Saturday, June 26, 2010

Friday's Recap (250610)

Yesterday’s cell was all about churches. We talked about churches that grow exponentially and churches that grow on a tortoise-pace. We talked about churches that entertain like a contemporary pop concert and churches that lead with a solo guitarist. We talked about churches with charismatic, bring-down-the-house preachers and churches with protocol-abiding, somber pastors. As many as there are denominations in this world with their different doctrinal beliefs and practices, there are churches of mixed varieties catering to different groups of people, of all walks of life and ages. In all these, it is obvious that church-building and activities are a complicated affair. As the congregation grows, as tithe-money and offering flood the coffers, and as the budget becomes more ambitious, the leaders of the church also become busier, more distracted and even more territorial. There is always the unfortunate risk that pastors of mega-churches will sink into a Darwinian-like struggle for popularity and dogged competitiveness in order to stay a step ahead of other churches.

I always believe that successful churches, like big, international conglomerates, will have to contend with the problem of size one day because size matters. Managed unwisely and size may become their weakest link. There is a saying that when you find a perfect plan don’t bring people in, they only mess it all up. There is some ironic truth in this when it comes to leading and managing an organization, whether secular or charitable. As the church grows in numerical strength, the resources of the pastoral team will be helplessly stretched. With limited time and energy reserved for the week, the pastors would face a floodgate of demands that they cannot optimally fulfilled. They would be hard-pressed to cater to different interest groups with one being more influential than the others. By the simple and unstoppable force of numerical evolution, growth always comes with greater inequality. Some members, especially the richer sector, will want to be “served” or at the least “given more attention to” by the pastoral team, and this will usually be at the expense of the poorer, less vocal majority. Soon enough, the problem of inequality grows unwieldy and intractable with the pastors becoming more politician-like than Christ-like, pandering to one “electoral interest” while sidelining the others’.

To add to the confounding mix is the issue of pastoral strife. Since pastors are humans too, there is always a palpable risk of an internal administrative struggle for popularity among the congregants just like in any Miss Congeniality contest. It is unavoidable that one or two pastors would be more dynamic, charismatic and “spiritually” appealing to the congregation than the others. This subtle inequality, if not properly dealt with, will give rise to an ugly mudslinging-like egoistical fight between pastors and their respective secretaries behind closed doors. Unseen walls or barriers could be set up between “warring” pastors which not only retard the spiritual growth of the leadership structure but also the members under their charge.

At least, in a secular organization, driven almost solely by profit, the head honcho could fire recalcitrant employees at will. Alternatively, when the numbers get too large, they can always retrench or terminate staff to save costs and cut down on redundancy. As such, as these corporations grow, they can still effectively control their growth without getting out of control.

But how can a pastor of a mega-church do the same? How could a pastor bring himself to excommunicate members in order to manage the numbers without turning the church into an exclusive club for like-minded people? Mind you, Jesus’ invitation is still the same for all today, irrespective of race, language or religion, or during his days, Jews or gentiles, circumcised or uncircumcised. So, when a church suddenly finds herself on a stratospheric path to exponential growth, she needs more than just extra pastors and lay staffs to perform the following: keep the numbers under control, stay focus on the twin goals of evangelism and disciples-making, and shepherd the diverse interests and their spiritual needs.

In my view, runaway growth brings about runaway problems. Sometimes, these problems run in all directions that even the pastoral team cannot effectively contain.

Then, there is the question of building funds. When the church is small and village-like, money comes in drips and drabs, similar to an IV bag feeding glucose into a patient’s veins. There is hardly enough to support the lone pastor’s family, not to mention his church of rented crummy halls, foldable chairs and a second-rate guitarist.

Then, when the moment everyone is praying for arrives with unexplained growth exploding into the scene, the church suddenly have more money than she had asked for, or more appropriately, more money than she could say “no” to. With offered manna pouring into the church like the monsoon rainfall, the church now has to deal with money issues. Money is like an intemperate mistress in this church-growing business. She demands your full attention and you don’t need to love it to find yourself in the eye of an ever-growing financial storm. I know the all-too-familiar saying that the love of money is the root of all evil. The operative word here is of course “love”.

But in the context of a mega-church with Godly principles to uphold, it is my view that too much money, especially idle money, is the root of lame suspicion and worldly distractions. Human nature being human nature, we cannot remain “un-affected” by the presence of a bank account full of tithe-money waiting to be managed in a way that maintains a healthy balance between the pastoral goals and the contributors’ pious expectations.

Members entrust their hard-earned money to the church to keep the church going as a going-concern. The expectation is simple enough: to ensure its members grow firstly in quality (spiritually) and then in quantity (numerically). The order cannot be in reverse, that is, quality has to come first before quantity. Seen in this light, it is my view that the church has to strike a balance between discipleship and evangelism. While discipleship is inward growth within a church, evangelism is an outward growth more like an outreach to the world. Some churches have strong evangelism but weak follow up and discipleship programs. Others are just the reverse.

What are the pastoral goals then? Well, it is of course indistinguishable from that of its members, that is, discipleship and evangelism. But there is more to it than that. And any pastor who tells you otherwise is definitely one who is pastoring a small church of less than a hundredth strength. Because numbers complicate matters, it becomes even more complicated when they bring with them money, and lots of it, expecting the pastoral team to sow it for a bountiful harvest. But the member’ expectation sometimes differs with that of the pastorate’s.

As a pastor, you cannot please everyone. Especially if you are a pastor of a mega-church, you will have to decide how you are going to deal with the excess money that comes in faster than the members’ growth itself. You cannot go “crazy” by spending all on evangelism as it requires mammoth planning and available staff. The logistics itself is sometimes mind-boggling. You cannot also go to the extreme with discipleship programs because your pool of teachers and materials are all limited. The planning can be physically daunting too. In the meantime, you are still left with a bank vault of cash, standing idly by, waiting to be used. Given the limited options, you can only invest the money in some safe interest-bearing accounts or blue-chip stocks. But this is easier said than done.

