Radically Happy

The “ecosystem” is a term coined by Joel McGill in the early 2020s to describe something new we are seeing in the Body of Christ. By definition, this is not something we own or control. Rather, this is our attempt to characterize our “piece of the elephant” as we connect with others who are seeing (or want to see!) the same thing.

Below is a starting point for a “pattern language” that I and others have found to help characterize this paradigm shift. Would love to hear yours!

Ecosystem Patterns

1. FITO: Friendship Is The Org

Historically, for understandable and necessary reasons, Christianity has been defined by institutions. This is arguably the reason Christianity thrived in the West, but barely survived in the Middle and Far East.

The cost of this, however, is that relationship was inevitably subordinate to the needs of the institution. And tragically, that included our relationship with Christ.

However — precisely because of the freedoms purchased by those institutions at such a horrific cost — we now have an opportunity to flip the script. Institutions of various kinds will continue to exist in the ecosystem, but in a way that is subordinate to healthy relationships — not displacing them.

I sometimes describe this as “driving the KAHR” — Kingdom As Healthy Relationships.

2. CIASTA: Christ Is And Sets The Agenda

Pronounced “siesta“, this is a more formal way of emphasizing that friendship with Jesus is the absolute benchmark for everything else we do. While most believers would agree that God wants to invite humans into intimate relationship with Him, we dare to believe that this is His first and highest priority in everything we do. And that if we “waste” a business meeting simply ensuring we connect with Christ, that will be far more productive than any amount of merely human effort or decision-making.

3. RITS: Rejoice In The Sewage

For us, “putting on the ritz” is not about fancy clothes and swanky hotels. It looks more like vacuuming up waste from a basement.

This literally happened to Joel multiple times, and the last time — after he chose to praise in the midst of it — God revealed that this was due to systemic problems in the city’s archaic infrastructure. And He was now surfacing this (literally and metaphorically) so we could partner with Him in fixing it.

That is why and how prioritizing friendship accelerates the growth of God’s Kingdom. It is precisely when we directly — joyfully! — confront the underlying messiness we’d prefer to avoid that we uncover God’s deeper strategy.

4. HAAF: Help As A Friend

We can’t talk about displacing institutions without confronting the hard cold reality of business models. Every living thing requires resources — including ecosystems — and those resources have to come from somewhere. We believe it is better to consciously design for this reality, to avoid being unpleasantly surprised when our unconscious assumptions betray us.

A key part of building an ecosystem is embracing a “fractal” model, where large and small, full-time and gig, for-profit and non-profit all coexist within the same relational protocols — much like the Internet!

The resulting tension, though, is that this can make it difficult to know where the line is between “personal” and “professional” assistance.

One way we help manage that tension is the idea of “Helping As A Friend.” With friends, there is often a natural gradient between:

1. a quick question (free)
2. helping move (pizza)
3. a long drive (paying for gas)
4. dog-sitting (pay for time)

Within the ecosystem, we try to establish norms where it is okay — even expected — for people to say, “Because this is part of my business, I’m happy do X for free, but hoping you’ll do Y in a paid context.” That is, we’d like to help our friends launch a sustainable business, even as we may want them to help us in other areas.

This doesn’t mean the process is simple. It is inevitable that some people are happy to do certain things for free that others will want to charge for. We cannot eliminate that tension, but we can manage it better by thoughtfully wrestling with the question: “How would I treat a good friend in this situation? How would I want them to treat me?“

5. LTG: Listen to God

This is so important it could easily be first, but I like it at the bottom because it is so foundational. Institutions function by defining clear lines of authority: who is allowed to speak about what. In religious institutions, this manifests in defining who is allowed to speak for (and even hear from) God.

But an ecosystem can’t work that way. Like democracy, it requires everyone to share in the work of discerning truth, in order to avoid “single points of failure.”

That is why we continually make space to not merely hear, but actively listen to God — and then do what He says! This includes everything from formal group trainings to “taking a moment” during an intense discussion.

Listening well is far from easy or natural, but it is the core of every great friendship — and arguably the key enabler of authentic trust.