Corporate Churches
I just read a ChristianityToday.com article titled: “Leader’s Insight: Is Ministry Leadership Different?”
Eric Reed spent some time interviewing Andy Stanley for an upcoming April edition article and decided to let some of his content out early.
Andy says:
“One of the criticisms I get is ‘Your church is so corporate…’ And I say, ‘OK, you’re right. Now why is that a bad model?”
What’s humorous is that we get the same comments… and I know were not even close to being as “corporate” as Northpoint. We recently had a lady tell us that we were, “headed to Babylon.” Upon further questioning as to how she had drawn that conclusion (beside the crack pipe she had been smoking) she told us because we were running the church as a business and becoming corporate and we were not free to follow the heart of God.
Andy said, “I grew up in a culture where everything was overly spiritualized. I don’t want to be a cynic, but raking out all the spiritual versus non-spiritual, I think, is healthy.”
I think I would argue that you cannot separate life into “spiritual” and “non-spiritual.” Really everything is “spiritual.” In the entire Old Testament, the word “spiritual” does not even exist in the Hebrew. Why?
Because you can’t segment life that way.
Leadership is spiritual. How you run a church is spiritual. And I would argue, just as spiritual as spending time alone for devotions or singing worship songs on Sunday morning.
We are called to do everything to the glory of God and live our lives in a way that is sacrificial to Him (Ro 12.1). This includes everything we do; whether we go to work at UPS sorting boxes or whether we are the CEO of a 20,000 member church. Everything we do is spiritual.
I don’t know….. but, I love the way Andy makes me think.
April 6th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Yes, I think you and Andy are right on for the most part. Learning from businesses or running our church like a business might mean simply: “doing practices that are effective and planned.” There is certainly nothing against that. What is spiritual or not spiritual about that? I only suggest that we be careful to realize doing Christian ministry means are tactics/practices/logistics are constrained by Scriptural boundaries. Business practices still need to subjected to Christian critique. Thanks for your thoughts. See my fuller thoughts at:
http://firstmovethyself.blogspot.com/2006/04/andy-stanley-says-there-is-no-such.html
May 30th, 2006 at 7:29 am
How do you know you aren’t heading to Babylon? With that kind of warning I would take a step back and make sure there wasn’t something that may have been out of line somewhere. And are you sure she uses crack? That is pretty offensive to be saying about someone. If you are indeed a leader, why would you even think to say that? Leaders nurture their flock, not injure it. I am disappointed.