The Church Industrial Complex
“Don’t ever change” is something that people write in yearbooks but don’t remotely mean. Let’s be honest, does anyone think that being the same as you were in high school for the rest of your life is a good thing? The nature of living life is change and our world has gone through accelerated change over the last handful of years. I believe that the pandemic was a global disruption that, from the most positive perspective, God intended to reacquire his people’s attention, and in turn, their affection and obedience.
I pastor a traditional, evangelical, large-ish church in the United States. I’ve been brought up and trained in what author Dan White Jr. calls “the church industrial complex” in his book Church as Movement.[1] This is the West’s structure of church modeled after the military industrial complex made famous in President Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961.
To summarize, we do church and evaluate church the same as we see everything else with the same practical metrics and hierarchical structures. We tend to go back and forth with “Christianizing” the best business principles while pastors act as CEOs of local bodies of believers.
Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, once said, “In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”[2]
When the church is recreated in our image it no longer can accurately reflect God’s image. That doesn’t come from one who hates or has given up on local church. That’s coming from one who loves and cares about how we live out our calling as the Bride of Christ gathered together. All this to say that I have changed radically over the last decade and that change has only increased in the last three years. I believe that I, an American pastor, have been confronted with the Maranatha cry and that has compelled me to a deeper place of love and urgency for the church and her mission and a profound longing for the return of Jesus.
God has placed a desire on my heart to share my journey of discovery, surrender, repentance, and obedience as it relates to how I have lived out pastoring a church in the West. It’s not finished, not by a long shot. I haven’t figured it all out nor have I fixed everything that we know is wrong with our expression of being the church. I am actually a bit of a mess. But I am confident of this; I am more hopeful for and committed to living out the joy-filled, self-denying, cross-bearing, disciple-making, stage-setting calling that Jesus very seriously gave us when he was raised up to the highest place and is now eager to return to a bride adorned in splendor.
Even though I wouldn’t describe the church with the term “splendor” right now, I am decisively hopeful that we will be that church in splendor if we hear and obey what the Spirit is leading us back to and rebuilding on the foundations that were set on Jesus as the Christ. This hope is held in tension for me, and I regularly feel like a Jekyll/Hyde personification. One day I am all in, calling people to follow me into the places where the Spirit leads and the next day I just want to opt out and fade into the background because obedience is just to agonizing and unappreciated by those around me. I don’t speak for all pastors, but I think that most pastors struggle with this tension whether they are willing to admit it or not.
Surrender First, Then Revelation
Part of my discovery over the last few years is that while there are some great things about our church structure, there are also some things that have resulted in drawing us far from the heart of Jesus. The biggest thing for me, as a pastor, is that the structure we have is designed to keep me employed. That’s a scary statement for me to be making.
About 500 years ago, the church went through the Protestant Reformation. This was a necessary reformation of what the church believed. What didn’t really change in the Reformation was the structure of the church. We still have an ecclesiology that more closely resembles a Roman Catholic structure rather than an early church structure. This has led me over the course of the last three years to believe that we (or at least I) need a reformation of ecclesiology – how the church is structured and my role as a pastor in it.
The church is a family and it is a priesthood. That characterization is more important than the hierarchical structures that we have focused on so intently. The result of that misalignment is an unrealistic expectation of how we function as the Body of Christ. It’s interesting to me that in my years of ministry, I’ve not seen a pastoral resume that begins with how the candidate has chosen what is better in life and sat at the feet of Jesus. Everything I’ve seen is a list of education and accomplishments and the intimacy with Jesus is usually a few bullet points about spiritual practices. Maybe it is out there, but I’ve never come across a job listing for a church staffing position that prioritizes above all that this person must have a depth of intimacy with Jesus that far exceeds his or her education and experience in ministry. How many pastors lead communities of Jesus followers more from their talent than from their intimacy?
But I digress and that’s a discussion for a later time. Here’s what I discovered and what made me really sad; my functioning as a pastor leading a church has gotten in the way of my participation in the personal and intimate calling to know Jesus and make disciples who are prepared and ready for the appearing of Jesus. And it’s easy to justify because I am teaching and leading others to make disciples of those who are far from Jesus and make sure our church is successful – usually defined by bodies and dollars. We pastors don’t like to admit it, but I often feel like I’m too busy running a business to be about the business of my Father.
This might sound discouraging, but realization, even when uncomfortable, gives us the opportunity to grow and align with Jesus. The keys are surrender and repentance followed by obedience. Recently I heard it said that revelation is the reward for surrender. It’s the idea that God wants to reveal more than we even ask for but in order to receive we must be in a posture of surrender. I don’t believe that God has revealed anything to me that isn’t spelled out in his Word. It’s nothing new. But leading and living in the church industrial complex has resulted in me forgetting or missing some foundational things that Jesus expects from his church.
I really don’t know where this will take me. Maybe I’ll be a better pastor, or maybe I won’t be welcome as a pastor anymore. What I do know is this; if what God is revealing in these later days is not taken seriously and obeyed, there will be consequences. We’ve already seen some of those consequences in how the people of God responded and behaved toward each other and toward those who need to see Jesus in us during the pandemic. The pandemic wasn’t actually about a virus. I believe it was about the mercy of God to remind his church that we have been given an explicit mission and we have not taken that as seriously as we should.
So, for me, it is in this shower of God’s mercy that I am ready to confess some things that I’ve lived out that don’t belong in the family of God and replace those things with what does belong. This might just be me but judging from the state of the brokenness I see and experience in the church I don’t think it is. So, where did this journey begin for me? It began with humility.
To be continued…
Maranatha.
Matthew has been pastoring in one form or another from the Midwest to Central California for 20 years. He and his wife are in the parenting adult children season of life. Over the last few years, Matthew has been awakened by the Maranatha Cry and now carries with him a deep conviction to ready the church for the return of Jesus, calling the church to intimacy with Jesus and obedience by making disciples.
[1] Woodward, JR. White, Jr., Dan. The Church as Movement. Intervarsity Press: Downer’s Grove, IL. 2016.
[2] Popik, Barry. “Barry Popik.” The Big Apple, www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/when_christianity_came_to_america_it_became_a_business. Accessed 9 Aug. 2023.
