Choosing Your Path

As mentioned earlier, our church had borrowed many practices from the business world. We were not alone. Most management books written for the Church promote the use of business practices. What many in the Church don’t realize is that the business practices used in the Church today emerged in the past 50 years; practices that were developed under the guiding principle of pursuing profits and wealth. It's hard to fathom a more polar opposite from the teachings of Jesus than the principles that were guiding Corporate America for the past half century. Yet we in the Church are using their tools. What I witnessed at our church was a proliferation of business practices. It made the church look, think and act like a business. The staff were organized and trained like employees of a business. The services and events operated with the precision found in Waikiki ballrooms. The church became focused on attracting and entertaining seekers and believers, such as adding theatrical elements to the service, serving catered dinners after the Saturday evening service and hanging large screen monitors on almost every blank wall in the church. We were pursuing growth and relishing in the results. All this led to the same signs found in businesses, signs of inwardness and pride bolstered by success. The signs were so apparent that it made me stop and ask myself - is this the right path for our church? This led to a second question: is it plausible to lead people to Jesus, and then encourage them to follow Jesus when what they see and experience at church looks and feels like the rest of the world; the places where they work, shop or hang out? I wish everyone could see that the weekend gathering of followers should be a sacred time, a time and place where we can experience the presence of God, where we can fellowship with one another in God’s Kingdom here on earth. The Church experience should be the polar opposite of the experiences offered by the world. It should be a time and place for people to experience the love of God and receive the love of others. It should be a time to reciprocate that love to God, to worship and praise Him, and to learn to love all others. It should be a time and place to serve God and others – as an outpouring of our love. Church services should be the time and place to establish new friendships, ones that will last an eternity. The early church as described in Acts chapters 2 and 4 was counter-cultural to the worldly experience at the time yet the Lord added to their numbers daily. Why? Because people were experiencing something they couldn’t get from the world - and they loved it. It was the oasis in the desert of life. Let me ask you, are people not looking for something counter-cultural to the world today as well?