APEST and a Vocabulary of Organization

In Organization at the Limit, a book dedicated to analyzing the organizational dynamics that
contributed to the Columbia space shuttle disaster, William Ocasio discusses the unique
connection between language and organizational activity. Applying an analysis of the
language used and how it points to deficiencies in thinking, Ocasio points to the subtle, yet
powerful capacity of language to focus our attention as well as to blind us to seeing problems
when they occur. The language we commonly use can greatly influence what gets noticed and
what gets ignored. He says, Its not that language determines what can be thought, but that
language influences what routinely does get thought.1 In other words, applying the insight of
G. K. Chesterton about institutionalized insidersit isn't so much that insiders can't see the
solution. It's that they can't see the problem itself because they have no language for it.
To illustrate, the fact that we tend to experience blind spots in vehicles is not so much a
engineering problem as it is a linguistic one. When we refer to them as rear-view mirrors
then people tend to use them to look at the rear view alonehence creating the blind spot on
the side. When we refer to the external ones as side-view mirrors then people will use
them to view what is going on the side of the vehicle. Language matters big time.
Taking his cue from the official report of the Columbia disaster, Ocasio and his team of
organization consultants concluded that simply putting it down to individual error does not
solve the issue of what actually caused the crash. The problem rather lay in the way NASA
actually conceived of, and articulated, organization and management itself. Their language
indicated that they did not have the categories to help them even see the problem coming,
let alone resolve it. He calls this phenomenon of organizational blindness the vocabulary of
organizing.2
In an effort to describe its core practices and procedures, organizations develop a vocabulary
that helps describe, as well as prescribe, organizational activity. Realizing this inherent
connection between organizational vocabularies and activity is insightful because it helps
explain why some issues receive more attention and become more prominent than others.
Ocasio says it like this: the vocabulary of organizing serves to provide the organizational
categories which designates what constitutes a problem or issue to be attended to as well as
1. William Ocasio, The Opacity of Risk: Language and the Culture of Safety in NASAs Space Shuttle Program in William H. Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun, Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columba Disaster (Maine:Blackwell Publishing, 2005) p. 103
2. C. Wright Mills makes the same observation about vocabularies: A vocabulary is not merely a string of words; immanent within it are social textures institutional and political coordinates. Back of a vocabulary lie sets of collective action. C. Wright Mills, Language, Logic, Culture in John Beck, Chris Jenks, Nell Keddie
and Michael F. D. Young, Toward a Sociology of Education, (New Brunswick:Transaction, Inc., 1978) p. 520

what type of solutions and initiatives are to be considered.3 Essentially, a vocabulary of

organizing plays a significant role in determining what practices will be considered normative,
and what practices are literally un-heard of. Thus, linguistic categories used by an
organization can actually shape how it conceives of core tasks.
If we applied these ideas to the Western church, we can easily see how our most generative
forms of ministry, the apostle, prophet and evangelist, have been edited out of our
organizational vocabulary. They are no longer considered to be legitimate descriptors for
leaders of ministries in most churches. The result being that we are now scripted not to see,
or pay attention to issues related to apostolic, prophetic and to a lesser degree, evangelistic
concerns, even when they are staring us in the face. We are perfectly designed to achieve
what we are currently achieving.
Conversely, because APEST supplies the church with the essential linguistic categories to form
a complete vocabulary of organizing, reinserting the very language of apostle, prophet and
evangelist into organizational discourse will revolutionize our conception of the church and its
core tasks. Instead of seeing the church as an extension of the seminary (teacher), or as a
place to merely get fed (shepherd), we can rightly conceive of the church within the broader
framework of Christs ministry. For instance, if we persist in using the standard ST frameworks for church planting, then we will inevitably see the primary purpose of the new plant
will be to run worship services and bible studies.
By adopting a broader APEST understanding (and vocabulary), other insights about the
functions of the church are brought to bear. New possibilities will present themselves to you
and the team. It will reinstate the possibility of the permanent revolution by giving us a
broader range of options and opening us up to seeing things in a multi-dimensional way.

THE BOOK

THE PLAYBOOK

3. William Ocasio, The Opacity of Risk: Language and the Culture of Safety in NASAs Space Shuttle Program in William H. Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun, Organization
at the Limit: Lessons from the Columba Disaster (Maine:Blackwell Publishing, 2005) p. 109