Jesus Unveiled is a relatively new book (2019) by Keith Giles. Filled with down to earth advice and practical guidelines for doing organic church together, it’s a book I would highly recommend. Below is an excerpt from the book about “What The Church Isn’t”.
As we’ve seen, the New Testament uses several words and metaphors to express the character, function, and personality of the Church. Namely, the Church is a Body, a Bride, a Temple, and a Family.
Now that we’ve spent time exploring what the Church is, let’s take a hard look at what the Church isn’t. The New Testament doesn’t ever refer to the Church as an organization, as if it were a corporation or an industry. Instead, the Church is referred to as an organism. Therefore, according to the Apostles, and to Jesus, the Church that God designed is not intended to be thought of, or to be treated, like a business.
The Church that God always wanted is a family. This means that pastors are not synonymous with CEOs. It also means that the people in the Church are not to be thought of, or treated, as employees, commodities, tithing units, or assets. Instead, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and should be treated as such-with love and respect.This is about more than mere semantics. What you believe about something, how you talk about it, how you think of it, actually affects your behavior towards it or concerning it. So, I have found that, if you think of the Church as a business you will begin to expect certain things from it that you wouldn’t expect from a family, and vice versa.
For example, no one expects the family to grow in size each quarter or post an annual profit. Families don’t work that way, but corporations do. A father would not treat his daughter like an employee. Nor would he base his relationship on how much revenue she contributed to the family. Corporations may act that way, but families do not.
For a long time now, especially in the West, the Church has turned her gaze to the world of big business. She has based Her identity on a corporation rather than the organic, family-based, relational design laid out for us in Scripture.
Scripture makes it clear to us that the Church is an organism; a living Body made up of living parts which function best when they are interconnected. God’s design for His Church is relational.
“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)
A family is a social unit made up of people who share a common ancestor and engage in shared activities and beliefs. The family is grounded in love and it takes strength from the quality of the relationships developed over time.
Healthy families love each other in spite of difficulty, or hurt feelings. Families forgive and share.
Families pull together in a conflict. Families support one another and encourage one another. But when a family is run like a business it is impossible to maintain any of these foundational values of love, loyalty, sharing, forgiveness and protection.
A business is grounded in a completely different set of values. A business is a collection of talented people recruited to advance the interests of the company, build recurring revenue streams and add value to the business.
Whenever an employee becomes unproductive he is eliminated.
Whenever a more talented employee is recruited, others are down-sized or let go. A business is ultimately about making money and growing larger. A business is mostly concerned with gaining market share and outperforming the competition.So, if we treat the House of God like a business we will suddenly find ourselves engaging in activities that serve to grow the business and eliminate the competition.
Ideas such as love and family and service and community may become phrases used as metaphors to describe the activities of our business. They will not be expressed or embodied, in any real way, by those within our organization.
A business is concerned with growth, not with how happy, or healthy the employees may be. A business is concerned with numbers, finances and outward signs of success, it is not concerned with forgiveness, community or love.
The people who make up a family are called brothers and sisters. They are treated with love and respect. They are all valued for who they are as people, not for what they can do to improve the bottom line.
The people who make up a business are called employees. They are treated as assets which the company may exploit for financial gain. Employees are regarded as individual components which contribute to the overall success of the business. They are valued for what they can add to the company, not for who they are as people.
The Church, as Jesus designed it, is relational and organic. According to the New Testament, God’s plan was for His people to operate like a family, where He is our Father. He created a church that operates like an organism where He is our head, not like a business where we set up certain people as CEO’s and treat people as employees.
Clearly, the New Testament reveals that the Church is a family, an organism and a Bride. It is never referred to as a business venture.
As we’ve seen over and over again, the mission of the Messiah was to build a suitable temple for God to dwell in. Jesus alone is the one who is qualified to build the temple of God, and we are that temple. We are a spiritual house of living stones “not made with human hands” but by the nail-scarred hands of God’s only son.
Put another way, the only true temple of God is the one that is being built by Jesus, not one built by any man, pastor, teacher or leader.
Blessings and don’t forget to subscribe below.