Church Inc.

For the past 14 years I have spent my life working in the church. During this time I have had pleasure in serving in three large and generally corporate church settings. Although, I have often enjoyed the level of thought and strategic planning pop-business has brought to the church at times it has made me scratch my head and left unchecked can be very dangerous.

Once after addressing a moral issue with another church leader, this leader told that the community in question was “growing in attendance and giving and that the money does not lie.”

It made me ask: “What are we doing?” Is the church a money-making business? Is this the bottom line?

This week I attended The Willow Creek Leadership Summit, an annual event that I love to attend. During one of the sessions author and speaker Jim Collins spoke from his book How the Mighty Fall. In this talk Jim outlined how large and influential organizations have fallen over time. As I listened to this talk I thought: Now this is something the incorporated church need to learn.

5 Stages of Decline

1. Hubris Born of Success

a. Outrageous arrogance to believe that we have achieved success on our own.

b. Our decisions are good! This is because of our skill, not the work of God and great circumstances.

c. We have figured it out! We are the model of church today!

2. Undisciplined Pursuit of More!

a. Over reaching! Let’s get more! Let’s build a big room! Multi-site!

b. Don’t ask the question: “Do we have the right people on the right seats of the bus”

3. Denial of Risk and Peril

a. The team refuses to look at the risk involved.

b. Fails to put faith and fact together.

4. Grasping for Salvation

a. The game is up.

b. You start searching for the silver bullet.

5. Capitulation to Irrelevance of Death

a. It is over.

In conclusion, Jim shared that the mark of enduring organizations is the pursuit of some thing greater than success and money. As I listened to this I thought what a great reminder for the incorporated church today.

God of Money

I am currently reading Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. It is a very profound read and here are a couple of thoughts I am wrestling with:

“Man must have an idol-The amassing of wealth is on of the worst species of idolatry. No idol more debasing that the worship of money. Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately therefore should I be careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in character. To continue much longer overwhelmed by business care and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at thirty five, but during the ensuing two years, I wish to spend the afternoons securing instruction and in reading systematically.” Andrew Carnegie

• Money will be the primary God of Western Culture-Friedrich Nietzsche

• Greed is especially hard to see in our own lives.

• Have you ever thought: ”I spend too much on myself?”

• Jesus warns us more about greed than sex and almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.

• Nowhere is slavery more evident than in the blindness of greedy people to their own materialism. (Luke 16:13-15)

• Jesus, the God-Man, had infinite wealth, but if he had held on to it, we would have died in our spiritual poverty. (2 Cor 8:9)

• When you see Jesus dying to make you his treasure, that will make him yours. Money will cease to be the currency of your significance and security, and you will want to bless others with what you have.

• The God of money cannot be removed. It can only be replaced. It must be supplanted by the one who, though rich, became poor, so that we might truly be rich.

God of Success

I am currently reading Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. It has been a very profound read so far and here are a couple of thoughts I am wrestling with:

“I have an iron will, and all of my will has been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. . . I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. . . Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even through I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.” Madonna

• More than any other idol, personal success and achievement lead to a sense that we ourselves are god.

• One sign that you have made success and idol is the false sense of security it brings.

• Another sign that you have made achievement an idol is that it distorts your view of yourself.

• You cannot maintain your self-confidence in life unless you remain at the top.

• God’s Primary concern is not to help you achieve success.

• The God of Israel is not on a leash, he cannot be bought or appeased.

• God is not tame.

• God’s Grace puts everyone else in his debt. Not the other way around. We owe Him. He does not owe us success.

• When we forgive others it means that we absorb the loss and debt of that person. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness is costs.