I am recovering from a devastating downsizing of our national offices in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) We have just gone through a drastic restructuring familiar to many people who live in the corporate world. And this downsizing was done with all the corporate tools available to this mindset. The exception was the worship services we held as a community of faith, but even those services were tainted with corporate residue.
I am very concerned about the corporate mindset of the mainline church. I believe that this may be one of the most prevalent reasons for the current situation we find ourselves living in today. Loss of membership and the inability to attract younger people may have more to do with our corporate institutional nature than any of the more popular reasons being touted today. We seek out leaders for our denomination from the corporate world instead of finding people who are ministers or who have theological and ecclesial training. This mindset pervades our whole church, not just the denominational headquarters.
Corporate leadership shapes our language, mission, and overall ecclesial structure. For Presbyterians even our local church sessions act more like a board of directors than spiritual leaders and the church pastors function more as administrators, or worse, CEOs than ministers of Word and Sacrament. And all too often the church reverts to language of the business world, sports, and medicine to describe our mission, structure, and even evangelism.
The mission of the church to develop new churches is now driven by consultants. These consultants search for new locations for new churches by socio-economic demographics ensuring a wealthy congregation and substantial growth over a period of time. All, if not most, of these decisions are made on the basis of income and education of a given area. There is scant, if any, theological or ecclesial thought in this process. The motivation is a new church that will be financial successful.
While this is not all bad, and while we need to be successful in our new church endeavors, the gospel does not call us to serve only the rich and educated but in fact speaks more clearly to our call to the “least of these” (Matthew 25). Many of the church planters, mainly found in evangelical denominations, are ready to plant churches built on the gospel and faith in God’s work through them rather than demographic studies. They are not afraid of failure, especially if the endeavor was faithful. This places the Paschal mystery of death and resurrection at the heart of their lives, and faith in God’s work through them as their driving force, not economic models of growth.
We have a lot to learn to from our sisters and brothers who take such risks for the gospel.
The structure of the local mainline church is becoming more and more a corporate model than the Body of Christ. The prevalence of a committee structure for even the simplest decisions is laughable. If we want to begin a food bank, we form a committee. If we want to begin a new worship service, it goes to the proper committee. If we are interested in starting a new mission project it must first go to a committee.
While committees can be helpful in implementing such things they are too often stumbling blocks to mission and outreach. This is especially true when the committee structure reflects more of corporate America than the fellowship, prayer, and mission of the faithful.
In many churches, the daily routine is more like a corporation than a church. Offices in many mainline churches begin filling up in morning with people reading e-mail instead of gathering for morning prayer. Often the sanctuary is locked during the week, even in churches where there are church employees at work throughout the day! Many times the daily routine at a church is full of meetings and deadlines but absent of intentional times of corporate prayer and outreach. This is not universally true, but the corporate world is creeping into our spiritual well being and should be a point of deep concern.
We could only benefit from a daily church structure that centered on corporate prayer, open to the community, each day.
Mainliners bemoan the fact that many younger folk are leaving, or never entering the church. If you ask people why they are not interested in being a part of a local community of faith, one of the most prevalent concerns is the institutional nature of the church. For good reason, many young people are skeptical of corporate institutions. One main reason for this skepticism is that most corporate institutions are concerned mainly about their own survival. The Christian faith, scandalous as it is, calls us to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel. The two paradigms are inherently incompatible.
Evangelism in this context is very problematic. And when the church witnesses more to its self-preservation than giving itself for the sake of others, our actions speak clearly to our corporate orientation.
As with many laments, I want to end on a note of doxology. The faith emerging today in many areas of the church is now speaking a prophetic voice of faith in Christ and the call to serve as faithful disciples. The reclaiming of the ancient practices in worship (especially daily prayer and weekly sacramental practice) is one important sign of the fact that many people wish to be shaped by the gospel of Christ and not so much influenced by the culture, especially corporate culture. The waning interest, especially among younger Christians, in “contemporary” or “seeker” models of worship is another example of the distrust of the culture-driven models of church. Even the packaged Christianity, such as Purpose Driven models designed as an overarching paradigm, hints of the corporate marketing of the faith and is viewed with much skepticism.
In response, many mainline Protestants (and even more emerging evangelicals) are practicing a more monastic version of daily prayer. There are emerging churches willing to stay within the denomination while restructuring their ecclesial bodies around liturgy and mission. This is a hopeful vision for our future. It is a vision grounded in prayer, worship, and service to others, not in guaranteed success. It is grounded in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which means this way of being church runs the risk of death. But as followers of Christ who live into the Paschal mystery, we know that death is always followed by resurrection.
Corporate models and our good business practices will not save the church. Bold faith in following Christ, which means giving our lives for others, may be our only hope for the future of the mainline church.
Chip Andrus is associate for worship in the Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville, Ky.
