This has been said before, and I’m not the first to say it, but today I want to get out a soap box. You can disagree with me, tell me I’m wrong and crazy, but this is something I feel strongly about. In the SBC, we are the “people of the Book” and we say the Bible is sufficient, but there is one area I see we don’t live it. I have torn a page out of the handbook for cooperate America and grafted it in our New Testament. That is this fascination with purpose statements, mission statements, vision casting and marketing. It’s become ludicrous how much we would rather look like GE or IBM than like the body of Christ.
OK, here is issue number one, and for me it’s a biggie. Jesus is the head, He’s the boss. He’s in charge of the entire church from the universal down to the local church level. Jesus is the head, the boss, the man in charge, He gave us our mission and purpose. What business do we have rewriting what the boss already gave? Great Commission, it’s the vision, it’s the purpose, that’s it. We don’t need to recraft one, Jesus wrote it and it’s sufficient. Did Jesus botch it? Do we need to fix what Jesus wrote? We get all antsy that Jesus didn’t include the 5 Purposes, if they were that important, Jesus would have said it. Pastor Rick Warren is a nice guy, met him a few years ago, but he’s not Jesus. Jesus gave us Mission, Purpose, Vision, wrapped it all up. If you need more, throw in Acts 1:8.
Number two we do vision casting, a vision caught from the Pastor and giving control from Christ to the lead pastor. I believe that God will lead and speak too a pastor, but I also believe in the priesthood of the believer, a plurality of elders, individuals who hear from God. I believe in cooperate prayer and God moving His body. I have seen pastors become tyrants in their visions, moving churches to bankruptcy, division, even death. Peach the Word fellas, stop using scripture to promote your agenda. God will cast vision in the people through His word, and it will cause much less division.
Third, cooperate expansion. How we love the mega church. It’s big business, we love to promote our mega church pastors cause big church = success. If at the end of three years you are abandoned and people want you put to death, you have failed. Yes, that wasn’t subtle at all. Jesus would be a failure in our modern paradigm. The new movement is muti-site, multi campus so we can lead and be in control of bigger and better. We want our vision, our mission, our leadership and our strategy to be spread, after all, we are successful, right? We have adopted a cooperate/franchise model of success where more money and more people is a win. That isn’t what I see in the New Testament, I see Paul training new leaders, leaving them in charge, encouraging them, teaching them, but planting new churches. We need to give new leaders and new churches an opportunity to reach new people.
OK, last one I promise. We are totally in love with Christian books on how to grow a church like a business or a sports team. We use cooperate training, cooperate alignment, cooperate principles and we have strayed from New Testament. Our churches have personnel teams, yearly employee reviews, internships. I understand the need for these things, but each step brings us closer to being Church Inc. Pastors and Leaders are now simply paid employees trying to please the clients and no longer serving Jesus. There is high pressure for results, for growth and baptisms, so we throw out Spirit leadership and rely on new methods. We need achievement, so we fire the coaching staff, get a new quarterback and redo the playbook. All the while, are we really being people of the Book, or have we found a new set of rules.
I once heard Francis Chan ask, if a group of people were stranded on an Island with only the NT, and came to America having only the NT to guide their understanding of the church, would they recognise what we do as church? What would the church look like today if you only used the Word, and not 200 years of American tradition? I don’t think we would work so hard to craft a purpose statement. Do you?
This is the reason for expository preaching…verse-by-verse preaching corrects the corporate mindset.
Dan,
I think you’ve got some good points here, but I think they get lost on your soapbox.
Rick Warren would say that those 5 purposes come from Jesus. Yet, you have him pitted against Jesus. You have those who promote multi-site campuses as self-centered power mongers. I don’t think that’s fair to them.
As far as Chan’s quote…I’d actually quibble with it a little. I don’t think it’s a fair question. We aren’t living in 1st century Jerusalem or even Rome. Much of what the NT talks about church is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Is it possible that we are actually being more true to the New Testament by contextualizing the gospel for 21st century America instead of doing church the way it was done in the 1st century? (I’m not confident that I would agree with where my question leads…but I’m just asking it to say it’s not as black and white as Chan is presenting).
Again, I think you have some really good points here. But you could make them well without the soapbox.
