primary constituents and community. Health system leaders decided to sell assets, including some rural hospitals.

Methodist Le Bonheur did not simply end relationships or cut programs that were no longer effective. It also sold assets and ended programs that were themselves worthwhile but that, after careful evaluation, were determined to be no longer at the center of its work. As Shorb put it, “Sometimes you have to shrink to grow.”

The missional focus, in turn, became education, children’s hospitals and the development of the system’s Congregational Health Network. The innovative Congregational Health Network has helped establish relationships throughout the greater Memphis community to connect, as Methodist Le Bonheur Senior Vice President Gary Gunderson puts it, the “healing institutions” of Methodist Le Bonheur with the “health institutions” of local congregations.

The Congregational Health Network has helped Methodist Le Bonheur become a more generative organization, because it has enhanced the networks connecting people throughout Memphis with networks of services from midwives to hospice. It has also enabled a more proactive and holistic focus on health throughout the community.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now a consultant for and board member of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, advises institutional leaders to evaluate carefully what shouldn’t change before deciding what can change.

Dubik has considerable experience guiding change -- he helped lead the Army through one of the most sweeping transitions in U.S. military history. In that process, before he was ready to advise what ought to change, Dubik had to describe the “soul,” or essence, of the Army. That soul shouldn’t change. Everything else, he says, is up for grabs.

Mission-driven Christian institutions are generative and sustainable because they can name and focus on their telos, their soul. With that clear sense of purpose, institutional leaders can more wisely decide what needs to be pruned and what needs to grow to enhance the institution’s generativity and sustainability.

But many institutional leaders leap too quickly at chances for unchecked growth in size and programs. And, indeed, there are moments when growth is needed, such as in the effort to create scalable results or during an institution’s early years.

Who would not have wanted to contribute to the growth of Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank, or the spread of church-related higher education in the U.S. in the 19th century, or the multiplication of local affiliates of Habitat for Humanity?

The amazing fruitfulness of such organizations, elegant in their design and sustainable over time, has contributed to significant development of human, intellectual, network, service and financial capital. Their flourishing has also contributed to the emergence and cultivation of local, regional and broader ecosystems.

Yet Methodist Le Bonheur’s experience also points to the critical importance of pruning.

In John’s Gospel (15:1-2), Jesus evokes the image of pruning for Christian life, and this practice is crucial for organizations as well. Pruning involves getting rid of those things that are broken, are sinful, have died or no longer advance an institution’s mission. Jesus talks about the wheat that in falling to the ground eventually bears much fruit (John 12:24).

Too many individual organizations cling desperately to a life that has already run its course, when they might be able to be re-purposed for new life in the broader ecosystem. Leaders of large institutions such as Methodist Le Bonheur have to attend to their whole ecosystem as well as the organizations within their institution.

Jesus’ image of pruning also suggests that we may need to remove some things that are otherwise healthy for the sake of even greater faithfulness and effectiveness. Healthy rosebushes need to be pruned for the sake of even greater growth, beauty and creativity. So also with institutions.

In 2000 the Mormon church decided to transform its thriving junior college in Idaho, Ricks College, into a four-year baccalaureate institution, to be called BYU-Idaho. As Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring narrate the story in their recent book, “The Innovative University,” church president Gordon Hinckley was convinced that the church needed to offer young church members more opportunities for higher education. The conversion of Ricks College seemed to be a better and more cost-effective strategy than creating a brand-new institution.

Hinckley faced a series of tough choices -- reviewing and reducing the number of disciplines, majors and courses; converting the campus to a year-round curriculum; and, notably, eliminating an enormously successful intercollegiate athletics program.