[Blog] Thoughts from the Front Lines: The Business of Being Churched
My family came from a strong church background but some of their choices (ahem homeschooling ahem) got them bounced around to a few denominations before they finally gave up and grew into a home group with some friends. By mainstream Christian standards, I'm part of the great unwashed: The Unchurched.
What follows is my view as the Church's Target Customer.
Get Vision, Strategize...Go!
While waiting for my husband to disconnect from Steemit last night, I casually opened the magazine and started flipping through the articles. Turns out, this particular publication is sort of like a "behind the scenes" business advisory magazine for pastors. It was filled with full-page colorful ads, bullet-pointed articles and helpful advice boxes. It's the 17th issue of a slick, modern, attractive magazine. Think "Forbes Business" for pastors.
This sentence jumped off the page with jaw-dropping honesty: "We love and minister to everyone and we're trying to reach everybody. We're really going after a targeted customer so we can win the whole family."
Customers?
That was the theme of the entire magazine: how pastors can target customers so their church can become successful.
That's not a church. That's a business. These church leaders are not advisers...they are entrepreneurs.
)This is a serious problem. "Church" isn't supposed to be a viable career path. It's not supposed to be a "growth model" venture. There shouldn't be reams of software and advice dealing with church finances, classes for how to design church buildings and ad after ad to update your children's ministry and grow your mid-sized church.
We're doing it wrong. Church-goers aren't supposed to be customers. We're not supposed to be buying and consuming a product.
Knowledge about God and the wisdom to live good lives shouldn't need a marketing strategy.
Organization is Necessary
Don't mistake me: any group of people meeting together for any reason needs some organization. It makes perfect sense to advise other groups on tactics that help with the practical function of such an organization. But this magazine presented a cold hard look into church as a business, with pastors targeting, marketing, financing and strategizing like any corporation would.
And the word "unchurched" was on almost every page. Because the Great Unchurched are the target customers pastors want to lure into their churches and convince them to stay.
What's The Point?
There was no advice on how to study the fruit of your own life. No discussion about how the Way is narrow and only a few find it. Nothing advising to stay out of the world if you want to really present something attractive and different to what the rest of the world is quite a bit more successful at presenting.
Belonging to a 501c3 Denomination is not the standard of one's faith and beliefs. Jesus did not command his disciples to go out and Church the Unchurched. He did not say build giant buildings and get business savvy so you can run a tight financial ship.
He said, "go, Disciple". To disciple is to teach in a one-on-one situation so intensively that a good teacher can only work with a handful of students at a time.
This is not the stuff of corporate strategy but of apprenticeship.
This Is Destructive
This corporation growth practice is damaging us. Christianity is being diluted by the world's philosophy to such an extent that the only judgement you can make about someone is not, as Jesus firmly advised, to study the fruit of someone's life but to determine whether they're properly Churched or not.
My sister has faithfully attended a large group Bible study for a number of years. It spans multiple denominations and actively encourages it's members to get involved in leadership. A talented musician, she's been in charge of music for the past year. However, she can't attend the leaders' meetings, choose the music or do anything except practice and organize other musicians. Why?
Because she doesn't belong to a recognized church.
There's been no consideration of her beliefs, no examination of the fruit of her life, none of the steps Jesus advised taken. She's Unchurched, so she's not allowed to help lead. Period.
Stop It!
Christians, this is stupid.
We are not called to be so super hip and cool we lure people into our group and market to them so they stay.
We are called to speak the truth, to exercise Godly judgement, to have a firm backbone grounded in God's understanding of bad and good. We are called to walk a narrow Way, not a broad one. We are called to judge by the fruit of a person's life and exhort each other in Godliness, not in managing tax loopholes.
People know when they're being targeted. They know when someone is a salesman. No one needs more of that. We're bombarded with marketing pitches and people looking to sell us something no matter where we turn. Most of them are doing way better than even the most ambitious churches.
Get The Car Out Of The Ditch
It's as if a lot of us are living lives like a car that's run off the road into a ditch. We need help getting back on the road, not carefully designed entertainment to keep us content while wheels-deep in muck.
We need Truth. Straight-forward, unapologetic clear-eyed Truth. A foundation to stand on.
Want To Fix The World?
Several of my siblings recently attended an event where psychologist Jordan Peterson was speaking. It was held in a fairly large theater which was packed to standing-room-only. Jordan Peterson spoke for three hours, sitting alone on a stage with a microphone and a glass of water.
There was no music, no Powerpoint slides, no fog machines, no embellishments...and you could've heard a pin drop in that theater while a man spoke for hours about why the only way to change the world is to start by cleaning your own house.
