Getting out of the Religion Business

My whole life has been spent in the religion business.  Almost every dime I ever earned came from pastoring, teaching, or writing about God or the church.  Organized religion still puts meat on my table. When I retire, my social security and pension will still come through my work in organized religion. I’m a professional pastor and teacher, and not ashamed to say it.

But even so, I still get a queasy feeling about the work of the church as I have seen it all my life from an insider’s perspective.  The way the church functions seems backwards from the way God intended.

People who are down on “organized religion” and see it as some terrible evil frankly don’t know what they are talking about. Organized churches and professional church workers are a necessity, and if it were not for people like us, there would be no church today. Jesus was a professional, full time minister.  He did not work as a carpenter when he was traveling around with his disciples. He was a full time Rabbi.  The same was true of his disciples who followed him.  They left their nets to follow Him. Paul worked as a tentmaker only when money was not available to support him in full time preaching.  It takes time and effort to prepare messages, pastor the hurting, and to do the administrative work required to keep the church going.  Study, preparation, and education are necessary to fulfill Christ’s calling to the church, and there must be money, structure and personnel to get it done. I do not question my personal calling to church work, or the calling of others to a full time service of the church.

What’s wrong is not that the church is organized.  It’s what we do with the organization.  Organized religion exists for a purpose, and that purpose has been turned in the wrong direction. We have approached religion as if people have been called to build the church. This is backwards--the church has been called to build the people.

In Ephesians 4:11-13 Paul writes “He (God) gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” The Bible does not say that God gave the people the responsibility of equipping church leaders, but that He gave church leaders the responsibility of equipping the people.  We exist to make the people great.  They do not exist to make us great.  Yet church leaders in our pride and insecurity have sought for millennia to build organizational structures us that make us look and feel important.  Our ambitions are based on our egos, not our call.  We think that the calling of the church is all about us and our organizations.    

This has always been true and in all churches, but since I’m more familiar with the Protestant Evangelical church in modern America, I’ll confine myself to talking about it.  Our modern churches act like fast-food restaurants for the soul.  We have franchises, like McDonald’s or Burger King, which are in constant competition with each other for a shrinking religious market. Some churches are very successful and start branches everywhere. They even have their own logos and branding. Some even have marketing director and graphic designers to make sure their brand is well known.  They talk about market shares, revenue streams, focus groups, and target audiences—just like any other large business. They seek to crush the competition by offering more dynamic ministries, relevant preaching, and more professional praise bands than the church down the street. They hire professional musicians and video guys to make sure their religious shows (which they call “worship”) is better than the next church.  Those who do not fit their demographic are ignored in favor of those who bring a better revenue of prospect and gifts.

Please do not think I’m picking on the megachurches, that is not my intention. The only difference between what they are doing and what most smaller churches do is that they are better at it. Most of the criticism of megachurches comes with more than a little tinge of jealousy.  But, these criticisms of marketing are only a question of style.  The real problem with the church goes much deeper. The real issue is the hearts of church leaders and the message that they preach because of their hearts.  All pastors (myself included) are tempted to put ourselves first, to see the church we pastor as existing to support us, not us to support our church.

The church is our business—our living, our pride, and our security.  We want to be comfortable, just like everyone else. Our pride is wrapped up in the numbers of attenders, the size and condition of our buildings, and our reputation in society.

This leads us to spin the message in certain ways. Stewardship and financial giving is important, but not holiness or love.  Bringing new members to church is important, but not private prayer or personal disciplines.  Programs of instruction and discipleship go only as far as learning how to use our spiritual gifts for the sake of the organized church, and witnessing to people to get them in to church.  Controversial subjects are talked about, but only when they provoke people to get more active in our church, and to separate them from others.  Patience and tolerance are ignored as being unprofitable.  Spiritual disciplines such as regular prayer and fasting are not given high priorities.  Being a Christian in our families and jobs is mentioned, but only in passing.  People are told they need to serve Christ, but they don’t have to act like Him.  As long as they know they are saved, they can keep on being the stinkers that they always were. 

In the school where I teach, I asked my students what discipleship looks like, and what we need to teach Christians about being disciples. They list several things, but their list usually ends with either knowing and using their spiritual gifts or with telling others about Jesus.  When I ask them what comes next in discipleship after we have taught people to work in the church and invite others to Jesus, they seem to have no idea. There seems to be a consensus that this is the place where discipleship ends, at exactly the place it stops building the organizational church. 

The New Testament picture of discipleship is bigger than that.  It involves a lifetime of becoming transformed into Christ’s image.

This misconception is not my students’ fault--it is largely the fault churches that emphasize building bigger ministries, not members.  As long as people contribute financially or as volunteers, it is assumed they are not in need of greater maturity.  They are good enough to get by, but not strong enough to shine with the light of Christ wherever they go.

  It’s time we start telling the organization to serve the people, instead of telling the people to serve the organization.

The word “pastor” means “shepherd.”  A shepherd knows his sheep by name. Not every sheep has the same needs, but he makes sure that they get individual attention. If the sheep are not healthy, he gets no benefit.

Religion—organized religion—is a wonderful thing when it works right. Don’t let anyone deceive you in thinking that organized religion is somehow intrinsically bad.  But organized Christianity, if it wants to survive in these troubled times, must get out of the business of building religious institutions that are an end in themselves.  Churches exist to bring God’s love, comfort, judgment, and concern to people, so they can shine with the light of Christ as fully realized models of Christ.  If we who claim to be in Christ don’t look or act like Him, then the world has every valid reason to think that Christianity is a lie.

The church exists to build people, not the other way around. If we are not doing that, we are all in the wrong business.