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Okay, so let’s be positive for awhile.
“Well, if you’re so anointed, so above it
all, pastor, tell us how to fix this!” I can’t fix it. Only
Christ can fix what’s wrong with he black church today. Only the
love of Jesus Christ and the deliverance brought by the Holy
Spirit can un-do generations of Church Folk damage and free us
from leadership largely infested with spiritual and moral
corruption. The most difficult concept for us to embrace is we
must stop being Church Folk and start being Christians. We must
become acquainted with Christ—not the church, with Jesus—and we
must re-learn our walk, one step at a time. Being a Church Folk
is a lot like being addicted to crack; don’t expect to kick it
in one day or one week. The black church can’t expect real
change even in one generation; most of this stupid and ungodly
behavior has to be bred out of us. Our sons, our grandsons and
granddaughters, unsatisfied with the surface, fake religion of
Church Folk, will, I pray, seek real depth in and real
commitment to Jesus Christ. So much so that we’ll stop the
stupid stuff, the rivalries, the cash grabs, the bickering, the
hatred, the in-favor/out-of-favor see-saw relationships.
It’s probably best to say that the only real way to save the
black church is to destroy it. Just nuke the thing and start
building from the ground up. Starting, first and foremost, with
the most basic of understandings, that the church belongs to God
and not to us. That the church, the real Church (capital “C”),
is the Body of Christ—is all believers, regardless of race. Our
individual buildings are only cell groups, focused on the unique
needs of specific groups of believers. But our money (that’s the
hardest part), our time, our energy, our resources, our
musicians, our ushers, our deacons, our youth leaders—all of it
belongs to God and not to us. If we thought of our resources as
a pool and not as mine, Mine, Mine, the implications for change
would be tremendous. If we had one building fund instead of
142—think about how much money there’d be and, therefore, how
many options there’d be. If we’d build community centers instead
of churches—common places shared by all churches, available to
all churches, with classrooms and gyms and music
workshops—instead of each church bleeding its membership dry
trying to build its own.
If we could be responsible enough, mature enough, spiritual
enough—if we could be a whole people, a well people, instead of
the fractured, broken mess we are currently—the impact on our
communities would be thunderous. And we could stop raising money
and begging and stop being distracted by all of this church
building and spend our time, energy and resources doing the work
God has actually called us to do.
However, to even begin such an alliance, we’d have to cancel out
Self. Our Preferences. Our Desires. Our Agendas. Our Way Of
Doing Things. Starting first and foremost with our leadership,
the ego-driven, unbowed pastor who will not submit to leadership
of any kind. The unspiritual, stone-faced trustees who slam the
door shut on any and all change. The deacons who use the church
as their own personal Elks Club with the secret meetings and
Moose Handshake. No business in the church should be done in
secret. Delicate matters need to be handled in private, but not
shrouded in secret with dire penalties assessed for disclosure. With the proper safeguards in place, we can indeed
guard against corruption. Pastors can join together in a spirit
of cooperation, modeling the early church of Acts Chapter 2,
which did everything as a group of diverse believers. All
decisions were made as a group. They sold everything they had
and gave to those in need [Acts 2:42-47], meeting one another’s
needs. Instead, our churches today horde resources for
themselves only, allowing other ministries to struggle.
I can’t fix any of this. Neither can you. But God can. The
evidence of revival—real revival and not this mess we do once a
year to line somebody’s pocket—is change. Real change. Lasting
change. Here in Ourtown, we have any number of “revivals” a
year, which increasingly see dwindling attendance. Churches fly
in these guys from all over the country, spending thousands of
dollars to do so. And, the day after these men leave, the
churches are exactly the same. The behaviors are exactly the
same. The mess just goes on like nothing ever happened. Because
nothing did.
There should be no revivals if there is no change. If all you’re
doing is meeting a calendar obligation with your annual revival,
then all you’re doing is wasting time and money. There are over
a hundred churches here in Colorado Springs. Maybe 60, 70 of
them have annual revivals, spending an average of $3,000 to fly
some guy in here to holler at you for a few days. That’s
$210,000. That’s nearly a quarter of a million dollars—wasted
every year on foolishness.
Add in pastoral bonuses—the real reason many men go into
pastoring—and you’re looking at an average of $10,000 a year
(usually much more) per pastor. That’s a minimum of $700,000.
every year. Spent on nothing but the pastor’s new car or what
have you.
What if we stopped doing this foolishness? What if we started
pooling all the money from all the churches and brought all the
people together as one Body of Christ? Just cutting out the
ungodly and unbiblical foolishness, the annual fleece-flocking
of Pastoral Anniversaries and Church Anniversaries and so on,
and eliminating the summer revival scams (that’s all they are:
pastors getting their buddies paid), and, here in our small
town, we’d be looking at a couple of million dollars a year,
easy. In your town, wherever that may be, you’d be looking at,
likely, ten times that.