Truth Is Attractive All On It's Own
THAT'S what our churches need. That's what people are truly hungry for. They need truth. They need understanding. They need to be able to right the wrongs in their own houses. They need to be able to get themselves onto solid ground and if the church openly and honestly speaks the truth, it would have something to offer.
Until churches get out of the business of being in business and start doing the hard things of getting our own lives in order, focusing on knowing God instead of small-business marketing tactics...we are going to continue to fail. To decline. To become increasingly irrelevant.
Photo Credit and great article on similar theme
Photo Credit, Outreach magazine
Photo Credit, "Boost Your Ministry"
Photo Credit, "Marketing Strategy"
Photo Credit, "Reaching The Unchurched Family"
Photo Credit, Second-hand Car Salesman
Photo Credit, Car In Ditch
Photo Credit, Jordan Peterson
That magazine is one example why I am unchurched! Churches have become a very large business, bring in billions of dollars worldwide every year. It makes me physically to see what they are doing in this third-world country. I will continue to honour and pray to my Creator but I do not need an organized church telling me how, when, where and why I must do it, to conform to the ideals of big business.
It made me feel a little ill too. Because I really haven't been in the mainstream church environment since I was a kid, it was pretty shocking to read the articles and see how absolutely consumer-based the whole thing was. I absolutely understand needing to keep a church organized and pastors advising each other on how to maintain order and so on...but the whole marketing focus was just mind-boggling.
I appreciated this article. I experienced a different model of church while living overseas, one that I feel matched more closely to first century believers. It has been incredibly difficult to "re-acclimate" back to traditional church life in the States. And in all honesty, I do not want to re-acclimate because I see less focus on being the body of Christ (especially in regards to discipleship and accountability) and more of a focus on programs and events.
I feel that the church (the people who trust Christ as Lord) need to STOP "going" to church and start "being" the church. Thanks for your thought provoking post.
You're welcome, and I appreciate the thoughtful comment. It seems like it's just so much easier to go along with a church instead of doing all the work required to act as Jesus modeled, and the ore entertainment that's added to the package, the easier it is to just shut the brain down and float along. It's good to know that this isn't the case everywhere and there are living churches other places: we're going to need them!
Amazing line. “... stop going to church and start being the church.” I’m going to be saying that now. It is so true!
Great post. It is so crazy how the modern church has turned into a business. We have been unchurched for about 2 years. Sounds so weird but leaving the church was the best thing we ever did for our relationship with our Savior.
I would say the same for my family growing up and ours now as well! We have to search and think so much more and the pressure of having to conform is no longer such an issue.
You named the reason why I left the churches, more about the money than the helping folks find God.
I know the reason Ben and I left the church we went to for a short time after we were married was because they were really making a push to bring families in by increasing the "Children's Ministry" and we weren't interested in having our kids away from us during service. At one point, the pastor started talking about how all the young mothers really needed to be volunteering in the nursery because it wasn't acceptable that we of all people would sit by and not contribute. I was the only mother present who wasn't volunteering, and I wasn't volunteering because I kept our kids with us and didn't want to use the nursery.
When you realize you're walking a completely different road, it's time to leave that church.
Yes and amen! The more we have been away and read the Word for ourselves, the more we see how the church is not the true church.
And the more we are away, the more uncomfortable we are when we happen to go back...
Wonderful post. Totally nails it. We are unchurched now and plan to stay that way. It is sometimes difficult, but in the process of building relationships with a couple home groups. We are focusing on history and context of The Word. It’s like getting a steak dinner, compared to just milk in the church.
The gift economy is better in my opinion than these top down type structures. Once you subscribed to a 50- anything, you're subscribing to a bunch of rules and regulations that if you want to keep operating "Freely" you must abide by. It's a shackle.
When do we get to the point where we can collectively do the right thing amongst each other, freely giving what we can to others (read, what we can, not everything all the time; take what you need, *pay the rest forward) and trust that the "spirit of the gift" ( See the book Sacred-Economy available for free on the internet) will come back around and get you again?
When you start trusting it and truly trusting it, it starts working. What's amazing about it? Most of it can't be taxed.
--That would be my favorite part about it.
This would be ideal, but I suspect it's not going to be until Jesus comes back that we will see anything like this. Human nature being what it is, I doubt we're going to see selflessness until we have a God's-commands-written-on-our-hearts situation being widespread. You need a widespread filling of God's spirit before you will see actions in keeping with God's ways.
Excellent!
Thank you!
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