House of Bread

Bankruptcy at the Crystal Cathedral October 19, 2010

Bloomburg News reported yesterday that Crystal Cathedral Ministries, once known as Garden Grove Community Church, has filed for bankruptcy:

Crystal Cathedral Ministries, the Southern California megachurch founded by television evangelist Robert Schuller, filed for bankruptcy court protection from its creditors, which are owed as much as $100 million.

The church, known for its television show “The Hour of Power,” listed assets and debts of $50 million to $100 million each in Chapter 11 documents filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, California. The church, based in Garden Grove, claims a congregation of 10,000 members

Schuller, who started the church in 1955, is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America, a fact not widely known. While never denying it, Schuller doesn’t publicize it either. Denominational affiliation was never a key ingredient in Schuller’s vision and his success in building a megachurch would surely confirm its irrelevance.

Schuller was always larger than life. His vision, personality, drive and leadership abilities were critical to the growth of his ministry, in particular The Hour of Power television program. Like many successful entrepreneurial pastors Schuller turned his church into a family business. All of his five children, and their spouses, have been staff members of the ministry. Schuller groomed his son Robert to succeed him as senior pastor in 2006. It was a relatively short-lived experiment. The son was unable to fill his father’s large shoes and was removed in 2008. Keeping it in the family, Schuller then appointed his daughter, Sheila Schuller Coleman, as senior pastor earlier this year.

It’s hard to know whether the passing of the pastoral mantle from father to son, and then to daughter, had anything to do with a dramatic fall-off in income to the ministry. In any event, the current recession would have aggravated other causal factors:

Crystal Cathedral spokesman John Charles said in an interview the church’s revenue has fallen about 40 percent this year. From 2008 to 2009 revenue fell from about $30 million to about $22 million, he said.

Can’t say this for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if $22 million is more than the entire budget of the Reformed Church in America’s denominational offices and various divisions.

Handing off the leadership of a ministry from its founding pastor/leader to a successor is one of the biggest challenges facing churches/ministries whose life and vision are owned or dominated so completely by one person or family.

As I read the New Testament, this does not seem to be a problem Paul and his apostolic colleagues ever encountered. The reason is simple: they built their churches on the foundation of Christ, not on their own personalities or vision.

Once again…clergy burnout makes the front page August 2, 2010

Every few years a major newspaper runs an article on clergy burnout. Today, it is The New York Times – “A Break from Work is Healthy (Even if It’s the Lord’s Work).”

For those of us who have read these articles before — and especially because we have served as clergy and know something about this from first-hand experience — there is little new to be learned: Clergy feel deeply called to their vocation; it is a high-stress profession; the pastoral needs of a typical congregation are never-ending; clergy feel they must be available 24/7; clergy don’t take sufficient time off; clergy don’t take all the vacation allotted to them; clergy marriages and families feel the pain; and clergy “suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans.” The list goes on.

In response, denominational and diocesan officials have begun a variety of “health initiatives” to help clergy make smarter decisions about taking care of themselves. Thus, officials are encouraging spiritual retreats, regular days off, full use of vacation time and sabbaticals.

Absent from this and other similar articles, however, are any suggestions that the fundamental problem lies embedded in our concepts of ministry and the role of leadership, and in our understanding of the body of Christ.

There is a long history of incremental steps that have brought churches to their current understanding and practice of ordained ministry and leadership. All, of course, claim support from the Bible. Despite the fact that these understandings may be flawed, they are not likely to be reconsidered any time soon. The ordained clergy themselves are the primary reason. Upton Sinclair summarized the problem succinctly: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

What most ordained clergy refuse to understand is that the clearest biblical role associated with their vocation is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” But because of their training, the salary attached to their work and the expectations of ordained ministry among most Christians, clergy almost always feel an inescapable imperative to actually do as much of the ministry as the hours and days in a week will permit. Generations of believers have therefore been trained to expect clergy to do nearly all of the really important “ministry” within the congregation. Is this not what they feel called to do? Is this not what we pay them for? Is this not why they went to seminary? We are, after all, just laity and isn’t it our job as laity to support the clergy while they do “the work of ministry”?

These assumptions, which are rarely spoken, are the practical foundation of most churches. They are not necessarily the theological foundation, which is often presented in loftier terms, but these assumptions really shape how it all works out.

At least two things result from this: First, the clergy inevitably suffer burnout. No surprise there, given congregational needs and expectations and the commitment of  most clergy to meet those expectations and needs.

Second, the body of Christ is ill-equipped to function as the body of Christ in the most important way scripture defines – that it “builds itself up in love.” Clergy often act as if it is their responsibility to build up the body of Christ in love. Biblically, of course, it is the body that builds up the body with the equipping provided by its leaders. Many congregations have no chance to do this because instead of equipping them to do it, clergy are busy doing it themselves.

Until clergy undergo a fundamental paradigm shift in their understanding of their role and truly begin to equip (and empower) the body of Christ – their local congregation – to do the work of ministry, they will continue to flirt with burnout.

I am not suggesting this transition will be easy. There is an enormous weight of history behind the prevailing models. But these traditional models are flawed and they are failing. There is hope in the failure that something better – more biblical – will rise to take its place.

Functioning v. leadership training May 4, 2010

An old friend recently sent me the link to an article in Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal, “The Dirt on Organic.” The author, Brian Hofmeister, wrote of his experiences in starting and nurturing a small network of home-based organic churches. Only one of the three house churches survived (based on my reading that’s about average), but  with less vision and vitality than at the beginning. As for the problems, Hofmeister identified an insufficient number of leaders as the principle culprit. There were too many immature new believers to be trained and too few mature believers willing to do the work. And most of those who were capable eventually moved into “passive observation.” Which led Hofmeister to advocate the necessity of paid leadership for a church body of 30 to 40 members:

I estimate that a solid leader who is running outreach, discipleship, and leadership development the organic way is going to need 15 to 20 hours per week for a church of 30 to 40 people. That’s assuming there is another leader putting 25 to 40 weekly hours into training and networking.

