Come to church: no faith required
This week I was thinking about the irony of many large churches: they teach “faith” to attendees, but hugely discourage them from exercising faith at church. How so? Large churches, like some large corporations, only want to do what looks successful. If you have a new initiative and you run the idea up the holy flagpole, it will quickly get shot down unless it is a guaranteed success. Success when translated into churchanese means, “lots of people will come so the program will not look like a failure.” If a program or idea is new, or risky, then people quickly learn to not suggest such initiatives.
What does the big-church-small-faith-mindset do to avoid risk? (Note: this happens even in small churches.) The key is to dumb down the programs to a mental age of 19-and-a-half, present concepts in four minute sound bites, and, whatever you do, don’t ask too much of the attendees. If you ask too much, people will feel imposed upon, will not come back, and will not invite their seekerish friends (which they won’t do anyway, but you don’t want to be the one to give them grumbling ammunition).
Another way to mitigate risk is to import a “sure thing” program from a big-name speaker. Get good coffee and a live feed (which usually is fake-live, otherwise known as dead) from a mega-(successful)-church, and you are good to go. If the program is a flop, blame it on the national celebrity preacher. In business we used to say, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM computers.” In the church world we say, “No one ever got fired for streaming in Bill Graham / Bill Hybels / Bill Johnson / Bill Whoever.”
The really big way to avoid risk is the most obvious: let the main pastor come up with all of the ideas! That way, they are guaranteed support. With the right executive sponsor (in some cases, the only executive sponsor) it will be a sure thing. Even if it fails, it won’t be a failure: it will be a PR opportunity for Pastor Bill to show he is humble, just a mere mortal like you and me.
What do we learn from this? Church is not a good place to exercise faith. You can talk about it in the sanctuary, but only try it when you get home please; and don’t mess with the church programs.
PS: There is one time when you are free to exercise faith at church—-when the offering plate comes around.
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