Forget cells... how about fractals?

Hello again!

"Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:20)

I'm not sure how many of you know this; but fractals are amazing!

Don't worry if you don't think you know what fractals are. The word is not very much used outside of dusty mathematics lecture theatres. I'm going to go on for a bit about them, but please bear with me. I think it'll be worth it...

This is a fractal:

A Fractal

 It's called the Julia set. It was named after one of the mathematicians who pioneered the study of something called complex dynamics, or the repetition of functions on complex numbers. (See this wiki page for more information, if you're that way inclined.)

The Julia set is closely related to the Mandelbrot set:

Part of the Mandelbrot set

You might recognise that one. It's quite well known, mainly because it is stunning. It's also named after a mathematician.

The main reason they are so amazing is that they exhibit something called self-similarity. They are made up of parts which look like smaller versions of the whole thing. That picture of the Mandelbrot set is just a small part of this whole:

The Mandelbrot set

The pictures above are just representations of mathematical equations, but they really are stunning. They are mesmerising to explore: this video gives you an idea, but you can download free fractal generators and explore them yourself. It really is amazing.

So why am I showing you these? If they are just graphs, what relevance do they have to anything? I mean, they're just numbers, right?

The fact is, fractals are a key part of our mathematical understanding of the world. They are an incredibly efficient way of filling space, and we can use the principles behind the pictures above, and others like them for all sorts of things - from making realistic looking fake mountains to predicting the movements of the stock exchange.

"But what do they do in real life?," I hear you say...

Fractals are everywhere in nature. Whenever you see a fern, or a head of broccoli, or a cloud, or a snowflake, you see a fractal. Just look at this one, for instance:

There are literally hundreds of examples in nature. This is important, because nature reveals part of the nature of God.

So what do fractals tell us about God?

I've been thinking about fractals for a long time, and I think that they tell us about his body, the Church.

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." 1 Cor 12:27

The Church is made up of many small parts, interconnected to make a whole. Recently (in the last few decades), a movement has emerged in the Church, which is called "cell church". The idea is that congregations work best when they mimic a living organism. These organisms are made up of cells, which copy themselves and divide to multiply, forming copies of the original cell. There are often a few different types of cell, working together and performing different jobs to keep the overall organism alive and kicking.

The idea is great, but the next step makes it self-limiting. When it comes to growth, the natural model for a multi-cellular organism is mitosis. In this model, the cell ingests nutrients and produces DNA and proteins. When the cell has gathered enough DNA, the DNA components of each cell are copied and the two copies are pulled apart and go into separate cells.

More often than not, the congregations see themselves as the final organism, and the cells as their building block. This can be self limiting, as the final organism spends a lot of resources trying to ensure that the cells are growing and multiplying when they reach a threshold. The model falls down, in that church cells are not made up of identical components, so cannot be easily divided like biological cells. It can also cause some rifts within the congregation and wound some of its members as the cells are pulled apart based on the supposition that they have grown big enough. Often, a strong, well-balanced, well-mixed cell will split to produce two unbalanced, dissimilar cells. This doesn't fit the idea of cell multiplication shown in nature (except in the case of meiosis, where the outcome of the division is the production of half-cells, which need to combine with another half-cell to be viable as organisms).

What if the better interpretation of cell church takes its inspiration from fractals? How would that look?

The bible has lots of commandments and promises aimed at individuals. These can be summarised as

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)

As I mentioned above, the key feature of a fractal is self-similarity: that it looks similar at whatever scale you decide to view it. So what if the Church is supposed to work this way: take the commandments which apply to you as an individual, and replace the words so they apply to cell groups, or to church congregations, or the churches in a city, county, or country.

For example:

"My cell group shall love the Lord her God with all her heart, and with all her soul and with all her mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: My cell group shall love her neighbour as herself."

What does that look like? To me it looks like my cell group worshipping together, drawing together and going towards God, etc, and also looking outside herself to show love corporately towards other cell groups, communities and societies outside the church, and so on. This means networking - the whole cell doesn't necessarily have to do mass activities, but members within it, or groups of members within it should take any opportunity to bless those other groups around them. Just as on the individual scale, I might bless another individual with my hands, or with my words, or with my finances; on the cell group scale, the group might bless another with their Ann, or with their Bob, or with their hospitality.

The end result is that you have cell groups which are interconnected. Everyone knows someone in another group, and knows where they can get specialised help if they need it. Everyone seeks to bless others across cell group boundaries, and across church boundaries, and so on.

This model is not without difficulties. My cell group has been built around this sort of model. We are involved in many things within and outside our church. This makes us very busy, and means that our group meetings are often hard to organise, and that our group is quite hard to keep track of. It also means that our group is significantly bigger than most, because not all our members can make it to every meeting. It also means that the cell division method of multiplication simply does not fit.

However, that is not to say that we are unhealthy, or that we are not growing, just that growth looks a bit different. In nature, fractal patterns develop through branching from a core. All the elements remain connected, and feed each other. Take the fern, for example. Tehe fern grows out from a stem. The main stem feeds its secondary stems with water and nutrients from the soil, and the secondary stems return energy from the leaves at their ends.

What I am seeing in our cell group is that we are meeting together in smaller groups - my family will go and visit another family within the group, or we will invite some members of our group to meet a friend of ours who is not yet connected to it. These groups are still very much a part of the whole cell group organism, and receive life from the group, but they also feed life into the group from these smaller experiences. Growth takes the form of budding, and symbiosis, rather than splitting.

It means that we get a diverse range of people, with different levels of faith, and at different points in their journey towards God, collaborating and enriching each others lives.

How cool would it be if the Church at large looked like this? If a cell group from our church were to go and serve the local Catholic church by supporting their worship, or providing tea and coffee. Not because the leader says so, or because the pastor has organised it, but because a member of the group has a friend there, and  thought it would be a great way to love them.

I think it would be mesmerising.

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" - John 13:35