As the corporate elite have taken up more and more of the seats on elder teams and deacon boards they have brought with them a blueprint for success based on business. These blueprints have ushered in excel spreadsheet upon excel spreadsheet for us to use to count and quantify every component of church life. While the heart behind much of this has been to improve upon systems that needed change, the fruit of this labor has sent many churches down the road of misplaced purpose and identity. Some churches seem to actually believe that they are a corporate organization.
Our senior pastors have been replaced by CEO’s.
Our Spirit led initiatives have been replaced by best church practices from around the country.
Our dependence on money now dictates the kind of future our churches will have.
We seem to have become that child that grows up raised by wolves, believing our whole life that we are actually a wolf when in reality we are something different altogether.
We are the Church.
We were birthed on a completely different paradigm and value system and meant to be led radically different than any corporate giant. Unfortunately as our churches grow larger numerically, the invasion of business leadership tends to set up occupied forces whose role has been to conquer and control the organic nature of the Church. Might the next churchwide campaign that we run need to be a “going out of business sale”? This would be a season where we comb every inch of our churches to rid ourselves of the business influences that are keeping us from being more like the Church. After all, a child raised by wolves will never learn that it isn’t a wolf until you place it in a new environment and remind it who it was originally designed to be.
Thoughts?
