In "Watching The Sun Set", Jeremy Allison tells about a company that (according to him) was obsessed with control. He describes how that company's control kept it from enlarging the developer base for their products, and how the main money-making part of its product line stagnated, but the rest of the company was too tightly controlled to permit creativity (particularly outside creativity) to save the company.

In churches, we also tend to become obsessed with centralized control. I'm not talking about control that comes from heaven, either. Most of the decisions, including deciding how much leeway to allow the flock, are made by human beings, not God. And we consistently chase away good and reliable people when we overly-restrict what they can do or how they can participate. Even worse, those who don't leave are spiritually hindered. It is much as if you had a teenager and you made every little decision for him or her. Eventually, that child is going to grow up and move away, and will not have any idea how to live without your constant instruction.

The only thing to do, and the right thing, is to loosen your grip. Let God raise up his people for the tasks he wishes for them to accomplish and get out of the way. They aren't yours anyway, you're just a caretaker.

This seems counter-intuitive to anyone raised during the industrial age (from around 1820 to around 1990). In the Industrial Age, corporate organizations and structures were the focus of everything. We knew that we could succeed if we only had the right organizational form. This mindset infected churches, too. We want a children's ministry, a youth ministry, a Sunday school, and a midweek "family night" service, or we feel like our church isn't meeting our needs. But the truth is, over-organizing, and particularly over-centralization of power, has hindered our churches for far too long.

A church is not a factory. A church is supposed to be a group of people who seek to build their relationships with God and one another through our Supreme Master Jesus Christ. It is not supposed to be--or at least not primarily--an organization.

This is even more important at home. If you are sending your children off into Wednesday night classes, you may not be fulfilling your job as a parent. The church community is there to help you, but it is your responsibility to raise them up in the knowledge of Christ, which includes teaching them, modeling the life before them, and encouraging them to pursue personal relationships with Christ Jesus for themselves. Equally as important, you need to be teaching them to think for themselves and to make godly decisions, so that they will not be drawn away once they leave home to begin living life on their own.