From Me to We: A Plea for Preserving and Building Institutions

In cultural analysis, some values loom like black holes—the entire constellation of cultural values and concerns orbit around a single, dominating principle. And for North American culture, that value is individualism.

This manifests in various pathologies. We pretend that we can go it alone or that we don’t need collaborative institutions—churches, educational institutions, or absurdly, even governments. We deceive ourselves with bromides like “I trust Christ but not the church,” or “I love humanity, but I just can’t get along with the people.” We cheer as institutions crumble or wish for the collapse of long-established power structures, without a thought to how we will replace them.

It is, of course, easier to tear down because institution building and maintaining is costly work. The price of building a coalition is nothing less than relational investment. It’s an endeavour to create a shared dream. It requires arduous persuasion, changing people’s worldviews. And conflict will happen. There will be as many detractors and destroyers as there are builders. So is the result worth the effort? Why even bother?

Because we can do things together that we would never accomplish alone. Institution building is a humble admission that I don’t have all the answers, that humans were never made to work in solo, and that relationships are worth the trouble. It affirms that there is still a future that could be made brighter by my investment today. Institution building confesses that human flourishing exists, that it matters, and my labours could contribute to it. It acknowledges that humans were made to work, build, grow, innovate, contribute, and not just to consume. The very costliness and labor of the enterprise hints at the greater returns. Collaboration is costly… and it is worth it.

And because we have invested life and treasure, we love our institutions so we desperately seek to protect them. Our organizations appear bigger than any of us, often outlasting our own life spans. We would like to imagine that they will stand as monuments above the ravages of time; that even when we die and are forgotten, our institutions will endure.

Most of this is self-deception. Institutions exist in the real world like the people that comprise them, and the same limitations of finitude lie heavy on both. Institutions age, they corrupt, they take on their own personalities. They can turn grumpy or edgy or arrogant or simply evil. Eventually, every institution outlives its original purpose and dies. Nothing can escape the despair of Ecclesiastes. Everything… even an institution… is subject to vanity.

And when the institutions we love morph or crumble, our grief is justified. Something of value, something we loved enough to invest in has been lost. Collective opportunities have been destroyed. Years of human labor have been rubbed out. Because of this, we ought to strive not only to build but also to maintain good, time-tested institutions. We are conservatives—we start from a mental and emotional preset to believe that the time-tested insights of previous generations are not shackles to be escaped but blessings inherited. If our institutions were merely valued for their sticker price—the amount of asset value if liquidated—would we react so viscerally about their trajectory or their future? Something greater is evidently at stake.

But grief should not be our only response to institutional decline. As with any loss, the wise take it to heart and grow still wiser. Never confuse institutions with God, His work, the church, or our hopes for human flourishing. Institutions exist to serve people, not the converse. Like people, institutions also have their own productive lifespan. It is not necessary to live forever in order to say that we lived at all or accomplished real good. The marrow of the institution can be measured not in budgets, numbers, buildings, or brand recognition, but in the individual human lives that were helped by our collaborative effort.

If you invested heavily in an institution which subsequently fails or changes, all is not lost. Remember that the good accomplished endures not in concrete or bricks. True good rests in the lives of the people you helped. The institution always existed for them. And so long as their lives were strengthened, your labour was not a waste.

So turn again and rebuild. You once embarked on the audacious optimism of institution building because you believed in it. You can do it again. In a culture and time that foolishly champion the independence of the self-sufficient, untouchable maverick, show true courage and accept that you cannot do it alone. Learn the art of humble relationship building; embrace the painful conversations; admit that you can be wrong and that you need the collaborative insights of other humans to work to your fullest potential. Care for more than yourself. Love your neighbour enough to work beside him. And love even the unseen neighbour yet to be born who will benefit from your investments today.

You were not made to be a black hole, orbiting only itself. The future is bright, illuminated by a million tiny points of light—lives poured out for something bigger than themselves. The labor is worth it. They are worth it. Plan, work, pray. And then boldly step forward to see what God will do.