Beware Organising at Work

To Ripon tonight and a gathering of the Bishop’s Council, a select bunch and a kind of think tank for the bishop. Tonight we listened to Martin Wainwright who I think is the Northern Editor of the Guardian who rambled in a very Anglican way around lots of topics throwing out pearls before swine who gobbled them up eagerly.
One thing he said set me thinking, it was about organised religion, which he kind of winced about. “When religions organise then humanity is let into the divine and then it starts to go wrong.”
I wonder if you could have religion without organisation?
Religion is all about the business of organising people’s spiritual lives…
or religion is all about the business of collecting together people who want to express their spirituality in community which involves organisation…
or religion is all about changing the world on the basis of principles which is also involves organisation
Hmmm, whichever way you look at it we end up with an organisation
Perhaps the trick is to acknowledge that, embrace it even , we need to organise, to be organised
Whilst embracing organising we do so with care, knowing that’s where the danger might be.
So perhaps our slogan might be: Organising, handle with care.
It's a bit of a worry because tomorrow we are having a discussion about Transforming Communities and how we might organise it!