Pursuing the Why - Finding Focus

                I’ve often been told that the church is like a business.  This idea frequently comes in the midst of a budget discussion from someone trying to get to the root of the problem.  The church is like a business, needing to make a profit or at least break even.  Like a business, we cannot spend more than we receive.

                I have never liked the business image, in part because it feels like the person who says it to me assumes that I don’t know how things work in the “real world,” as though being a clergyperson has removed that part of my brain that tells me how money works, or perhaps they want to believe that my calling has put me above thinking of such worldly things and I need a reminder.  My experience in the church is that there is often a suspension of disbelief when it comes to money.  The fair-priced repair on one’s private home becomes a horrible rip-off when offered to the church at the same price.  The musician who earns his or her bread by playing becomes selfish for seeking a fair wage for a Sunday morning.   The extra money that buys coffees and scratch tickets would be an unreasonable burden to cast away in an offering plate.

                I also dislike the business image because it creates an unclear role for people in the congregation.  Are the members of church the customers or the employees?  Is the pastor the shopkeeper for whom the customer is always right or a manager of a difficult crew?  Perhaps church members are more like the stakeholders in a cooperative market, partaking in the services of the community while also asked to serve the business.

                I now realize that the main reason I dislike the business image is that we won’t take it far enough.  If the church is like business, we have to go further than profit and loss.  For instance, most discussions of outreach don’t take into account the idea of a customer acquisition cost.  Most businesses assume that it will cost a certain amount of money in areas such as marketing and product development to obtain new customers.  Many conversations around the church involve the desire for growth and new members, but few conversations acknowledge that there is a cost to reaching out as a congregation.

                More importantly, I have found that in the church, if we say we are like a business, we are unclear about the nature of the product or service that we are promoting.  At one point, we could say that our product was Lutheranism, which we might identify as a Christ-centered, grace-centered theology packaged in a mix of cultural practices and liturgical worship.  But our product, at least as traditionally packaged, hasn’t been selling for quite a few years.  We are moving from having a decent share of the market, to being only found in specialty stores, where surprised shoppers look at us and say, “Remember this.  I can’t believe they are still making this.”

                To be clear, the essence of our product is solid.  We should by no means step away from the Christ-centered, grace-centered theology which is at the heart of who we are.  We should not fall in line with popular theologies that tell the world that God is waiting to bless you if you only prove your trust or that the good news is a promise of success,  wealth or blessing.  We should continue to tell the world that God has already blessed humanity more than it can know in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  We should continue to speak of a divine love that dwells with us in spite of our mistakes and not because of our good actions.

                Yet we may need to change how our product is packaged.  We may need to share our understanding of the good news in new ways or with new language.  We may need to look carefully at how the way we organize and live as congregations serves as a reflection of what we believe.  If we say the gospel is joy, but do nothing to spread joy in our community, we are guilty of false advertising.  If we say the gospel is peace or grace, but then organize ourselves in ways that demand large amounts of time devoted to meetings, meetings that tend to add more stress to already busy lives, we are also guilty of false advertising.

                We need to find a focus for our understanding of the gospel and let that inform our life together.  If the gospel is joy, how do we create joyful worship and fellowship?  If the gospel is grace, how do we live out the idea that there is nothing we have to do while still being responsible as an organization.  If the gospel is about peace, how do you show what peace looks like? 

                To go back to the business model, if we know our product, it makes it much easier to promote and sell.  If we know why we do what we do, it will have a great impact on how we do what we do.  None of this is intended to take away from the good news of what God has done in Jesus, but rather is intended to give focus to how we share it.