Is Planning Treating the Church Like a Business?

Throughout my 27 years in ministry I have had discussions with many about the role of planning in the church.  For some it feels like we are treating the church like a business, which begs the question I will engage in today.  Is planning treating the church like a business?  The answer is that it can, but it doesn't have to.  I will be the first to admit that the most powerful tools that the church has access to are the Word of God and prayer.  These are not church answers, this is just reality.  Jesus promised us in John 15 that if we abide in Him, we would bear much fruit for apart from Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5)!  This means that anything brought about in the church that has spiritual value (fruit) happens because God made it happen.  So is there even a role for planning in the church?  I would answer that question with a resounding "YES"!!!  Throughout the Scriptures, we have God inviting humans to participate with Him in accomplishing His Work.  There is no doubt about it, God does the heavy lifting in the hearts of people and the unfolding of His plan, but He has invited us to participate in the process.  Paul tells Timothy to study to show himself approved.  Even though God is the one that works through His Word, we study and teach... we participate.  So when I get up on Sunday mornings, I teach what the Holy Spirit has been teaching me behind my desk.  It is this divine/human coop that is a mystery to me, but it is how God works.  The same is true with planning.  This is why He has given people within the church such gifts as administration and leadership.  However, whenever you are planning for church growth, you have to be careful not to drift into making it solely a human thing because that is when it becomes like a business.  When it gets to that point you are relying on the wisdom and power of man to manipulate circumstances so that there appears to be fruit.  So what do we need to keep in mind as we plan for church growth and keep it from drifting into a human thing?

1.  Pray throughout the planning process!  Nobody loves the church more than God Himself.  Jesus (God the Son) gave His life up for her (the church).  So when we are planning for a thriving church, we need to be in a spirit of prayer throughout the process.  I am not talking about a token prayer before or a prayer at the end that sounds much like this, "God bless the plans we have made."  I am talking about a prayerful attitude throughout where, as leaders, we are seeking wisdom from God and discerning the direction from the Holy Spirit.  

2.  Prioritize people over programs!  Remember that the church is made up of brothers and sisters in Christ not programs.  Programs and strategies are extremely helpful if kept in proper perspective relative to the people.  Too often we love the programs of the church more than the people in the programs.  This is not healthy and it will end up destroying people.  I have made this mistake more times than I care to admit in the name of moving our plans forward.  This is not to say that we don't address hard issues that affect the function or direction of our ministries, but we do so in love.  Sometimes this means that you have to have plans in place to bring others along to understand why certain decisions were made.  One pastor that I had lunch with years ago was telling me how he helped move their multi-generational church toward a contemporary worship service.  He knew this would be a barrier for the older generation who grew up on hymns that have become so meaningful to them.  He gathered them together to have a conversation.  He framed the conversation around values knowing that music was meaningful to all generations.  He laid out the importance of music and style to a younger generation and the stats behind the mass exodus we are seeing in the church of our young people.  He finally posed this question, "What do you value more... hymns or your grandkids?"  The older people responded by welcoming a more contemporary style because they valued the spiritual lives of their grandkids more than their preferred music choices.  This pastor could have just pushed the decision of the leadership through without carefully and thoughtfully bringing an older generation along, but he didn't.  Why?  Because he knew that people were more important than programs.  

3.  Make sure you have the right bottom line.  In business, the bottom line is often profit margin.  Are we making money?  Sadly, we tend to measure the success of a church in a very similar way.  We measure bodies, buildings, and budgets.  A church must be successful if there are more people coming, more buildings being built, and a bigger budget than the year before.  When we begin measuring these metrics for a successful church, we begin to drift into a business mentality.  Now, to be fair, bodies is an important metric because every body represents a soul that needs to grow in Christ or come to know Christ, but I think there are better metrics for us.  For example, our church believes strongly that we are called to make disciples who make disciples.  How do we measure what a successful discipleship process looks like?  In our strategy, we encourage people in our worship service to connect in a Life Group because living in a community where the one another statements in Scripture can be meaningfully exercised is critical.  From Life Groups we encourage people to join a D-Group, which is a gender specific group of 3-6 people who meet weekly to hold each other accountable to the spiritual disciplines of reading the Word, verse memory, and prayer.  From D-Groups and Life Groups we encourage everyone to reach out to the people they rub shoulders with... co-workers, neighbors, etc.  So what are our metrics?  We look at the percentage of our regular worship attendance who are engaged in Life Groups.  We look at the percentage of Life Group attendees who are engaged in D-Groups.  We look at what percentage of our people are engaging in our church wide reading plan, which forms the content for every D-Group.  We look at the percentage of people who are actively engaged in evangelism.  Our bottom line is to see disciples being made who will replicate and make other disciples.  

So, YES, a church can drift into functioning like a business in their planning, but it doesn't have to drift at all.  They can use best planning practices to move toward the right bottom line, recognizing the church is the people, and that they can't do anything worth its weight in spiritual salt without Christ.  I just saw a quote from John Maxwell that read, "Without a plan, the church grows no where fast."  I believe this is true, while also believing that apart from Jesus we can do nothing.  It is not an either/or, but both/and.