Consumer Christianity - Too Many Choices?

I continue to be amazed about how many parallels there are between the life of a local church and that of a family. Pastoring, in fact, sometimes seems a lot like parenting. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy and Titus to careful consider the state of a candidate's family life when they looked for potential spiritual leaders. He did not say that elders and deacons had to be successful business men, but he did say they had to be sucessful family men.
Entrepeneurial acumen certainly does not disqualify one from spiritual leadership and can be very valuable when applied to the life of a local church. According to Paul, though, it should not be the grounds for considering or selecting someone for such a role.

I think the reason is very simple: while businesses and churches have many things in common, a local church is much more like a family than a company. In a business, people are a means to an end; in a family, people are the end. In a business, people are sacrificed if necessary for the sake of the bottom line; in a family, people are the bottom line. Jesus did not die for ministry buildings, projects, or institutions, but for people. Hirelings lead task oriented ministries; shepherds lead people oriented ministries. Moses was not only called to go to the Promised Land, he was called to lead a particular group of sometimes rebellious people to the Promised Land. His level of commitment to them and his love for them was much like that of a father to his children. As pastors, if we ever sacrifice our sheep on the altar of our vision, then our ministry has become our god and we are a hireling, not a shepherd.

In every other gathering of human beings, people are brought together on the basis of some degree of shared interest or commonality, be it a love of football, similar political persuasions, common educational goals or something else, but in a family, people are forever bound together by simple DNA, no matter how divergent their values or diverse their personalities. Though their interpersonal conflicts may cause them to want to flee from each other, even if they go years without speaking or making contact, it is amazing how inevitably some occasion such as a wedding or a funeral or the discovery of a congenital family trait by some obscure biologist will thrust family members together once again.

God designed the biological family this way for many very good reasons. One of the most important must certainly be the perfection of our character. We can easily sever every other difficult human relationship without ever learning the lessons on interpersonal relationships from it that we should, but not our biological family ties. As one wag put it, "You can pick your friends, but you're stuck with your kinfolk!" Have you ever noticed how rare it is for siblings to be just like each other in temperament? This is not an accident! God intentionally places very diverse personalities in the same nuclear family for the simple reason that this forces every member to grow relationally. As we succeed in our families, working through conflicts and walking out forgiveness and forebearance, we learn valuable keys to success in every sphere of human relationships in broader society.

In this vein, I came across an interesting article a few minutes ago on Christianity Today's website (click here). It addresses some of the downfalls in adopting a purely "marketing" approach to local church leadership, especially focusing on meeting people's felt needs without ever calling them to a long-term, "come what may," commitment to a particular congregation. At first read, I think most any pastor who has seen someone lightly leave the flock they lead might read the article and identify with the frustrations felt in the conversation which opens up the piece. I encourage you, though, to take the time to ask yourself the question, "In the church I serve, how intentional are we about promoting the kind of interpresonal bonding between members that would motivate them to stay with this community of faith no matter what?" If we fail to do this, we rob our people of God's perspective on the local church and they will not grow unto the spiritually mature individuals He intends them to be.

What do you think?