Friday, December 10, 2010

Are Churches Serving or Self-Serving?

There's a great conversation taking place over on the Facebook page about the proliferation of churches positioning themselves as businesses and their pastors as CEOs, In the process, business gets done, but often the work of Christ doesn't and it's a shame. The gist of the discussion seems to include a concensus that the best way to overcome this is for individuals to ask how they can make a difference, and that of course, IS the church. Too often, however, people with gifts and talents who want to serve don't get a chance.
Here are some observations I posted. Do you see these things in your church?

Churches stop people who really want to serve and reach out with reasons like:
1) They always do it this way
2) Myrtle is the one who does that
3) We're using our funds for something trendy
4) Other churches are successful ...by doing something else and we want to do that instead
5) You're a woman
6) They don't see a need
7) They don't want to lose control of something
8) The person in charge shouldn't be, but is, and doesn't know how to do it, help you do it or let you do it
9) They need 400 committee meetings and no one offended in any way before ministry can happen
10) A hundred other reasons that keep the business of the church going, but the work of Christ stalled.

Don't get me wrong. There are many wonderful church bodies doing wonderful things, and many wonderful pastors trying to light a fire under church members who need to be more aware of needs in their community. But there also are a growing number of big, "cool" church mega corporations with their cool, fame-seeking pastors who are more concerned with image and numbers than with spreading the word and love of Christ and that makes me sad.
--Lauren Yarger

2 comments:

Dave said...

Well said. I wonder when Western seminaries started training CEO's instead of scholars? Like everything else in the U.S. (education, for example) we try to function in a business model, and it simply doesn't work.

P. M. Pathrose said...

I think this piece of cake belongs to those with vested interests who try to put the Christian churches in a bad light as they always had done. Before arriving on theories, please consider spending some time to learn about the scenario in other countries like India where the church (Roman Catholic being the largest) is the chief promoter of performing and other kind of art-forms.

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Lauren Yarger, Bio

Lauren Yarger has written, directed and produced numerous shows and special events for both secular and Christian audiences. She co-wrote a Christian musical version of “A Christmas Carol” which played to sold-out audiences of over 3,000 in Vermont and was awarded the 2000 Vermont Bessie (theater and film awards) for “People’s Choice for Theatre.” She also has written two other dinner theaters, sketches for church services and devotions for Christian artists.

Yarger trained for three years in the Broadway League’s Producer Development Program, completed the Commercial Theater Institute's Producing Three-Day Training and produced a one-woman musical about Mary Magdalene that toured nationally and closed with an off-Broadway run.

In 2008 she was a Fellow at the National Critics Institute at the O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. She writes reviews of Broadway and off-Broadway theater with a Christian perspective for Reflections in the Light (http://reflectionsinthelight.blogspot.com/) and is editor of The Connecticut Arts Connection. She also is a contributing editor for BroadwayWorld.com

She also reviews books for Publisher's Weekly and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She formerly was Connecticut theater editor for CurtainUp, a national theater web site bsed in New York and a reviewer for American Theater Web.

She also served as Executive Director of Masterwork Productions, Inc. and worked in arts management for the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

She is a freelance writer and member of the Drama Desk, The Outer Critics Circle, The American Theater Critics Association, The League of Professional Theatre Women and The CT Critics Circle.

A former newspaper editor and graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, Yarger lives with her husband in West Granby, CT and has two adult children.

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All contents copyright © Lauren Yarger 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, contact masterworkproductions@yahoo.com.

Scripture from THE MESSAGE Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

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