Is it possible that some churches try too hard?
It was pride that turned angels into demons.
You don’t have to look into the Apocrypha to find this. The apostle Paul alerts us to it when he counsels against making recent converts too quickly into church leaders. They ‘may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil’ (1 Timothy 3.6).
We should all want our churches to be successful. The proper motives for this are, of course, love for the lost, the well-being of the Lord’s people and the glory of God. But pride can sneak in and turn that right goal into an idol – something which actually serves us and our reputations, rather than the Lord Jesus Christ.
Right aims/wrong motives
How can we know if we are slipping into this? It needs careful thought because, on the surface at least, the aims of those who are in the grip of this idol look absolutely right. We should all want to see churches growing in numbers as people get saved. We should want to see churches causing a stir and interest in the community. Continually running evangelistic courses for enquirers is marvellous. Large prayer meetings packed with people eager to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are a thrill and encouraging people to be there is brilliant.
But all these things and more can be going on for all the wrong reasons. Pride can turn good into bad. It can be all about a church that is desperate to be successful and be seen to be so. We live in a success/celebrity culture and evangelicalism is awash with it too.
Ten symptoms
The church at Laodicea thought itself ‘rich’ but did not realize it was ‘wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked’ (Revelation 3.17). What are the symptoms of being in the grip of the ‘idol of the successful church’? Here are some suggestions.
1. Quantity over quality
The church becomes more concerned about numbers attending than the care of the people. You find that a lot of fuss is made of new folk turning up (nothing wrong with that) but once they are on the membership roll that care drops off. Paul implies in 1 Corinthians 13 that you can have a church as big as you like, but without love it is a total zero in God’s sight. (Small churches should be encouraged that vice versa is true too!) Also perhaps we are a bit too comfortable about the church growing by transfers rather than conversions.
2. Image over substance
A church in the grip of the idol of success wants to appeal to outsiders. It needs to look good. It tends to prioritise being shiny and slick. What a church service looks like and feels like is all important for the leadership and the members. Music, lights, visuals, script – action! It can be more like a TV studio than a house of prayer. The outside matters more than the inside, the image more than the heart. We are led to become kind of modern-day Pharisees without even realising it (Matthew 23.25, 26). For this world, image is everything and the church drinks it in.
3. In with the in-crowd
A wise pastor said to me recently that he was concerned that some churches seem now to promote a ‘brand’ rather than the gospel. With our glossy Bible-study courses, video presentations, celebrity preachers, demographically-targeted church plants, approved publishers and conferences we have bought into (often literally) something which is more about a certain Christian peer group’s approval than God’s approval. This brings an unspoken conformity. I was alarmed over Christmas at how many churches were all using the same video presentation. It felt as if leaders had grabbed something ‘off the shelf’ rather than knowing the Holy Spirit’s leading.
4. Finance rules
Francis Chan is an American pastor who stepped away from a mega-church of 6,000 people which had grown around his preaching. It felt too comfortable and too unlike the churches of the NT for his conscience. He now promotes small house churches where every member’s gifts are used (1 Corinthians 12.7). Such churches can run on a shoestring – unlike the ‘successful church’ which so many idolise. Did NT churches really have large numbers of paid staff? Chan says: ‘If you look at how much we spend as the evangelical church in America, and how many people got baptised last year, it cost on average $1.5m per baptism.’1 If that is true, it is awful. I don’t know what the equivalent figures are for the UK, but it would be worth finding out.
5. Driven rather than deep
A pastor who is in the grip of the idol of the successful church will be a driven man rather than a deep man. He will be someone who is seeking energy and satisfaction from the attention he gets, or hopes to get, from others rather than from the Lord.
I do wonder whether, if all the time that men spend on reading the ‘in-crowd’ books and blogs was spent instead in quiet meditation seeking God, we might actually see a seismic change in our pulpits. Congregations would be aware that they are hearing the preaching of someone with a true depth of relationship with God.
6. Young over the elderly
Targeting young people is often defended in terms of raising up the church of the future. Yes – that makes sense. But it can become an excuse for neglect of the less than ‘hipster’ work of seeking the salvation of those near the end of life.
I fear that many churches thirst for students in a way they don’t thirst for God himself.
7. CEOs not shepherds
My reading of the NT is that, although elders have responsibility before God for everything in the church, their primary concern is to be shepherds of God’s flock (1 Peter 5.2). The diaconate emerges in a larger church in order to relieve the elders so that they will not be distracted from caring for people, from prayer and from ministering God’s word in various ways. But in the church which is jealous for ‘success’ it often seems that elders have ‘bigger fish to fry’ than visiting the flock and getting alongside people.
8. Gathering rather than giving
Because the vision of ‘successful church’ corresponds with being large, it means that those in the grip of the idol of success tend to be very loath to encourage their members to get involved in small churches which need help. They want to hold on to their numbers. Though this is often the case, I was delighted recently to come across the opposite! A nearby church which God has prospered has given two of their elders to help a little church in a village in Kent. Hallelujah! It was like a breath of fresh air to come across this. I believe that large churches that give will stay large and lively. They have learned the lesson of the kingdom from the Lord Jesus: ‘Freely you have received, freely give.’
9. One-dimensional exposition
Because there is such an emphasis on making the church grow, the sermons are often slanted in that direction. Applications constantly seem to land somewhere around John 3.16 or to boil down to exhortations to pray more and evangelise more. Of course these are valid things to say, but there is a lot more in the Bible than that. The Bible is opened, but often opened superficially. We end on the horizontal rather than a vision of God directing our eyes upward in worship. Believers can be left challenged but spiritually hungry.
10. Everything upbeat
The apostle Paul does tell us to ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ and we should. But there can be an emphasis on being positive and upbeat which leaves no room for admitting when things have gone wrong or weeping with those who weep.
If we are not careful we become churches that try too hard. There is little sense of rest and simply enjoying the Lord and inviting friends, not because we are driven to it, but because what we have found in him is so good. ‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols.’
1. See interview with Francis Chan in Christianity magazine, February 2019.