Money like honey attracts more than just attention; it attracts modern day financial soothsayers. Couple with this saturated culture of materialism, there is always this risk that these financial soothsayers will tempt the pastoral team to cast their net further with their idle money. This always involves taking more risk for higher gains like investing in riskier upstart companies. This also involves spending the excess money on more questionable ends that blur the line of pastoral accountability like buying a bigger car for personal use, upgrading into a newer, more posh apartment or investing in a membership club exclusively for the pastoral staff. It may also involve investing in secular companies where the pastor effectively takes on the role of a weekday director, managing corporate affairs and making personal profit, whilst shepherding his beloved flock during the weekends, managing God’s affairs. Talk about serving two masters!

This is my personal conviction about today’s modern mega-churches: Examine yourself. Turn the searchlight on your own beliefs and practices. I believe that churches should not be trendsetters, whether by conscious design or cultural inadvertence. We are called to be set apart from this world and not to settle in with it. We are called to be Christ-centered. We are the Light of the world and not the world’s “Crystal Ball”; busy reflecting our own glory while pretending to serve God. We are the salt of this world and not the world’s steroid going “ga-ga” over numerical growth at the expense of spiritual depth. At the very least, our self-examination should bring us to a point of assessing whether we are a 3-mile-wide, 2-inch deep secularized culture, whereby we foolhardily mistake quantity for quality, busyness for spirituality, and wealth for member’s spiritual health. In other words, a church should be a place of true worship where we draw strength from God to spur one another on towards love and good works and not a circus of one sensational performance after another with the pastoral team taking on the role of a ring master, and the members becoming its well-trained livestock, at the beck and call of its master’s handy whip.

Many times, I ask myself, would Jesus have done it any differently? Jesus’ ministry was fortunately short-lived, just three years. But He planned it well, very systematic and yet simple and effective. He rounded up twelfth social rift rafts and put them on “real estate commission” to change the world with one mission, one simple motto: Jesus can, you can too!

I would classify Jesus as a church-planter, like a farmer who patiently sows his seeds on good soil. His seeds are his transformed disciples who are themselves effective church-builders. They all died for their cause, sacrificing their lives for the vision of their messiah. Whether Jesus or his disciples were rich or not is not really the issue. Jesus had made himself abundantly clear in his ultimatum to the rich young ruler. But this one thing is abundantly clear though, what they may lack in material wealth, they more than made it up with spiritual wealth by leading as an example and by being an inspiration to all to live up to and emulate.

But what if Jesus had lived in our modern age and to a ripe-full age of seven scores and ten, would he have done it any differently? Bordering on hypothetical blasphemy and chronological incredulity (since without his death, there would be no Christianity as we know it today), I would dare say, and this is only my own view, that He would still be the same “yesterday, today and tomorrow”. He would still be an itinerant church planter; not a trendsetter but an old fashion farmer. Sure, he would make use of today’s technology for his world outreach. Like Obama, Jesus would use the media and the internet to spread God’s word. But He would stay true to his preaching, living a life set apart from this world, standing up for the poor and the oppressed, being a peacemaker and a discriminate healer, comforting those who mourn and are broken in spirit, and always eternity-focused, faithful, hopeful and purpose-driven. Along with his unimpeachable qualities, Jesus may win many awards and accolades (even a few Nobel prizes), be invited to speak for nations and in world conferences, be showered with international praises and even material gifts and real estate beyond all that one could imagine. But with all the attention, glamour and wealth, would Jesus be swayed, influenced and tempted, or even derailed?

It is easy to say that because Jesus is Jesus, God incarnate, he would not be. But my answer is not predicated on that convenient reason. In Matthew 4, Jesus was handed, on a silver platter, the same temptation or opportunity, if not more seductive, by this world ruler at His most vulnerable. But His answer, which I believe would be the same today, was a cool intonation, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, you shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him only you shall serve.” You can’t get any more focused than that!

But let’s be objective. The obvious caveat here is that we are not Jesus. We are his disciples. We are imperfect, emulating the perfect. We are living under the shadow of what is to be the “glorious unraveling”. Needlessly to say, the church is imperfect because it is made up of imperfect worshippers, with their pet peeves and pet gripe; juvenile at best and malicious at its worst.

The church is not a museum for well-framed collections, spotless and finely polished. The church is a hospital for the sick and diseased; or else, there would be no cause for a savior.

So, after all is said and done, one has still to empathize with the plight of pastors of mega-churches. It is definitely not an easy job. The demands are both biblical and secular. On one side are discipleship and evangelism, and on the other side is, money managing. There is therefore no hard and fast rule for managing mega-churches. It takes Godly wisdom, a humble and surrendered heart, and a shepherd’s passion to manage it well. But, as a member of a reasonably large church for twenty plus years, I would like to offer this brief prayer to my church leadership as my peace offering and love token.

A short prayer for my shepherd

It is my prayer that my church will leave no members behind for numerical growth. That it will see the richness in the lives of her members and not in her structure, programs and budget. I pray also that my church will stand in the gap to pray for and uplift her members and, when overwhelmed, she will not hesitate to stand on the rock that is higher than all, so that she could see further and reach deeper into the hearts of her wandering flock. Most of all, I pray that my church will unquestionably serve one master who is the Christ and be a servant to all, in humility and unreserved devotion. In closing, I pray that my church will embrace brokenness and vulnerability and accept my limits as a member. In return, I pray that I will always remain faithful and devoted to my church, who is the bride of Christ, my fortress, my refuge, and my sanctuary. So help me God. Amen.

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