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THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

May 31, 2003

This week my fax machine rang, and out came this round-file document. For those of you that do not follow the link it is an over-the-counter stock offering for a company called "Kingdom Ventures," ticker symbol KDMV. This company is described as, "a church development company operating in the multi-billion dollar Christian marketplace." The offering further states, "KDMV's program enables participating companies to reach millions of active church members and get access to these billions."

For those of you that do not speak ‘businessese,’ let me break this down for you. KDMV is a company that sells services to individual congregations to help them grow and develop. Then, because that activity allows them to access the membership lists of those congregations, they turn around and sell those membership lists. It is not clear in the offering, but it is entirely possible that the ‘church development’ activities of this company consist entirely of helping fund the church by paying for the membership list.

This is wrong on so many levels; I do not even know where to begin. Have to start somewhere….

I would never be a member of any church that allowed any outside agency access to its membership list. My membership in a fellowship of faith is not about marketing or sales or anything else. The church keeps that information for the benefit of itself and other members. I am assaulted on a daily basis by far too many unsolicited pieces of junk mail and email and telemarketers to ever want the church to become another source for such harassment.

Secondly, I am not at all comfortable with a "for profit" organization selling development services to congregations. I find it immensely sad that a congregation would need outside help to begin with, after all for what are Pastors trained and paid? But even if we assume for a moment that such outside help is required, to financially profit from that effort is terrifying to me.

It is probably not a good idea for me to go on discussing everything that is wrong with this. I have written about it so often before. "Corporatization" of churches is such a bad idea. From marketing to fund raising, from depersonalizing to confusing the goals, this is just a bad idea.

I am struck, and have commented before, that the world of churches seems to be split into two separate types. One the one hand we have the older churches. These are dying on the vine, as I have discussed so many times before. The newer, more ‘successful’ churches are built on these corporate models of one sort or another. These more ‘successful’ churches have a number of problems; they are prone to corruption; they usually ‘sell’ entertainment more than they change lives.

I think this is really eating at my craw right now because I heard someone I respect talk about Saddleback Community Church this week. If you are unaware, Saddleback is the "most successful church on the West Coast." It’s huge, thousands and thousands of people. The principal behind Saddleback is "ask people what they want and give it to them." That is a fine marketing strategy, but does anyone besides me see a problem with this for a church?

It is clear from the very beginning of the Bible that what man wants and what God wants are not necessarily the same thing. That approach begs a very, very fundamental question – Does the church exist to serve man or does it exist to serve God? I personally think this is question is really what divides the two types of churches I describe above. The older churches try to serve God, but have become so institutionalized and so mired in an argument about what God really does want that they just rot. The newer, ‘successful’ churches serve man, and at best hope God slips in there somewhere.

I am convinced that Christian maturity is reached when the fundamental question of ones life changes from "What can God do for me?" to "What can I do for God?" In my life, the para-church helped answer the first question, but it was in the church that I started to ask the second. There is nothing wrong with a church having programs that handle both questions, but the ‘successful’ churches of this age seems to only deal in the first one. We can ill afford a bunch on immature Christians.

Much is made about the revival of Christianity that currently appears to be underway. I am not sure it is all it is cracked up to be. The institutions of faith are on the rise, but is faith itself? We may be making more Christians, but I think they are narcissistic to the max, they are interested not in what they can do for God or even the church for that matter. They are only interested in what God and the church can do for them, including maybe making them wealthier as we saw at the start of all this.

I would rather see a world rolling around in its sin than I would a world hiding behind this veil of immature or false Christianity. It is much easier to show the light of Christ to those in darkness than it is to those stuck somewhere in the dusk or dawn, the light is that much brighter to those in darkness.

I think we are in the age of Laodicea:

Rev 3:14-22 (NAS)
^{14"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: ¹⁵I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. ¹⁶So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. ¹⁷Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, ¹⁸I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and {that} the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. ¹⁹'Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore, and repent. ²⁰'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me. ²¹'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. ²²'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' "}

Woe be to us if we are.

With Love,