Balancing Emergent and Hierarchical Governance at Church
Jonathan Jardine, drawing on Clay Christensen’s strategic frameworks, examines how decentralization of church practice—not doctrine—can help build Zion. He traces LDS innovations like seminaries, the Primary, and the welfare program back to emergent strategies that bubbled up from local leaders solving real problems, later adopted and standardized by general authorities. Jardine contrasts this with recent decades’ shift toward deliberate, centrally planned initiatives, arguing that the church needs both approaches and should empower members to exercise their “spiritual muscles” through local innovation.
