Leadership

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If you have not been to your local Church in a while, you might be surprised what you’ll find inside. Many of the Churches of today don’t resemble the Churches of just 20 years ago. Now on Sunday mornings your family can drop the kids off at daycare, attend a rock concert, visit a McDonald’s playground, stop by a Starbucks, and mingle with the social crowd at the local café, all within the confines of their local Church. We’ve managed to “super size” our house of worship into a Super Wal-Mart. It raises one serious and concerning question: When did Jesus stop being enough? When did Church leaders decide that in order to truly “reach others” the Church had to become a cross between Disney World and a bad episode of “Friends”?

Early Christian Churches were built out of a necessity to allow all of Christ’s followers to join together in fellowship and worship. Churches expanded or planted new Churches to facilitate all of the new people that the true believers were out there working hard to bring to Christ. Today’s Churches are “called to be planted” in areas where tithes will be plentiful and the demographics are favorable. No thought is given to reaching those in greatest need. Nowhere in the Bible does it say “If you build it they will come” when it comes to Church planting and Church formation. In the beginning, so many “came” that they had to “build it”. The buildings were simply a product of Christ followers, not the other way around.

The Problem:
A growing number of Churches today have what I consider a car dealership mentality. They set up shop in a location with the most drive by traffic, in hopes of luring the unsuspecting public with free entertainment for the whole family. Steeples and crosses have been replaced with glass display walls that showcase a host of entertainment that awaits anyone that dares to enter. Best of all, the price of admission…. just your soul. I mean if you don’t believe in Jesus and the Bible, then isn’t that free admission anyway? Come on, what have you got to loose? We have become salvation salesmen in our attempt to pack the pews and pad the attendance numbers in the name of Christ.

Recently GM announced they were going to be selling cars directly to the public, via the internet. We all know that “What’s good for GM is good for America”; it now seems it is also good for American Churches. New Christian leaders can just sit in their shiny new tabernacles and email, text, twitter, podcast, and blog the masses into “test driving” their latest version of the gospel. Does our new interpretation of what it means to take our discipleship “to the ends of the earth” mean just to those with internet access? Hey, they are the ones with the money to tithe anyway, right? Is this really the direction we want to take the Church and how we want our children to interpret what it means to be a part of the Body of Christ? Isn’t the disconnect between church members, the church leaders and the community great enough already?

A Call to Change:
If you are troubled by all the hype, the spectacle, and “modern convinces” that are starting to get in the way of authentic Christian worship at your Church, let your Church leaders know. Let them know that their monthly “smart phone” budget should not be greater than their mission’s budget. Let them know that emails and phone calls can’t replace a sit down meal or a face to face meeting with those that they have been chosen to lead. Encourage them to lead by example and participate in real missionary work, rather than just show you a video of a mission’s field and say “we gave to this cause”. Above all else, pray for them daily.

Ask your Church leaders to show you where the budget goes and decide if the amount of help your Church is providing to others is proportionate to the resources your Church is collecting. Your tithe is a portion of the resources that God has allocated to you and your family. Just because you assign it to a Church does not relieve you of the responsibility of ensuring it goes to further the Kingdom of God. Turning a blind eye to the wasteful or inappropriate spending of your Church makes you just as guilty as those that sign the checks. Stewardship is non-transferrable in the eyes of the Lord. Don’t be an accomplice to those that would rob God or any of his children of what they deserve.

There is Hope:
I am thankful to belong to a Church (Northwood Church in Keller, TX) that has managed it’s growth and finances in a responsible manner. In a day when many Churches use 80-90% of their congregation’s offerings to pay the enormous overhead costs of their staff, and the prime piece of real estate that their Church sits on, a large portion of our funds(approx. 40%) still go to missionary work and to impacting the areas in which we serve. Here at home, when our building could no longer house our congregation, we added on to it and continued to build upon the roots we had already planted deep within our community, rather than relocate to a new area with better traffic flow.

Our philosophy about the purpose of a Church is simple, live out a biblical life as demonstrated by the life of Jesus himself, and share the Good News with all that will listen. We do not pay others to go in our place. We send our own people to use their vocational skills to help communities in other countries in their struggle to become self-sustaining. When we engage others, our primary goal is to serve, not convert. If the opportunity presents itself for us to share our faith with them, then we do so in a respectful and non-assuming manner.

We train Church leaders to plant new Churches and spread out to reach the people where they live, not where we want them to come. We submerse ourselves in their culture and figure out how to serve their needs, rather than sell them our version of how a Church should operate. We never misrepresent ourselves as a Church trying to help, then try to sell them our beliefs and methodology of worship. Even car dealerships are laid out in a manner that separates their sales department from their service department, so as to not confuse their patrons. It seams to me that is the least we can do as Christians.
Remain strong in your faith.

Your brother in Christ,
Bill Whitaker

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