A gas station is more like an office building than it is like a bird's nest... sure. That said, if I want a gas station, I might still be better off starting with a plot of land that contains only a bird's nest (which I can destroy or relocate before I start building my gas station) than with one that contains an office building.

That said, I'm all in favor of learning stuff about organizations from studying organizations, including (but not limited to) religious ones. But there's a big difference between "learn stuff from studying X that I might use in constructing Y" and "model Y on X".