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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
AMEN! May your tribe increase!