The 1 in 60 Rule
In his book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins outlines the five stages of why once highly successful organizations fail over time. He describes Step 2 as the “Undisciplined Pursuit of More.” The organization overreaches, chasing growth or diversification that lies outside its core competencies, and thereby migrating away from the disciplined decision-making that had created initial success.
Okay, keeping Collins’ prophetic words in mind, consider the initial success of the Church, when they “grew daily in numbers” (Acts 16:5). Then compare that information to what has become such a common story today, where the average local church baptizes one person every three or four months.
The historical data tells the story. The Christian Church grew quickly because of our initial intentionality in sharing Jesus with the people in our oikos or, as I often describe them, our front row, those eight to fifteen people who’ve been given the best seats to hear about and see Jesus in us. That has always been Christ’s designated strategy and why virtually everyone who places their faith in Him did so because of someone in our own oikos.
Dr. Rodney Stark, who was a highly regarded academic professor at Baylor University, had a clear take on what he calls “the rapid and remarkable Christianization of the world.” In The Triumph of Christianity, he cited the oikos principle (without calling it the oikos principle). “Mostly, the Church spread as ordinary people accepted it and then shared it with their families and friends, and the faith was carried from one community to another in this same way—probably most often by regular travelers such as merchants.”
But, over time, we lost our focus, and the course Jesus set for His Church was ever-so-slowly readjusted by well-intentioned church leaders. It seems that the outward intentionality of Christendom to save the world was supplanted by inward thinking revisionists who instead sought to save believers from the world. Little by little, the focus of God’s people was redirected until, today, we find local churches buried by their logos, websites, programs, and “ministry responsibilities.” All perhaps good but, in the end, leading to nothing all that eternally great. Certainly nothing close to the Great Commission.
Experts in air navigation have a rule of thumb known as the “1 in 60 Rule.” It states that for every one degree a plane veers off its course, it misses its target destination by one mile for every 60 miles you fly. That means, the further you travel one degree off course, the further you’ll end up from your desired destination. For example, if you’re only one degree off course when you leave LAX, rather than landing in Honolulu, you’ll need to attempt an emergency water landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 50 miles away from the airport. That’s a problem, especially if you were looking forward to romantic walks on Waikiki Beach with your spouse, not a 50-mile swim to get there.
In other words, if you’re working with the wrong focus, success actually makes things worse.