The Church of Jesus is without question the most anti-fragile system in world history.

Consider our fixation on megachurches over the last 30 years. I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with megachurches, but have we been naive about their fragility? Like Goliath, their size and influence project an image of enduring strength, and yet a sad number of megachurches have been brought low in recent years by often small,

The question for those of us in the West, and particularly in America, is this—Why have we chosen to construct such fragile church systems? Why do we build ministries that rely upon a single fallible leader, one dynamic speaker, or that require massive and unsustainable amounts of money? Our devotion to fragile systems means as the pace of

hat if the government revokes our tax-exemption? What if youth sports take over Sunday morning? What if non-Christians get to pray before city council meetings? The inherent fragility of our churches, ministries, and schools helps explain, at least in part, why so many Christians carry so much anxiety today, and why we’re conditioned to see a

That’s when we might discover it’s the churches we’ve dismissed as weak and insignificant—the small, decentralized, anti-fragile networks of disciples found throughout the rest of the world—that courageously step forward like David to face the challenges of our time.

We might assume that the opposite of a fragile system is a robust one; an organization that is designed to withstand any single threat. But Taleb disagrees and says that the best systems don’t merely resist threats, but actually grow stronger when challenged. He calls such systems anti-fragile. Consider muscles. When put under stress, our muscles

Rather than a fearful huddle of believers worried about what Herod, the Romans, or those pesky liberal Sadducees might do, the early Christians appeared to actually believe Jesus when he said the gates of hell, nevermind the IRS, would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18).