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September 12, 2024 |
| The Church Business Plan | ||
Does God want his churches to be run like corporations with business plans? Many churches run them that way without much thought about what God wants.
This idea comes from the world we live in and it is entirely natural to think, "A church is a hierarchical organization like a corporation. Therefore, if that is a good way to run a corporation, it must be a good way to run a church."
Actually, a church is not a hierarchical organization. It is a flat organization where everyone reports to the king directly.
If you say your business plan is from God, I won't believe you. I know of too many cases where church leaders claimed the same but it was obviously false.
Anecdotally, I know a pastor who loved business plans. One year he even made the business plan the foundation for all the sermons he gave during that year. The year after we left that church, he again created a business plan. But, half way through the year he announced that he no longer believed in some of the doctrines of the denomination and that he would be leaving the church and the denomination. Was that in the business plan?
If you claim your business plan is from God, you are claiming that it is a prophecy and that you are a prophet. You may not have thought of it that way, but it is true.
If any of your business plan does not occur then God is a liar. Or you are a false prophet ... feel free to kill yourself without completing this document. If the congregation fails in any point of the plan then they have failed God. The other choice, which isn't much better, is that you are a liar and fraud.
If you say your business plan has been approved by God, show me where in the Bible God ever did such a thing.
What would be the value of saying God-approved business plan. God may have approved it because he knows it will be a disaster, but you will learn from that and do better next time.
The truth is that you are using God to rubber-stamp your ideas, plans, and goals.
It is a rare thing for God to tell his people what his goals are for them. God is much more of a "do this - don't ask" kind of God. He directs each person individually, step-by-step.
If we were to do an annual evaluation of the church, we could not, because we do not know what the goals were for the year. Can any man ever really evaluate the success of a church? What measure would you use?
If we are being obedient to God then we don't know his goals and can't measure the success. If we are making our own plan then we know the goals and can measure the success.
Perhaps it is God's will that a church should run for a while and then shut down. Running a church like a corporation would leave us dead-set against God's will.
The "going concern principle" is a fundamental accrual accounting principle that assumes a company will continue operating indefinitely for the foreseeable future. (WallstreetPrep.com)
Walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)