Ian Mobsey identifies an addition to Avery Dulles typology of the Church. I think he's right: "the unspoken model that seems to have seeped in with little questioning due to the financial pressures of the modern world - is the model of 'Church as business'. What has increasingly astounded me, is that there is so little written about this model, which has been absorbed by many churches, particularly those that are large."
This is spot on. And one of the cultural drivers I would hypothesise is church leadership in many churches, particularly the New Churches, which is drawn from the business community and from managerial backgrounds heavily influenced by the MBA culture.
What I'm less convinced by, on reflection, is Ian's next sentence: "Clearly this model is not based on the significance of Christ, but purely on business cultural import." I would say that the model of God as investor in the parable of the talents or of God as owner implied in the parable of the unjust steward or the Pauline idea in 1Cor3 of us as fellow-workers with God (particularly in that chapter where the other metaphors are patent of 'enterprising' interpretations). And indeed the idea of an organisation as an enterprise can enable a reading back into 'church' language of more business friendly ideas. There's probably more, but I'm just thinking outloud at the moment.
The thing to remember is that metaphors and models tend to pick out of the datastream particular features while neglecting others. The art of theologically reflective leadership is to become aware of the positives and negatives of the models and metaphors and to use them appropriately. Church as business enterprise can help us to aim at excellence, a service/mission mentality/focus, professionalism, wise stewardship of resources, risk/enterprise and good administration. On the other hand it can make a church self-satisfied, self-absorbed and self-justificatory by ostensible 'success'. It can make churches instrumental with people. It can also mean that good and important things that God is doing or wants doing are missed because they don't fit well with the success criteria currently employed by the church.
We should recall too that money can be a form of communication; we need to learn to hear it's language aright...
Hyper-reality: Ian Mobsby musings: The new unspoken model of church: church as business:
11 December 2007
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2 comments:
Hi hear what you are saying - but I do think you miss my point. Church as enterprise can transform the body of christ into a form of community that is not an alternative community as understood by the word ekklesia. I am troubled by the focus on economic value which immediately excludes the poor and elderly. Such forms of church assume capitalism as a norm, which we know can profoundly dehumanise. I find many church as business to be somewhat syncretetic to the teaches of Christ - we are called to be in but not of a buisness world.
Money as a form of communication? Money as an exchange of financial worth will never be able to communicate real humanity - rather, at the extreme - a humanity defined by the market place or consumption. Why does the church never really critique capitalism?
It's true I didn't engage with the central thesis about the distorting effects. I was interested in an exercise of not throwing baby out with bathwater. My post, towards the end, actually does mention things that are congruent with your critique, though. I think we need to be careful in our critique of capitalism (and if you search on the word on this blog you'll find plenty of it) so that we don't end up merely leaving room for tired old collectivisms that have tended to support tyranny and effectively become state monopolistic systems.
I entirely agree with your issues around financial worth. However, we should be aware that money sends signals and can also be analysed in communication terms (and yes some of the messages are 'you are nearly worthless', which is a terrible message to convey to those made in God's image). In addition we should recall that there are different systems of money possible and that each has a set of biases, just like language and culture. It so happens we have been using a system that rewards capital. But we can choose not to be dominated by our monetary systems and to make them serve human and planetary welfare.
At present the system communicates well the needs and desires of capital and certain powerful shareholders, we need to find ways to allow the less powerful to speak financially in order to help the principalities of this world serve human welfare more fully.
No system can ever communicate real humanity, but it can be more transparent to it.
I hear your concern that being too positive about certain features of capitalism may be co-optable by the deadening forces of this present darkness. But I think we need to be able to offer hope to those who will have to be involved in markets for livelihoods. To say enterprise is evil and to refuse to allow the church to have a go at modelling it well would be irresponsible, in my view.
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