Business Wisdom from James MacDonald
James MacDonald, has offered some business-savvy insight on hiring, management, and firing of church staff, informed by two decades of senior church leadership at Harvest.
One observation and one question.
Observation: James' advice flows consistent with the mainstream of conventional, tried-and-true organizational management thought. If you're going to run a church on a business model (and a 300 staff church at that), you had better follow proven principles.
Question: Is a church that has a staff larger than 90% of churches in America able to maintain any semblance of the local churches described in the New Testament? Put a different way, At what point do the values of the world and the values of the Kingdom conflict in business-model churches?
I couldn't agree more with James' observations about proven character, work ethic, and commitment to a common vision and mission. Those are virtually organizational absolutes.
I guess the real question is, Is running a massive, highly efficient, complex, well-oiled machine-of-a-church the optimal way of fulfilling the Great Commission and facilitating the Great Commandment(s)? I'm no hyper-Reformed biblicist who requires strict adherence to the Bible alone in developing a biblical (biblically consistent) model of church ministry. I do recognize the importance of non-biblical (as opposed to unbiblical) expertise as it relates to how we do faith and church. That said, I think we need to be asking (at least) two questions:
1. Do any of the principles we borrow from the world contradict biblically-explicit or -implicit Kingdom principles?
2. Is our methodology best suited to contribute to our explicit, God-given objective (making disciples of all nations)?
YOUR TURN:
Are there any principles of the business model of church that conflict with Kingdom principles?
Is the mega-corporation model of church the most effective model (let's limit it, say, to a suburban context like Chicagoland) for accomplishing our God-given mission?
What criteria do we use to evaluate such effectiveness? Bob Buford says, "What we measure is really our mission." So what are we measuring, how are we measuring, and to what extent are we measuring it? These are questions that must be satisfactorily answered before any claims of ministry success are touted. Attendance, assimilation (including small group attendance and multiplication percentages), and baptism numbers will not cut it.
______________________
Note: For those of you wondering where Donald ran off to, i told him to scram, just in case his antics were misunderstood and offended my friend. Thanks for understanding. ;-)
One observation and one question.
Observation: James' advice flows consistent with the mainstream of conventional, tried-and-true organizational management thought. If you're going to run a church on a business model (and a 300 staff church at that), you had better follow proven principles.
Question: Is a church that has a staff larger than 90% of churches in America able to maintain any semblance of the local churches described in the New Testament? Put a different way, At what point do the values of the world and the values of the Kingdom conflict in business-model churches?
I couldn't agree more with James' observations about proven character, work ethic, and commitment to a common vision and mission. Those are virtually organizational absolutes.
I guess the real question is, Is running a massive, highly efficient, complex, well-oiled machine-of-a-church the optimal way of fulfilling the Great Commission and facilitating the Great Commandment(s)? I'm no hyper-Reformed biblicist who requires strict adherence to the Bible alone in developing a biblical (biblically consistent) model of church ministry. I do recognize the importance of non-biblical (as opposed to unbiblical) expertise as it relates to how we do faith and church. That said, I think we need to be asking (at least) two questions:
1. Do any of the principles we borrow from the world contradict biblically-explicit or -implicit Kingdom principles?
2. Is our methodology best suited to contribute to our explicit, God-given objective (making disciples of all nations)?
YOUR TURN:
Are there any principles of the business model of church that conflict with Kingdom principles?
Is the mega-corporation model of church the most effective model (let's limit it, say, to a suburban context like Chicagoland) for accomplishing our God-given mission?
What criteria do we use to evaluate such effectiveness? Bob Buford says, "What we measure is really our mission." So what are we measuring, how are we measuring, and to what extent are we measuring it? These are questions that must be satisfactorily answered before any claims of ministry success are touted. Attendance, assimilation (including small group attendance and multiplication percentages), and baptism numbers will not cut it.
______________________
Note: For those of you wondering where Donald ran off to, i told him to scram, just in case his antics were misunderstood and offended my friend. Thanks for understanding. ;-)
Do any of the principles we borrow from the world contradict biblically-explicit or -implicit Kingdom principles?
ReplyDeleteLet me first state, that I do not think the church is a business and should be treated like one. The ultimate goal of a business is to turn a profit and support it’s self and the employees that work for it. Now, given the fact that the church is not a business, but needs effective leadership and organization; the models of businesses can be helpful to provide a way of helping to create an atmosphere of good ministry. The question, to me at least, is are these churches abnormally being effected by introducing business models to do ministry?
I think so. Is it bad? It can be. Let me explain…
Mega-churches all around the country are adversely being effected by this economic recession. Churches and non-for-profit ministries are cutting back due to the large economic tide that is coming towards them. Recessions have a way allowing businesses re-evaluate their approach to doing business—it’s making money or it’s not. Churches, too, are re-evaluating their impact in each respective ministry under their respective “umbrellas”. Each business and church as some bloated component to it. Ineffective businesses usually go out of business. Church should never go out of business, but, also, they have to re-evaluate ministries to get the maximum return—that is spreading the gospel. The question is the model that businesses uses to determine maximum efficiency should not be the church model. What I am concerned about is, as more mega church members are loosing economic resources and cutting back, will churches, that are adversely effected by the economy, also pull back their services. People at those churches depend on those ministries—most certainly, when those services are being used. Should the church stop providing services to the community just because there is no way to provide them monetarily? I don’t think so. Perhaps, these large staffs in the next coming years will be hindrances rather than service providers within the church.
You don’t see these models like this in the rest of the world. There is no concept of full time ministry jobs or positions. Most people in the church take on full time responsibilities with a jobs to support their families. People, in those church, step up in their free time to serve the ministry so much more than American Christians do.
Is our methodology best suited to contribute to our explicit, God-given objective (making disciples of all nations)?
No, I don’t think so. It’s easy for church members to push people to serve in fulltime ministry. It doesn’t make good for good discipleship because most members of the church who aren’t serving don’t take ownership of the ministry. Last time I remember, Jesus told his disciples to make more disciples and not delegate the responsibility of spreading the gospel.
The American model for mega-churches is flawed.
Thanks for posting.
nice. :)
ReplyDelete