The Christian Church should have been organized as circles within circles, communities
around a revealing-redeeming God at the center. That was the biblical image; it was also the
meaning of “hierarchy” as first used by Pseudo-Dionysius. In this image the leader is,
paradoxically, at the center not the top. The attempt to reform pyramidal structures is called
decentralization. But one cannot decentralize a bureaucratic pyramid because it has no center.
One could de-top it but then another leader is all too happy to take over the top. The worst
disease one can have is one in which the name of the cure has been given to the disease. What a
bureaucratic pyramid lacks is centeredness. Reform would mean leadership in numerous centers
of power and a larger organization as interacting communities.