How many hungry people could we feed with hat money? How many
classrooms could we build? Instead of building 70 buildings,
what if we built five, located strategically around the city,
and all the churches would have access to the classrooms and
gyms and resources?
What if we stopped acting like our church was the only one
preaching and teaching the truth, and what if we instead joined
together as a body of believers and followed, oh, I don’t know,
what the bible says instead of what we’ve always done?
The implications of such an idea are enough to get somebody
shot. It’s dangerous thinking. These days, more than every
before, the black church needs some dangerous thinking. It needs
a new direction, a new template. Something that could be called
The New Model For The Black Church.
How would I make things better? I asked
eight or ten local pastors: if you had an unlimited budget, I
mean if money was no object, and you had a free hand to rebuild
your ministry from scratch—what would you do? What would the new
model fro the black church look like?
Of the ten pastors I asked, one wrote me back. Everyone else
ignored the question. Most pastors here do not have email. Of
the pastors who have email, most do not check it regularly. Some
not at all. One pastor told me he rarely checks his email. So,
when he does, his inbox is flooded with messages and he just
gives up, deleting all of his messages, “If it’s important,
they’ll call.” That’s the overall quality of leadership we have
here.
Anybody can set up folding chairs in a storefront. Absent some
sincere operating cash, opening a physical building is a time
and money-consuming effort that drains the very life out of many
pastors. Even pastors with the most sincere of motives often
find themselves spiritually and physically wrecked from the
effort to launch or plant a new church. The existing black
church community rarely rallies around new pastors or new
ministries. Despite protests to the contrary, there is an air of
competition between churches and ministries, a new church often
being perceived as a threat to the already crowded field of
existing ministries. Especially if the pastor is a good
preacher. Especially if he is well-known or, worse, well-liked
throughout the community. The worst threat possible is a
well-liked, impressive preacher with a dynamic music program. A
guy like that could set a podium in a whorehouse and still
launch a successful church, likely drawing resources (i.e.
tithing members) from existing ministries. So, rather than run
out and hang a minister’s shingle outside a dusty storefront and
launch into an enterprise that is statistically doomed to
failure, what other possibilities are there?
Dozens. Tens of dozens. As many ideas as there are men and women
to dream them. It’s like we don’t even dream anymore. Every time
a new church opens it looks and sounds and smells and acts just
like the old one. Just like every other old one taking up space
in the city. Nobody can even pick out a good church name
anymore. It’s all recycled stuff, three deacons’ wives puling
names from a hat. New Greater Bethel. Mount Thus And So.
“Missionary Baptist” churches that do absolutely no missionary
work and no outreach or evangelism.
Perhaps, then, our first goal is to dream. To dream big. To
dream an uncompromised vision. To see an unlimited possibility.
What would that church look like? It might look something like
this:
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:
Far too many black churches have absolutely no objective in the
communities wherein they are located. The church's location is
often a matter of convenience— cheap property or other
opportunity—rather than one of community involvement. My new
model church would be entrenched in its community and would know
its neighbors. There would be basketball hoops and computer labs
and classroom and conference facilities available to the public.
The doors would be open all day every day, and the facility
staffed around the clock. There would always be a minister on
duty, 24 hours, and the House of the Lord would, indeed, be an
island of hope and an anchor to the community.
PASTORS:
Most any church inevitably takes on the personality of its
pastor. I’d like to explore diffusing the personality-based
church by changing the single-pastor model to perhaps a
multi-pastor oversight board. The executive, the position of
Senior Pastor, would rotate between them, and church matters
would be decided by this council. This method makes the new
model church much less personality based, much less Pastor
Williams' Church, as a wider range of parishioners can see some
part of themselves in, and perhaps more readily identify with,
the church leadership.
From a budget standpoint, this means either (1) adequate funding
would need to be raised to afford the pastors' salaries, or (2)
these pastors would need to agree to serve as volunteers or
under a stipend, with only the Executive, the Senior Pastor,
being salaried for the duration of his or her rotation.
MEMBERSHIP:
You can't join my church. I know that sounds absurd, but, no, in
my new model you cannot formally join the organization. The only
church you can formally join is the Body of Christ by accepting
Jesus as Savior. Personal salvation is stressed OVER church
membership. Sheepfolds and/or cell groups are created to see to
the needs of the people, but those sheepfolds are open to
EVERYONE— saved, lost, winos— EVERYONE, regardless of church
affiliation. Church membership, as we know it, is a legalistic
device designed to increase head count. It's about money and
resources and bragging rights and has no basis in scripture.
Nobody signed any membership papers in Jerusalem. In Antioch. In
Ephesus. There was less time spent talking about ministry and
more time spent actually ministering.
