Gaining Members or Making Disciples?

     We have this idea that a successful church is one that is gaining members, and that the more members a church has or gains the more successful it is.  That is certainly the way we talk and act. 

     The Psalmist on the other hand writes, “Turn my heart to your decrees and not to selfish gain” (Psalm 119:36).  In Jesus’ ministry one thing he avoids is any hint that he is seeking, let alone compromising his teaching in order to attract, more members, or even disciples for that matter.  Several times he deliberately makes his ministry more demanding, difficult, and unattractive for people.  He often seems frustrated by the following he does have.  In a famous portion of John 6, he seems content to be abandoned by almost everyone but his original 12.

     One of the justifications often given for the church seeking to gain members is the Great Commission in Matthew 28.  The risen Lord instructs his apostles to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity and teaching them to obey his commandments.  But his commandments nowhere value the accumulation in itself of increasing numbers of members.  I have already made the point in another post that disciples are not the same as members.  So what does it mean to “make disciples” and how is that different from “gaining new members”? 

     Jesus makes disciples by calling people and teaching them.  We know what he tells his disciples/apostles to do.  Basically, they are to do the same kinds of things Jesus himself does: healing, casting out demons, building communities, preaching, and teaching.  Disciples are to do those specific things, and teach others to do them.  In this way they are to represent, even in some sense be, Christ in the world.  In this way they become members, in the sense Paul uses the term, of his Body.

     Most churches, when seeking members, do not act, think, or talk as if they are calling people to anything resembling discipleship, according to Jesus’ descriptions of it.  Beyond requiring a verbal affirmation of Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior, congregations today do not teach or expect, let alone require, people to become disciples of Jesus in any real way.  They do not teach, expect, or require members to actually do much of anything.  Even showing up at Sunday worship is apparently too much to ask.  (Churches tend to have far more members than regular attendees.) 

     Indeed, were a congregation to enact such requirements I am fairly certain that a presbytery would strenuously object on the basis of a shallow, out-of-context reading of G-1.0302: “No person shall be denied membership for any reason not related to profession of faith.”  This would mean that we understand the profession of faith to be empty, meaningless, and unassociated with any action or behavior.  This is not the way the new Testament understands faith.     

     In G-1.0304, however, we see a list of 11 specific things members of congregations are supposed to be doing.  The list is not optional or merely suggested.  It simply assumes that these are things every member of a church is about.  A lot of these are responsibilities congregations have divested themselves of and assigned to professional clergy.  This practice of hiring someone else to be a disciple instead of you is foreign to the New Testament, to say the least.  In reality these behaviors are expected of all disciples of Jesus Christ.

     My point is that presbyteries should not be evaluating churches on the basis of membership numbers or growth.  Rather, congregational vitality is measured by the character and quality of discipleship exhibited by the participants in a church’s mission, as exemplified in G-1.0304, not to mention the explicit commandments and instructions of the Lord to his own disciples in the gospels.

     In other words, a presbytery has no business dissolving a church because it does not have “enough” members or money, when these are not categories that the Scriptures or the Constitution care about in the least.  At the same time, where discipleship is happening, and where members are fulfilling the demands of the 11 categories, why would a presbytery not feed such a congregation with needed resources?  Indeed, should not a presbytery actively encourage churches to make disciples rather than just gain members?

+++++++ 

Another Rant About the Church and Money.

            There is not a hint in the New Testament that disciples of Jesus are to be measured, evaluated, judged, or disposed of according to how much money they have, or don’t have.  This seems so obvious as to be ridiculous, of course.  Jesus says we can’t serve both God and money, we have to pick one or the other (Luke 16:13).  And Paul talks about the love of money being the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10).     

            But some church groups behave as if they have chosen money over God.  Granted, few churches these days would be so crass as to admit to treating an individual decently or not according to the person’s wealth, consciously at least.  Yet I am pretty sure that were an affluent person and a poor person to show up as visitors on the same day, in many of our churches people would give preferential treatment to the former.  I am sad to say. 

            But this bias towards wealth – or more accurately, against poverty – is most definitely prevalent in the way denominations deal with their constituent churches.  We habitually care more about how much money a church has, than how well they are doing mission.  We will gladly let a church with money do just about whatever it wants: new steeple, pipe organ, stained glass, six-figure salary for the “Head of Staff,” etc., no matter how empty and ineffective may be its actual mission.  And we will just as willingly close a church doing effective, innovative, and faithful mission, for no other reason than that it ran out of money.

            In fact, a church can even lose money hand over proverbial fist, but if it is rich enough to absorb the loss and keep paying its expenses, the church will hear no criticism.  And, of course, conversely, a church can see an increase in giving to it is mission, and still draw the ire of presbytery if the increase is deemed insufficient.

            Furthermore, because of misuse of the infamous “trust clause,” a small church may be prevented from – or even punished for – doing creative mission by a presbytery with leadership chronically deficient in energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.  The trust clause means that a significant portion of a small church’s resources – its property – is subject to presbytery’s whim.  Such property may not be sold or encumbered without approval of a presbytery.

