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.
