Running the church like a business

I come from a business background. I was a business major in college. I have worked for locally owned businesses and publicly held international companies. I have started and owned several businesses. Most were successful, and one was a tremendous economic failure. I have had as many as 300 people who worked in divisions I managed, and have had spending authority into the millions of dollars. God granted me some wonderful experiences, and some success in the business world in several different fields.


But now I work in a church in the role of administrative pastor. I love working in the church. Even though I experienced some success in the business world, I could never make business important enough to really give my life to it. I remember two instances. First was during the time I owned an oilfield service company. It was early in the morning after I had worked all night. I was walking to the rig floor feeling good about the night's work I had just done. I remember thinking to myself, "I'm really good at this. I wish I enjoyed it." A number of years later I worked as assistant general manager in a manufacturing operation. I was in a production meeting with several people I really respected.
We discussed ways to save pennies per unit. Over hundreds of thousands of units, the savings would be substantial. But I remember thinking to myself, "There's no way I can ever make this as important to me as it is to them." Shortly afterward, I felt God leading me to quit a six figure job even though it was the best working environment I had ever experienced. I couldn't make business be important enough to me to give my life to it.


I hear people many times say, "we need to run this church more like a business." I hope they mean that it be run according to accepted accounting principles, with transparency and integrity in the processes. But there is a huge difference between using good business practices in church and running the church like a business.

The first reason is that business success is measured in revenues and profits. Church success is measured by changed lives. How a church interacts with its vendors in the marketplace is one of the opportunities we have to share Christ with the marketplace. In a business, it is expected that deals will be driven hard. It is common for ethical corners to be cut to make a better deal. But the church has an opportunity to model the Christ life in its dealings. That doesn't mean that we should roll over and accept shoddy service and high prices, but it does mean that we should hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards in our dealings. Businesses should look forward to doing business with a church. They should expect to have to deliver top service and products at competitive prices, but they should also expect that the church will keep its word and honor its commitments. The church should never be seen as mooches who want something for nothing. Nor should it be known as a group that fails to honor its commitments because they know no one wants to sue a church.

Also, this may come as a shock for many, but the biggest difference between church and business is that the church has no customers. Our consumeristic culture has fostered the notion that the people in the pew are to be catered to because there is another church (business) down the street who will welcome their attendance (business). This way of thinking has effectively neutered the concepts of discipleship and church discipline. If something is taught that is unpleasant to the listener, or if one of the "customers" is rebuked for a wrong action, he just "takes his tithe (business) elsewhere." When we begin to develop ministry around what the people want, we begin the decline into consumerism, and it is nearly impossible to return to true discipleship that leads people to be the body of Christ.

When we run the church like a business, the most important number becomes the surplus or deficit we see in the income statement. It is true that we have a responsibility to steward the resources that have been entrusted to us. But that stewardship responsibility is greater than hanging onto large reserves of cash and feeling secure that they can weather a financial storm that never arrives. We are given the charge to seek first God's kingdom and righteousness because if we do that he promises to give us the things we need. But we see churches and individuals storing up great amounts of cash in savings accounts while we send our missionaries and inner city works begging.

Can we as the Church get to a place of absolute trust in God to lead and provide? I don't know. But I do know that we must be very careful about "running the church like a business".