Mike, I see your point, but in the end I have to look at the impact of the culture on the church vs the impact of the church on the culture. We spend a lot of time on blogs saying “ya, but look what is good. . . ” There are great pastors, great churches, great ministry, but as a whole, is the church changing the culture, or is the culture changing the church. I can’t hide the fact that I have often been led away by culture instead of following faithfully. We can talk about great men, and they are out there. There are great ministries, but we are losing ground quickly. Is that because of the Gospel? Is the Word insufficent? What would you say to it Mike?
Of course the Word is not insufficient. And like I said earlier I agree with your general point that CEO church is dangerous. It betrays a lack of trust in the sufficiency of the Word.
The reason for my comment is that your rather good point was lost on the soapbox, in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing, but I find that we only write passionately about something is to be passionate about it. I feel like it’s imperative that we examine and question our methods, our motives and our reasoning.
Dan,
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t speak passionately about this point. Nor that you shouldn’t question methods, motives, or our reasoning. But I’m saying that if you really want to make a point you need to be sure to represent the position you’re railing against fairly, otherwise your good point gets lost.
Dan,
An unpopular ‘soapbox’ makes one unpopular. But the work of a prophet is not to be popular, rather to be obedient to the mandate of his master. You speak truth in your observation, but likely most will say; “yea, but…” followed by a string of excuses and quotes from favorite writers or preachers who treat the bride of Christ as though they are the CEO. They would be truer to their position if they would restructure their non-profit organization and call it a para-church organization rather that calling their para-church organization a church.
I hear this argument from Chan many times, and others for that matter. But at the end of the day, if a pastor actually leads a church to drop all corporate model methods and look only to Scripture’s description of the church, he’ll more likely be isolated from his peers and treated as a leper or extremist. But his company will be more descriptive of Scripture and look less like the culture.
Good post… May others hear you as you put the blow horn to your mouth.
Dan,
Where does a Church like Brook Hills in Birmingham fit into the points you bring up. They are what most would consider to be a mega church, yet they place discipleship very high within their biblical church model. It is hard to find a church that is living out the Great Commission any better in the US, although I am sure there are smaller churches doing as well if not better as a congregation than Brook Hills that I am not aware of.
Your article points out truths that need to be said. We also need solutions that need to be implemented. I’ll pray that solutions follow truths all around the US, in large churches and in our smaller churches.
AMEN! May your tribe increase!
Excellent points, Mike.
I appreciate Chan’s passion but his extensions and applications may go too far.
Also I agree that Dan is not representing Warren’s views appropriately.
PS. I don’t mean to say Dan is being malicious or deceitful in any way.
I had the same professors as Rick. I recall the lesson on “purposes” from Acts and the Great Commission. Rick’s genius was and is applying the texts effectively in the church.
I understand that it is easy to idolize a method. So I can appreciate what Dan is saying.
Dan,
Thanks for adding your voice as one who is concerned with Biblical faithfulness and aware of our cultural christian trends away from that faithfulness. Often times, awareness springs from viewing the trends over the years and not just the view of today.
I hope folks will not think that you are attacking Warren or advocating Chan as if they are valid culture-wide examples. Both are exceptions to the American cultural church, not the general norm. Neither are as powerful examples as the Scripture and the Spirit, which is the main point of your post as I read it. It seemed to me you were writing about the whole, not individual parts.
May God bless you as you think this through on your own, as we all should do. May he bless you as you jog our thinking, as we all should do. May he deliver you from discouragement when most of the American christian culture doesn’t get it; yet (and maybe never).
When the gospel is preached and people are ministered to, how are they supposed to act? Particularly if God blesses the preaching and thousands show up? Should they be disorganized and not worry about where they’re going to meet, how they’re going to go about discipling several thousand people, ignore lights and water, not worry about where to park cars, whether people have a place that’s warm enough or cool enough to meet in, whether there’s any sort of educational material for learners, what are we going to do with all the crying infants while parents are worshiping, who is going to teach learners, who is going to be sure those who teach are gifted to do so, where are people going to go to the bathroom, etc etc?
When thousands come, they’d better be organized, or the thousands won’t come back.
When thousands do come, I’d say that preacher is one from whom we can learn.