             Churches, however, that have significant cash reserves, may do as they please, no matter how counter-missional a particular initiative may be.  Indeed, a church may even be positively hemorrhaging members, but if they have cash they need no presbytery approval to do anything not liable to invoke the Rules of Discipline.  But a small church that wants to support its mission by the liquidation of a manse, or the selling of an acre of real estate, is subject to the withering scrutiny of a presbytery whose leaders may be mired in the mindset of the 1950’s, or unwilling or unable to appreciate the style and/or content of the congregation’s mission.  (“Too evangelical.”  “Too liberal.”  “Too unusual”  Whatever.)  Indeed, some in the presbytery may even want the church to close, so that, when its property is sold off, the proceeds may be used by the presbytery to pay staff or even reduce the per capita apportionment.  (I’m not kidding.  There are apparently presbyteries that use the money gained from sold church property in this way, thus incentivizing the closure of churches.)

              The truth is, that a church that is doing the most effective mission is never the church that has the most money or is the most profitable.  This is because of what Jesus says.  Churches and people don’t get rich by serving God.  By definition, serving God means giving away what you have (Luke 14:33), not storing your wealth (Luke 12:16-21), and not ignoring the poverty in your midst (Luke 16:19-31), and so forth.  A church that makes a profit has effectively denied the Lord Jesus and chosen to serve money instead.  There is no complicated assessment that needs to be done to determine this; just count the cash.  Indeed, the most effective churches are far more likely to be those that habitually lose money because what resources they have are all going to mission.  Every dime sunk into an endowment or frittered away in paying for a building is robbed from Jesus.

            This is assuming that we are defining “effectiveness,” and “success” according to Jesus’ teaching that the mission of his disciples is witnessing to the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15) by service to the needy (Matthew 25:31-46, etc.), peacemaking (Matthew 5:9), healing (Luke 7:22), and disciple-making (Matthew 28:19).  It’s a big assumption, I know.  Not all that many churches, let alone presbyteries, are able to wrap their minds around this concept, even though it is screamed at us from virtually every page of the gospels.

            I pray that the day comes soon when we evaluate churches by the quality and effectiveness of their mission, and find ways to get our resources to the places where mission is happening (or at least give them access to the resources they already have).  And I also look forward to the day when we stop evaluating churches by how much money they have.

+++++++  

The "Connectional" Church, II.

This is the second of two posts on what it means to be "connectional" in the church.

The Rise of Horizontal Connectionality.

            The church now needs to cultivate a horizontal connectionality at every level.  Congregations are networks of disciples who support each other in living out their callings in the world.  Presbyteries are networks of congregations doing mutual support, encouragement, blessing, and sharing of resources.  And likewise up to the more inclusive councils of synod and General Assembly.  This would enable us to forge bonds of respect, appreciation, and love that are much stronger than in the vertical model, which was, frankly, more impersonal and coercive.  And it would hopefully militate against the corrosive inequalities that now grow between churches.  The function of a presbytery, then, would not be to do mission supported by its churches, but to support the mission being done by its churches.

            Now, after 32 years in the church I know as well as anyone that not all congregations even know what mission is, let alone have any interest in doing it.  This dearth of missional intelligence is widespread among churches regardless of size and wealth.  There are too many churches that haven’t had a missional thought in decades, and whose only wish is that someone come along and make it 1956 again.  They reduce everything to a matter of “getting more members.”  This imploded mentality is a product of vertical connectionalism.  In the first place membership itself is a vertical, corporate category; it defines us by our relationship to an institution, not each other.   But most importantly, mission always used to be a concern of those farther up the corporate ladder, and usually happening far, far away.  The recovery of the idea that local churches have a mission at all (beyond serving their own members and sending money to mission agencies) is relatively recent.

            Clearly, any shift to a horizontal approach must be accompanied by a serious, honest, and challenging discernment of what constitutes faithful, missional, effective, and courageous discipleship today.  Since the criteria for this will not be handed down vertically, it will have to be done by prayerful study and reflection on Scripture, openness to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, and careful examination of the present context.  In fact, this Word and Spirit of God will emerge in the center of our life, replacing the former vertical interfaces, and becoming the unity we share.  This will take the rightful place at the center – individually, congregationally, and in more inclusive councils.

            The horizontal connections between churches must reflect a horizontality in the local congregation.  That means that integral and essential to moving into a horizontal connectional model is the building of relationships and the empowering of individual disciples in the congregations.  It means the “flattening” of local church structures so that the main focus is not on the professional up front, the Pastor, but on the people.  Just as presbyteries no longer do mission “for” the churches, so now no longer must ministers do mission “for” the congregation.  The primary task of the minister now is training people for mission, and aiding in their coordination and connection in carrying out their mission. 

            And this is the same job I see for presbyteries relative to congregations: training, coordinating, connecting.  (If we try to horizontalize presbyteries without doing the same at the congregational level, presbytery will fail to grow beyond the “clergy association” appearance it so easily falls into today.)

            In the book of Acts, it is clear that the model practice in the new communities of the Way is to pool resources from the constituents as they had been blessed by God, and distribute those resources wherever there is need (Acts 2:44; 4:32).  This model shows us a strong horizontal relationship which begins with the constituents’ directly relating to each other, and then extends to where the gathering acts as an integrated whole in a redistributionary way, receiving and giving according to a calculus of need and equality.

            In a horizontally connectional system, the network will identify, lift up, feed, and learn from those places where mission is happening.  Instead of being in competition with each other, congregations will support and resource each other.  Instead of applying and waiting for resources to be granted from above, congregations will be able to help each other directly, based on relationships and not mediated through a superior entity.