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The Church as a Business?
By Andy on 20 February 2006 early afternoonCategory: Ministry
I was reading an email from a friend today. In it he expressed to me his concern that churches, particularly larger ones like Fellowship Church seem to be just businesses. While there are perhaps some similarities between some churches and some businesses, I don’t feel like comparing the church to a business is a fair comparison.
Since I thought the subject of his email would make a good post, I’ll highlight a few differences and similarities that I see between churches and businesses. I’m sure there are more, but here are a few that I came up with. I would love to here your input too.
Differences
Prayer – A church depends on and must stay sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit as they make decisions. Business rarely makes prayer a priority in their decisions, but a church must. A Believer’s life is powered by the indwelling Spirit. Through prayer, God speaks to (or impresses on the mind of) individuals to make certain decisions.
Products – The product of the church is people whose lives have been impacted through the life of Christ. Though a business might decide that there is no longer a demand for their product and change their product, a church knows that there will always be a need for its product. Market conditions will never determine that there is need for a relationship with Christ. So, the church never changes its product, its core message. However, it constantly repackages and markets its product to appeal to different types of people in different types of situations.
Profit – A business measures profit on how much money is made. A church measures (or should measure) its profit based on how much product is created. Are lives really being changed? Are sinners becoming saints? Are saints living more and more like who they really are?
Similarities
Organization – Businesses must stay organized if they are to stay in business. Disorganization wastes a lot of money and resources. The same is true for churches. When the church is disorganized, people’s time (which is volunteered) and money (which is donated) is also wasted. The larger the church and church staff, the more critical it is that its ministry be organized. If not, then its product may be compromised.Policies and Structure – A church often has to put policies in place to protect it from being taken advantage of. For instance, many churches do background checks on its employees and everyone who works with youth or children. Since businesses do that too, does that mean the church is run like a business? Not really, it just means that you don’t want a child abuser working in your preschool department. There are many more examples that could fall under this point.
Creativity – Churches aren’t always creative, but they should be. God is creative, and we are made in His image. Fellowship Church, its pastor Ed Young, and its staff are definitely creative. They compelling communicate God’s Word each weekend, and people won’t stop coming.
Excellence – The church, like a business, should maintain a high level of excellence in everything it does. It’s true that God does not care how beautiful someone’s singing voice is, but if it will attract an unbelieving person to a service where they can hear the Gospel, become a Believer, and begin to see spiritual fruit in their life, then isn’t it worth it?
Churches are not businesses. They march to the beat of a different drum. However, a particular practice is not wrong just because a business does it. It’s good for church’s to look at some of the practices of businesses and extract some general principles without compromising their essential product. That’s wise. After all, it’s God who has given business leaders their creativity and ingenuity whether or not they recognize the source of it or not.
The sheer size of Fellowship Church means that it needs to have lots of policies, structure, and organization to make it run efficiently.
Could it be that the only reason we compare large churches to businesses is because we have no other frame of reference to compare it with? Although large churches are not new—there is an account in the book of Acts 2:41 where about 3,000 became Christians in one day – there are relatively new for the modern era. Were you to look back in time at that church in Acts, the Apostles may very well have organized it by some principles that might be considered today’s business principles. Fifty years from now, we will have a frame of reference because there are a lot more churches that continue to get larger and larger than the church we grew up in or may be accustomed to.
I’m glad that there are churches like Fellowship Church. No church is perfect, but they are doing a lot right.
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Very nice article Andy.
— Yannick Feb 20, 08:36 PM #Thank you very much for your article.
— Luc G. Mar 1, 04:46 PM #Wow, what a great article. I needed to hear all of this. Maybe I can pass the message on to my local congregation.
— Rob Mar 2, 01:21 PM #