Sniping at other churches within the Body is tantamount to your body rejecting an organ. That hurts the whole body.
Nice. I don’t even have a response other than shaking my head. I am sure at Pentecost they all left because of the lack of nursery space and toilets.
Maybe not at Pentecost but something similar happened in Acts 6. And they had to organize. I don’t think what Bob is saying is too far off from what happened in Acts 6.
Bob, if I could paraphrase what you are saying it might be, “do everything decently and in order.”
Disorder breeds disharmony and distraction–not two particularly virtuous attributes it would seem to me.
One thought I had reading Mike’s post is in regard to the dynamic nature of the Bible.
It is a living Word not a record of first century history.
Faithfulness to the Bible demands a fluid, contemporary application of its text. Therein lies the danger I suppose to which Dan’s post aptly applies.
I think Mike’s response is the most profound expression of the matter I have read in a while. It has my gears spinning as to how I can best apply the Word to affect cultural change.
Hi FRANK L.
many things are the same today in Christianity as they were in the first century A.D. . . . practices that originated in Jerusalem and then continued as Christianity moved outward to Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, etc. . . .
worship on Sunday is one example, and
there are others but only practiced among certain faith communities
I guess my response to the blog goes something like this:
“Was the expectation by Jesus that the apostles needed to break down the two Great Commission versions into specific action? Or was the expectation that the Godhead would privately manage the specifics and we just obeyed in doing the next thing we were led to do?”
For Jesus to use the phrase “all authority in heaven and earth” suggests both views at the same time, to be honest. God provides the overarching guidance and direction. We sign up to filling in the small brushstrokes. Together we participate in the painting that is the complete Plan of Redemption (though God remains the one and only Master Painter.)
Take the “Bold Mission Thrust” mentioned in the CR thread. I searched for the term and the first link was a Baptist Standard article on the end of the Bold Mission Thrust. Ignore the medium for a moment and just read through the article. That was a human vision. It wasn’t monolithic. It didn’t have that name when it was first started. Later iterations expressed specific numeric goals some of which were met, some almost met, but I don’t think the overarching goal “that every person in the world shall have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ in the next 25 years … and can understand the claim Jesus Christ has on their lives.” Was met.
Was BMT a failure? I would offer that just the increase in international missionaries–despite somewhat moving the goal line by including short-term missionaries–was worthwhile. But was it a complete success? I’d offer it went out with a whimper rather than a bang when 2001 rolled around.
The question becomes not whether there will be human-originated “programs”. It is whether those human programs prevent the Holy Spirit from guiding us to the true success that only the Godhead can bring about. I would argue that the human programs are generally useful except to the extent they make David’s mistake of taking a census. That seems to be the line in scripture where human ingenuity results in pride. We need to be careful about how we sling statistics in support of human-initiated programs. It is much better that God receive all the glory and we receive none, zero, zilch.
Perhaps the real question is whether as believers we can really handle a zero-ego participation in the Great Commission. I think the history of Southern Baptists suggests at the very least that such a thing is–at a minimum–a tricky proposition. Even more so when I start thinking of the expenditures that are part of our Great Commission efforts as being “my giving”. That seems to me to be the broad way, not the narrow one.
“Perhaps the real question is whether as believers we can really handle a zero-ego participation in the Great Commission.”
the Christ-like example of ‘zero-ego’ is called ‘humility’ . . .
and since God gives grace to the humble, and the world is hungry for grace,
I can see that the Great Commission of Our Lord needs to be led by those who are not puffed-up by their own importance, or righteousness.
eight hundred years ago, a unarmed man wearing sandals and a brown robe, and a tonsure, approached the armed camp of the Islamic Sultan Saladin . . .
and after he spent some time with them,
he came away having secured the sacred places of the Holy Lands for the Church, which for eight hundred years have remained in the care of the ‘custos’ of the Franciscan Order
there is power in humility to accomplish much in a world that needs grace . . . this has been known for millenia, but has not been understood completely in our modern era, as stridency and self-righteousness and judgmentalism are seen by many Christian people as ‘more effective’.
time to reclaim ‘zero-ego’ ministry? It takes a great faith in Our Lord to do this. The results can be life giving.
