Is Your Church Really Just a Business?

The Church I attend now runs somewhere between 125-150 on Sunday Mornings. We have somewhere between 150-200 on Wed night. The difference being we hold a student ministry on Wed where we bus in students, feed them, and hold classes where the saving Grace of Jesus is taught. We expect no money from them (indeed we take no offering on Wed) and the Church membership cooks, serves, cleans-up, provides security, and teaches classes. Wed night is about sharing Jesus to the un-Churched and providing them with a meal. BTW we live in a very rural, economically backward area where poverty is pretty rampant. Several years ago, (before my time there) members of this church decided to build a large, open, almost barn like (concrete floor, plywood on the walls) structure, surrounded by classrooms and a large kitchen in order to accomplish this ministry. We hold our Sunday morning worship service in the "the barn" as well.They stepped out on faith and today the building is completely paid for.

Sunday mornings we do take an offering. Yes we give to the cooperative program of the SBC as well as select missions. Most of the rest goes to pay the Pastor's salary, electric bill and Wed night.

No business in the world works on this model.

 

1. The Definition of the Church

2. The Organization of the Church

3. The Name of the Church

4. The Government of the Church

 

In your link regarding the government of the church it says:
"There are only two commissioned officers in a New Testament Church, namely, pastor and deacon. The pastor is also known as bishop, and elder."

"When the church is looked at as a flock of sheep, the bishop is called pastor or feeder of the sheep.

The deacons are to be helpers to the pastor. Their official duties consist primarily, if not exclusively, of looking after temporal and material needs of the body, such as feeding the poor, financing the church, etc. The pastor is to be free from temporal and secular matters that he may give himself to that which is exclusively spiritual, prayer and the ministry of the word. He is to teach and, therefore, must give himself to study. He must be "apt to teach".

The writer is not correct regarding the roles. The author gives the role of elder to the deacon and narrows the pastor to study, prayer, and preaching.

The term "pastor" is latin for shepherd. Shepherd's care for sheep in more ways than preaching.

While your links are textbook definitions, they fall short of biblical order for the church.

 

"The church is a spiritual institution in a material world and has material needs and matters of business to look after. And so we may think of deacons as the business administrators of the church."

 

There were no "trustees" in scripture. Salty, you show us a business model, employed by many churches.

 

You may think that way. I do not think that way.

 

The main task of the church is to do that which nobody else can do, namely to preach the gospel of Christ to the uttermost part of the earth.

Since the OP is just a Hit-piece against churches being exempt from TAXES, I thought I'd describe what a true church is all about, i.e., THE BUSINESS OF THE LORD.



THE CHURCH HAS A FIVE-POINT PROGRAM.


1. The Missionary Program. The church is to perpetuate itself by making disciples. There can be no church perpetuity apart from missionary activity. Disciples can only be made by preaching the gospel. Without missionary endeavor churches are limited to a single generation. Disciples are to be made to the end of the age, and the making of disciples guarantees church perpetuity.


2. The Teaching Program. The church is to edify itself. This means the teaching of the Word of God, for it is teaching the disciples to observe all things commanded by Christ. No place for secular education either in the great commission or in the practice or the early church. The church is not responsible for the education of the world, but for the education of the saints in the Word of God.


3. The Ceremonial Program. The church is to guard the ordinances. The preservation of these ordinances in their original purity and simplicity will help to preserve the gospel in its purity. The perversion of the gospel had its beginning in the perversion of the ordinances. When men began to trifle with the ordinances the true gospel was perverted.


4. The Benevolent Program. The church is to care for its poor. The church at Jerusalem took steps to take care of its poor widows. Paul took offerings on the mission field for the poor saints at Jerusalem.


5. The Disciplinary Program. The church is to regulate itself. It is to keep itself pure and chaste by disciplinary measures. Christ gave the church the discipline commission in "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (#Mt 18:18). Paul commanded the church at Corinth to exclude the man guilty of incest. "But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person" (#1Co 5:13). He commanded the church at Thessalonica, "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us" (#2Th 3:6).


SOME THINGS THE CHURCH HAS NOT BEEN COMMISSIONED TO DO AND FOR WHICH THERE IS NO NEW TESTAMENT PRECEDENT.


1. It is not the duty of the church as such to reform the world. Christ and the apostles were not reformers in the modern sense of that term. The church is not a world betterment society, but a missionary society with regenerating power. This power is in the preaching of the gospel in power and demonstration of the Spirit.


2. It is not the duty of the church to feed the world. The church is not commanded to look after the material interests of the world. Of course, as individual Christians, we should do good to all men, and relieve suffering wherever we come in contact with it. But to enter into an organized capacity looking to the material welfare of the world is to become sidetracked. No Scriptural command nor example for taking part in indiscriminate relief campaigns, such as are being put on from time to time. Paul took up a collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem.


3. It is not the duty of the church to educate the world. Here is a task beyond the power of the church. To the extent that the church joins in secular education to the same extent she loses her spiritual power. Secular education is an individual and state matter and not a work committed into the hands of the church, which is a spiritual institution. Schools have crippled the missionary program of Baptists as no other one thing has.


4. It is not the duty of the church to furnish lucrative positions for men and women. That is what the Baptists are doing as a denomination. The army of executives and secretaries and statistical and enlistment experts supported by so-called mission money is alarming.


5. It is not the duty of the church to provide entertainment for the world. Much of our organized work is in that direction. The wife of the pastor of one of my previous pastorates was putting on a swimming party for the young people at Disneyland. She told them she could not do it at home, for the former pastor had taught them that it is wrong.


6. It is not the duty of the church as such to build hospitals. This is a by product of Christianity, and may be done by individuals in a purely voluntary capacity, but to make it the program of all the saints is to become sidetracked. This is a work that can be and is being done by men who are not Christians. But the main task of the church is to do that which nobody else can do, namely to preach the gospel of Christ to the uttermost part of the earth.

 

Here's the main task:
*Matthew 28:18-20*
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

 

We have clear roles in the early church. Should those roles be tossed aside as of now value?

 

THIS IS HOW WE HAVE OPERATED FOR SOME TIME, NOW. (sorry caps) We just lost a Deacon of 46 years.

Alan Gross

No reason to leave The Lord's Kind of Church, where I first heard it.

My current church home, Bryan Station Baptist Church, was founded in 1786 and still believes the same as it has through 40-something Presidents (Kentucky was not yet a state and John Handcock was President).

We are Missionary and have started several works throughout the states, including my first home church, and around the World.

• Churches Organized by Bryan Station

 

God can do great things, even if a church is run like a business. God is not confined by the systems we create. God even uses the unsaved to bring about glorious change. I have no reason to doubt God has used the church you have been in for so long.

 

So what are Primitive Baptists.

 

Romans 1:16, ". . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . ." Contrary to what some Primitive Baptists seem to believe.

 

Look closer… PB’s don’t pay a salary, don’t have staff for music, don’t educate at seminaries etc. it shows very little overhead and they don’t have missionaries. Very modest

 

Contrary indeed! May I ask you, what is the difference between conversion & regeneration?