Productive Church

Sometimes I wonder if the church feels like it has to have a product to market. What I mean is this, do we feel like if we are going to get people to come to church we have to have something that will attract them? What got me to thinking about this is the amount of pastors and staff that is expected to “produce” numbers. And so under the pressure of producing numbers, how many try to market a product?

The Bible tells us that there is nothing attractive about Jesus (Isaiah 53:2). I mean think about it for a minute, why would someone be attracted to a Man who call us to crucify ourselves, live for others and live a radical life of sacrifice? There is nothing attractive about that. If anything the Bible teaches us that the world will push back against Christianity.

But we have to produce people in church if we are going to be successful by the world’s standards. So what we do is one of two things, we either compromise the truth of Jesus and water it down to make Him look like a magician who will give us whatever we want if we just speak the right words (now that will produce numbers!) or we scare people into thinking that we have what they need and so they should come to church so satisfy an angry God. Either way we are marketing something.

So we get in this quandary in our church, Jesus in not attractive to the world, but we need people in the church, so to get people in the church we need a product to market, we can either market a wrong theology that makes Jesus more palatable, or we can market “salvation”. Either way is wrong.

Jesus said very clearly in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” WOW! Here is a new church growth strategy, what would happen if we let Jesus draw the people? I think what would happen is God would have His way with the church. But see this takes trust, what if Jesus only calls 20 or 10 or 5 to that church, what if that is what Jesus has in store for that church? Are we willing to accept that?

Jesus defined success in the Kingdom of God as one sinner who repents. There are not number limitations, there is no need for catchy campaigns to get more people to come, all we need is to trust Jesus, do what He called us to do and let Him grow the church.