Grr…argh: http://assets.baptiststandard.com/archived/2001/6_25/pages/sbc_bold.html
Dan,
Every thing you said is true. Great work, keep it up.
Dan, good post with a good point. Dave posted awhile back about doing 1950s church not being the old path and we need to go back to the Bible. But there was no discussion of that. Because of his illustration it became a Bible versions debate. But I think that these two posts have some of the same point.
I’m not particularly familiar with Chan. When I read his illustration about the folks stranded on an island with only the NT, coming to America and maybe not recognizing what we do as church — I don’t think he’s talking about whether we wear robes or three piece suits, but more about the essence of it; how we gather and worship and otherwise “do church”.
I participate in a singing tradition known as “Sacred Harp,” after the title of the book we use. All kinds of things have changed over the years, from what we wear to the singings to how we get there. Even the printed rudiments of music have been updated to modern terminology. But, were folks who started this over 150 years ago transported into the middle of one of our modern singings, they would understand exactly what we are doing because the essence of it has not changed. They might think we look a little weird! But they would know exactly what we are doing. Somehow I’m not so sure if this same test would work for church across the centuries. Seems to me it should.
Dan,
A pastor called a few of us into his office. He was wanting to “change” to a more simple form of church operation. I never liked “How To” books and he laid 5 out on his desk. He said they all had similarities and he wanted to set up “Teams” in lieu of committees. I happened to land on the Discipleship Team. The problem was, he didn’t change Robert’s Rules of Order where he could set on each team Ex Officio and tell us what to think. Pastors that do that are protecting themselves politically and destroying the body of Christ. Get politics out of church, too. Let Christ build His church.
I was reading in Ephesians this week and ran across, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Eph. 4:7. If the grace that was given to me only drew so many I must minister in the grace given to me and do it contently. The how-to books men write, and I do not know why, will never increase the measure of grace given to others. There is a form of blasphemy when a man writes about the grace God has given him and thinks he needs to sell the rights to it so another with a different grace can have more success. God doesn’t work like that. I believe this is a big part of the weakness of our church today.
Great post.
Bruce H.,
I have been reading your comments on this blog for a while now. it seems that you always determine that the motivations of pastors are poor.
The statement below is an example. It is also without foundation for such a broad brush sweep against local church pastors as you make it to be.
“The problem was, he didn’t change Robert’s Rules of Order where he could set on each team Ex Officio and tell us what to think. Pastors that do that are protecting themselves politically and destroying the body of Christ. Get politics out of church, too. Let Christ build His church.”
The develop of team ministry rather than committee led churches is good if one teaches the team ministry concept before making the transition.
Using “Robert’s Rules of Order” as a tool of business structure has no true effect on team ministry whatsoever.
We do team ministry (which I love) and also use RRO at our business meetings and such.
cb,
I am commenting to the title and content of this post, “CEO No More”. I was speaking about those pastors who think that way and have met several of them in my day. My response is related to the post with added interest. When the post is about, “The Pastor Jesus Approves Of”, I have several good examples for that post, too.
I have no problem, necessarily, with RRO. We need things done decently and in order. The leadership that uses it for political purposes or personal agendas is wrong. For a pastor to sit Ex Officio on a committee or team trying to get them to go the way he wants to go is wrong. You don’t need a committee except for protection from failure and responsibility of what you want to do. I witnessed a pastor blame a committee for choosing a certain design that he sat on Ex Officio. He said, “Well, the committee wanted to go that direction.” I was on that committee and it was the pastors desire to go that way. I just know what I know and my desire is to expose, without names, those who may be doing this now. It is not of faith when we cannot trust God to work through the committee or team. If the people are that stupid or spiritually dead then we definitely need a CEO.
Personally, I have nothing against Team ministry or the RRO. In the wrong hands and for the wrong reason they can be, and are, destructive.
“For a pastor to sit Ex Officio on a committee or team trying to get them to go the way he wants to go is wrong.”
Bruce H.,
You have now made a very specific statement. I agree. Any pastor who makes the effort to “get them to go the way he wants” reveals ,by such a singular motivation, that he knows little to nothing about the concept and methodology of team ministry.
cb,
Thank you. That goes for any decision maker (husband or wife, too) who is suppose to be living by faith.