SANCTUARY:
My new model church would not have a sanctuary. it would have a
multi-purpose auditorium. The early church met in houses,
largely in secret, and their facilities were used for what was
needed, for what met the needs of the people. My new model
church would focus on meeting the needs of people, rather than
fulfilling prescribed ideas of what a church should look like or
how one should function.
Chairs rather than expensive pews bolted to the floors. All the
money wasted on pews could be feeding somebody or clothing
somebody, and the chairs can be reconfigured to whatever event
is taking place in the auditorium.
Bottom line: we must place the emphasis back on spirituality and
not religion. Calling a room a "sanctuary" and treating it like
holy ground is in direct contravention of scripture. Christ died
to rend the veil separating one room, one people, from another.
And we, His people, have done everything we know how to put
those old temple rules back into place. This mentality is quite
anti-scriptural and needs to be corrected.
START TIME:
My new model church would start later, like noon or even later.
I'd encourage our families to sleep in on Sundays, which is
often the only day families have an opportunity to spend
together. Crack-of-dawn service times are, in my opinion,
anti-family as they become yet another busy-busy-busy activity
like soccer practice or shopping trips. The family catapults out
of bed first thing in the morning, rushes to prepare and hurries
down to the church where they are immediately split up—children
going one way, parents another—into various classes and
services.
I’d rather start much later. I would encourage the family to
have breakfast and spend a leisurely morning, so they arrive at
God's house relaxed and energized, instead of half-asleep and
frenzied from the rush.
SUNDAY SCHOOL:
Sunday School is a War Era invention that harkens back to the
days when church was, literally, an all-day event. Junior
Church, or something similar, suits the needs of youth far
better. Having both Sunday School AND Junior Church is redundant
and strains the limited attention span of youth. Sunday School
does almost nothing at all for adults that a well-run Bible
Study couldn't do more effectively. By putting the emphasis on
Bible Study and eliminating the costly and often skipped Sunday
School program, the church becomes more efficient in both time
and resources.
And we could keep spinning ideas all day long, the point being
that all we need is to actually have ideas. To have
dreams. To have vision. But, before we can have any of that, we
have to acknowledge our sin, our deplorable laziness and lack of
imagination. God creates us with great creativity. Our
creativity, in fact, is the only thing White America actually
permits us to have. We are a race of artists, of poets, of
singers, of athletes. Why does our imagination constantly fail
us when it comes to organizing our worship? Why doe we
continually let folk set in their ways and frightened of
change set all the rules?
That God Himself never changes is a given. But our knowledge of
Him, our understanding of Him, evolves over time. What He
reveals of Himself to us evolves with it. The self-revelation of
God is both orderly and progressive. He is a progressive Being,
giving us the portion of His grace that we are ready to handle.
The black church constantly facing backward, hostile to and
afraid of change, is not a thing inspired by God. It is the
enemy’s roadblock: our own piousness run amuck to the extent
that we consider a church stuck in neutral a badge of honor.
Oh foolish brother, oh foolish sister, making a virtue of
cowardice does in no way please God. Rather, it make you look
like a fool, beating your chest proudly for having fought off
efforts to move your church out of its coma. Many have simply
given up trying. Many more have simply given up on the black
church altogether, taking their families and their resources to
one of the many progressive white churches. As our numbers
remain stagnant and dwindle, our leaders—many of whom are
spiritually dead or at least spiritually constipated—pride
themselves in protecting their dusty cocoon, not realizing or
perhaps not caring that this relic does not please God and does
not serve or magnify God because it does not accomplish what the
church is designed to do: feed the lambs. Instead, the church
feeds the pastor. And, by extension, the deacons and trustees
and missionary boards and the Usual Suspects of unspiritual
church elders who’ve become too politically powerful to get rid
of.
These places are abominations in that, in practice, they deny
the holiness of God. By allowing unspiritual people in places of
leadership, by allowing corrupt and immoral pastors, by simply
doing nothing, day after week after month after year, to move
your church out of dry dock, you blaspheme the very Gospel you
pretend to represent. Jesus Christ is not the god of the
do-nothing. Not the god of the bitter. Not the god of the
jealous. Not the god of cash-grabs. Not the god of back-room
adultery. Not the god of gossip. Of liars. Of haters.
Not the god of Those Who Stand Still or, worse, Those Who Face
Backward.
I challenge everyone reading this to learn your Bible. Read and
know your Bible. Then compare the actual practice of your
church, of your pastor, of your leadership, to the personal
example of Jesus Christ and the pastoral directives of James,
Paul and others. Believe it or not, there is, in fact, a
standard. If your church does not embody the qualities or follow
the guidelines of the Bible, you’ve got a decision to make. You
can keep turning your head because the choir sounds good and you
just had the air conditioning installed in the sanctuary.
Or you can be an actual Christian. It’s up to you.
Christopher J. Priest
17 June 2007
editor@praisenet.org
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