Monday, March 14, 2011

The Church vs. the Institution

Insight that rises from people with genuine experience of ministry in the day-to-day world of parish communities is worth much.  There is too little platform for this and too much its opposite.  Personally, my congregation and I have grown weary of hearing about the business of Church.  Here in the Diocese of Texas, none of our bishops practiced parish ministry for an appreciable length of time before joining the business center at the diocesan offices, then going on to be elected bishop or bishop suffragan.  I suspect that in the case of almost any bishop anywhere a lack of ground-level front-line experience affects negatively the ability of bishops to set an inspiring and relevant tone in their respective dioceses, as I know it does here.  There is only so much that leaders trying to set the tone can say about the costs of running the diocese, and about the theory of the costs of running a parish, without all of us realizing that they are consumed with a business model for the Church.                   
The business model reigns in some parts of the Church, certainly here in the Diocese of Texas, despite the call of Christ to make disciples, not profits; to be faithful, not productive.  Yes, Jesus' parable calls us to be 'productive' thirty-fold, sixty-fold, or one-hundred fold;' but it is plainly wrong to imply that a lack of explosive congregational growth in numbers is due to clergy 'burying the treasure' entrusted to them.  It is an insult born of a callous business model, not born of a sense of shared Christian vocation.  

Insight from people with meaningful ministry experience notes that Church must be guided by a vision.  Bishops and other Church officials who have little or no real experience with parochial ministry will continue to find it difficult to provide a meaningful vision for a diocese because they have seldom had to do so for a congregation over a long-haul.  They will continue to interpret the 'success' of the Church in terms of bottom-line and fiscal period accounting.  This is sad enough, but the truly problematic result is that they will continue to infect the hearts and minds of the people whom they are called to inspire and support.  The vision of the Church must be greater than its own survival.  Church cannot exist only or even primarily to perpetuate itself.  The Church whose vision is guided by moral principle and the generosity of God is the Church that attracts people who give themselves sacrificially to such things as are more valuable than money.  They give themselves not to an institution or an ideology; but to other people who want or need their love and God's, to causes that represent God's Love for all, and to efforts to love God in return.   Devotees of the business model will never understand this.  The Church that thrives is the community of people who do.

1 comment:

  1. "How are we going to survive as a church? When we are the church, we'll survive." - Kyle Childress

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