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After waxing eloquent a couple of days ago about the value and the risk of moving SLG from being a meritocracy to becoming a tribe, one of my friends asked what that M word I made up meant.
Actually, the term meritocracy is not something I invented. A Yahoo search popped up over a million pages with the term. Technically it refers to a form of government where everyone is a perfect fit for their job and they work with integrity and exceptionalism. In other words, a fantasy government.
 More broadly, it refers to any organization where people get what they have earned.
When I went to school, it was a meritocracy. I graduated in the bottom third of the class because I did work representative of the bottom third. The hard working, smart kids graduated at the top.
Going through immigration control is not a meritocracy. It all depends on how many planes came in at the same time and where you are in line as to how long it takes for you to get through. Nobody cares whether your penmanship is superior to that of the 350 people in line ahead of you.
SLG has been notoriously a meritocracy. The question our team asks more than any other is "Do they have skin in the game?" This question sorts out tens of thousands of people following us.
Are you a builder, sacrificially investing in the Kingdom? First tier. I am highly available.
Are you sacrificially investing in your own growth, planning on doing Kingdom work when you are in a better place? Second tier, significant access.
Are you a consumer, investing in your own growth for your own comfort? Access has dropped off, but I will probably still answer your emails.
Are you entitled and demand phone time with me so you don't have to bother writing an email? You won't get it.
Did you write an email loaded with religious manipulation, replete with prophetic words about how special you are, insisting that God expects me to come invest in your mess? I won't.
The sliding scale was - and is - very pronounced. I can't invest in everyone, and those who want help to build outside themselves will definitely get more of my attention than the consumers who want their pain fixed at my expense.
In terms of allocation of time, SLG is still pretty much of a meritocracy.
However, with the recent focus on the Egyptian Curse and all of the ramifications from that, I made a deliberate decision to treat the whole tribe as one, whether you deserve it or not.
Now giving an entire tribe equal rights can be the end of the tribe. After all, there are more takers than givers. We have about 30,000 people who track with us. There are about 1,000 who are praying with us on this issue. This is about normal for a modern, loosely connected organization.
If this were a nation with only 1,000 taxpayers and all 30,000 citizens are looking for government benefits, the economy would crash.
But when you factor in that we are crying out for the power of God, it changes the picture. In a tax payer's economy, we are recycling a limited asset. A dollar is paid in and then goes back out.
With prayer, we are not looking to receive back the asset we paid in. Rather, our asset of prayer is like the battery running the starter that gets the engine going. The power of the gasoline engine is vastly beyond the power of the battery.
 We pray to tap into the power of God to devastate the enemy. And God's essence and power is not depleted at all by having to be life giving to 30,000 people of whom 29,000 did not pray and ask Him for help.
This is the logic behind the class action lawsuit against the Egyptian Curse. Those who are in a place to war are stepping up to do the hard work of starting the battle. As the enemy begins to retreat, more people will be freed up and will join in the excitement of the battle.
But for now, I am sure 1,000 will be able to shift the spiritual dynamics at the beginning of the long march. Those who are the weakest and cannot invest in the battle will receive the same measure of blessing as those who are the strongest and are hitting it with intensity.
This is a tribe, or a family, where we carry each other in this kind of prayer.
Can we do it on all counts? No. There are many areas where the size of the need - and the want - is vastly greater than the resources available to give. Take deliverance. The number of people in the tribe who do deliverance is too small to be able to resource all of the needs within the tribe.
At almost every point of human need and resources, we have to remain tilted toward a meritocracy where some people get more and others get less. The economy does not work when you measure human assets.
But when it comes to the King's ancient enemy, we can walk as a tribe, lifting up the pain of the whole tribe to our God who can resolve the pain of the whole tribe.
It is a different way to walk, but a good one.
Arthur Burk
July 2015
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On one of those 2% days, he woke up around noon, wandered downstairs asking for breakfast. She tossed him a loaf of bread and suggested he make himself toast. He stood there in front of the toaster with a loaf of bread in his hand, looking baffled and powerless, then asked plaintively, "From scratch?"
As a point of fact, some of those who DID have the prescience and perspicuity to come reported that this was easily my best business presentation so far. They left with a rich set of tools for leading a Kingdom company, regardless of its gift. This was a balm to my highly prejudiced soul because I am quite the champion of the Servant tribe and was delighted to have featured the Topaz companies with the sparkle and substance they deserve.