On the nature of the church – Attempts at Honesty

Human institutions must put their continuance as a very high if not the highest, priority. They must promote the organization’s welfare over the benefit of one of the members. Members who don’t contribute to the institution’s success are forced out for the good of the entire group.

Those of us who don’t get paid for ministry understand this. I continue to get paychecks because I contribute to the success of my employer. When I no longer contribute to that success, then my employment is likely to end quickly. Corporate America has little or no tolerance for freeloaders.

Unfortunately, I have seen churches that seek to emulate corporate America in their structure and organization. I was in one church that hired an Executive Pastor who was anything but pastoral in his approach to people and the ministry. He was all about policy, procedure, branding, and control and had little interest in caring for the people he was hired to nurture.

He tried to run the church as if it was a corporation. The measurements he sought to use to determine success were attendance and giving. The people were treated as a means to an end rather than the whole purpose of the church.

Thinking of the church this way is to make a category error. The church is not a strictly human institution. The church is God’s idea and according to Jesus, it is His responsibility to build it (see Matthew 16:18).

I have written about this before, but when the church is more about implementing programs and methods than it is about seeking the guidance of God, then there is a problem. When people are treated as a means to increased influence and power rather than the ones Jesus came to save, then there is a problem. When the leadership feels pressure to avoid saying anything from the pulpit that might offend someone, then there is a problem.

I’m not saying that we should be intentionally offensive or take divisive stands on things that are not central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What I am saying is that like the diagnosis delivered by the doctor that will potentially lead to the healing of the patient, the Gospel must first deliver the news of why the hearer needs to be saved. Salvation doesn’t come to those who don’t acknowledge their need.

All this is to say that so many methods of the church growth movement seem misguided and pretentious to me. They seem to want to replace a relationship with Jesus with a membership in a social club.

Maybe this is an oversimplification, but when the focus is taken off of Jesus and put on the organization, I doubt that lasting benefit will result. Instead, I want a pastor and elders who consistently point me to Jesus so that I can follow Him.

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12:1–2, NASB 95

I don’t need a bad imitation of a corporation, I need the body of Christ and fellow believers who will encourage me to stay in the race and not lose heart.