Getting the cart before the horse

Ever since accountants have ruled the world, we have been getting the cart before the horse. Accountants count money, and because we all like money, we end up forgetting what produced the money, and we chase the money itself. The end result is that we neglect our ‘core business’ (as the management textbooks call it).

To bring the same reasoning into church circles, we should not be trying to get more people into church without agreeing on what they are coming to church for! Recently, the new Anglican primate of Australia was reported as saying that the most important task for the church is to get more people into church. Sounds great, except that Anglicans cannot agree why we want them in church in the first place.

Of course the why question can be answered glibly by saying “we want them to hear the gospel” and so enter the kingdom of God—but a little scratching beneath the surface finds different gospels within single denominations, as well as across different denominations. Given that Paul got a trifle cranky about different gospels in Galatians 1:8, it is a surprise that we are so quick to wallpaper the cracks in the name of denominational unity. Like the father of the bride in the Holy Grail movie: “Let's not bicker and quibble over who killed who—this is supposed to be a happy occasion!”

Filling pews is easy—you just put on a good show. The Pentecostals have found out by trial and error that even a mediocre show will pull the punters in this age of instant gratification. The pity is that some mainstream churches not only preach a perverted gospel, but they can't even put on a good floor show to compensate! Sometimes old style ritualism works (not that there is anything wrong with that, as Mr Seinfeld says), but usually it is like a Vera Lynn song at a bluegrass convention. In the same way, attempts to create coffee shops and revisit Woodstock in the name of Jesus are equally worthy of extreme embarrassment.

In the end the medium is secondary to the message, but nonetheless important. It is the order of priority that is crucial—we must have the gospel right first, and then we might turn our minds to how we strategically bring the gospel to the culture we live in. You can be good at the first step and hopeless at the second (and many are), but you cannot have a false gospel and make it right with good marketing. Like the fable, sooner or later people work out that the emperor has no clothes.

The corporate world found out long ago that unless an organization has total agreement on its core business then it will flounder—hence the plethora of highly paid consultants who help management discuss and agree on their ‘purpose statement’. Modern businesses also know the value of having a clear idea of what the business will look like when it successfully carries out its core business (the vision thing), and who makes up the target customer base (part of the mission thing). Just as importantly, they know that although the core business stays the same, the world is in a state of flux. This means that the way they go about their business must be dynamic and flexible. Hence the mantra that ‘change is constant’ requires more high-priced consultants dealing in ‘change management’—trying to guess where the changes will occur and even how to promote change so that the business becomes an active cultural force rather then passive.

Sadly, many churches invert this totally—the gospel changes ‘dynamically’ to whatever least offends, but everything else is set in concrete. Certainly we want more people in church, but what we really want is more people in the Kingdom of God who have repented and believed in the very real and physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they can't do this if the gospel being presented is no gospel at all. In the corporate world, people at least have the moral rectitude to leave the organization if they don't see themselves as being able to contribute to the core business.