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The British author C. Northcote Parkinson coined this term to describe an aspect of human behavior that limits the effectiveness of bureaucratic organizations. Unfortunately, it also appears to apply to the church. "Injelitance" is the combination of incompetence and jealousy. It describes the tendency of members of a bureaucracy who have risen above the level of their competence, and are therefore incompetent to do the work they are doing, to attempt to sabotage the work of their more competent peers whenever it appears safe to do so. They do this reflexively, in order to prevent those more competent workers from being promoted.
Injelitance has an opportunity to manifest itself in the church because we are ALL incompetent to perform our roles in the Body of Christ. We need to depend on the Holy Spirit. The work God has given us to do is impossible for us to do correctly without Him. But relying on the Spirit makes us uncomfortable. Our flesh would prefer to try to do God's work, and so pacify Him, by its own power, which is impossible. John 6:28-29; Romans 8:5-8. So we all show some degree of incompetence at the work God has given us, exactly in proportion to the degree that we rely on ourselves rather than God. Furthermore, we all see other Christians who are, or appear to us to be, fulfilling their callings more effectively than we are.
We can respond to our observation that others are doing the work of God better than we are in one of three ways. We can ignore it, although jealousy is very difficult to ignore. We can respond correctly and use the observation as a motivation to trust God more. Or we can give in to jealousy and oppose, openly or subtly through gossip, those among our Christian peers who rise above mediocrity. Unfortunately, even in the church, jealousy is the most common response.
My observation of the relationships between Topeka churches leads me to the conclusion that there is a great deal of injelitance going on between churches, pastors and church leaders in this city. While I am not a party to pastor-to-pastor gossip here, I do observe that, at least among white churches in Topeka, churches here very seldom actively support each others' programs, even within the same denomination. (The black churches here appear to cooperate with each other somewhat more.) Across denominational lines, one church's announcement of a major event for which it seeks wide public participation is nearly always taken by churches in other, even quite similar, denominational groups as a cue to schedule their own, competing events, to be sure that their members will not participate in someone else's event. Ministerial associations have never really been a viable force here, as far as I can tell, and neither have leadership or lay prayer meetings that cross racial or denominational boundaries. Lawrence, where I lived prior to Topeka, was much the same way. But other places I've lived—Wichita, Ames and Iowa City—did not have anything near the level of inter-church competition I have observed in Topeka and Lawrence. And I understand that various forms of overt cooperation are much more prevalent in other cities that are in the midst of revival.
A review of Parkinson's Laws, from Forbes, on another site.
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