First, I’ll acknowledge that I know nothing more about Hofmeister’s situation or experience than what he has shared in the article. And second, I’ll admit that this ignorance could make what I now write nothing more than hot air. But I’ll take the chance.

It seems to me that Hofmeister brought an institutional church mentality into an organic church setting. Not surprisingly, the result was the failure of the organic and the need to move to institutional models of leadership. Here’s where I think Hofmeister went astray: he misunderstood the role of leadership in an organic setting. Biblically, that role is clear — to equip the saints so that they (not their leaders) are able to build the body of Christ in love. It appears to me that Hofmeister saw his role as in-house professor of systematic theology, hermeneutics and  Bible survey. These are good things if the goal is well-educated church members. But what this approach will fail to accomplish is to equip the saints to function as the body of Christ when they are together.

What most believers are neither taught nor equipped to do is to function as gifted members of the body of Christ. The reason is that paid professional leaders do almost all the functioning when the body gathers for its most important time each week — the weekend worship service.  The primitive Pauline model of Christian community envisioned regular gatherings  of the body where every member contributed by means of a song, a teaching, a revelation or whatever spiritual gift God had given. Paul never called these gatherings “worship services” and he never taught that they should be planned and led by professionals set apart to do so. Neither should they be used as classrooms. Paul knew that if  these things happened, it would be the end of body ministry and most members of the church would become passive observers.

To keep this from happening individual members of the body must be equipped to function according to their giftedness and in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit every time the body of Christ gathers. This equipping of the saints is not the same thing as our modern understanding of leadership training.

Contemporary institutional or traditional churches are big on leadership training. Why? Because the programs of such churches require an unending parade of leaders — members to lead the Sunday School, to run the nursery, to organize and schedule ushers, to chair committees, to oversee the sound system, to plan and organize the dinners, to lead the stewardship campaign this year — everything imaginable except equipping the body for building itself up in love.

It seems to me that it was this mindset that Brian Hofmeister brought into an organic church setting. He saw an immature body of believers, could not find enough leaders to address all the things he thought was important, and concluded that the only solution was part- or full-time paid leadership. The better approach would have been to patiently and painstakingly equip these immature believers to function out of the gifts Christ had given them. It really isn’t about leadership training; it’s about being equipped to function as a member of the body.

But I could be wrong.

From house to institution April 18, 2010

The sentence really woke me up. I was lazily reading Nicholas Kristof’s column in today’s  New York Times — “A Church Mary Can Love” — when I came across this startling paragraph:

Yet over the ensuing centuries, the church reverted to strong patriarchal attitudes, while also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with sexuality. The shift may have come with the move from house churches, where women were naturally accepted, to more public gatherings. [emphasis mine]

In his column, which you can read here, Kristof highlighted a couple of New Testament texts hinting at women in leadership roles in the churches associated with Paul. He also refers to a couple of post-apostolic, gnostic texts that affirm the important contributions of women. And he writes of what is taking place in the trenches, far away from the Vatican, where nuns stand shoulder-to-shoulder with priests in doing the redemptive ministries that touch the lives of the diseased and dispossessed.

But it was his recognition of what likely took place in the move from the home to the public building that really caught my attention.

When churches met in homes, it would indeed have been nearly impossible to marginalize women. The list of people Paul calls to mind in Romans 16 includes as many women as men. And it is in this list we find the intriguing reference to Junia, whom Paul identifies as an apostle.

There are several references in the Acts and the letters of Paul to Priscilla and Aquila, a couple who not only hosted the church in their home, but resourced itinerant evangelists like Apollos. Priscilla is always mentioned first. Is this an indication that her leadership or ministry eclipsed that of her husband? I’m persuaded.

More Christians met in homes than anywhere else for several centuries. The move away from the home coincided with the rise of clerical orders. By the time of Constantine, the movement known originally as “The Way” had become Christendom, and house churches ceased to exist. The transition from home to institution strengthened the clergy, crippled body life, and marginalized women.

In many denominations nowadays, women are the clergy. But the body of Christ still struggles to function regardless of whether men or women are the ordained leaders.

A denominationally-ordained friend recently asked me if house churches are the future. I replied that they are part of the future.

Those believers who are weary of allowing clergy to do all the functioning will find the house church attractive. They will also find the transition from institution to home is not as easy as they imagined. Old habits die hard.

Giving up the salary January 11, 2010

For almost 30 years I was an ordained minister of a mainline denomination. For the first twenty of those years, I served as a pastor of two different congregations — ministry for which I received  a salary.

For the next eight years I was the executive director of the mission agency of the denomination, and I received a salary for this as well.

Following this, I re-entered pastoral ministry, serving for about one year as the pastor of a small mostly independent congregation not far from where I lived. I received a salary for this work until the church ran out of money and I was forced to seek other employment.

That was over five years ago. During that time I have worked for two employers at different times and done some consulting work on the side. Somehow, my wife (who is also employed) and I have paid the bills, avoided debt, helped a daughter pay for a wedding, loaned money to our children, and generously supported mission causes at home and abroad. We have also received many, sometimes large, unexpected gifts from family and from friends who remembered and appreciated our ministry. To say that the Lord has taken care of us hardly says enough.

But on the day I received my last salary check as a pastor in 2004, I did not have the faith to anticipate any of that. I will never forget the feeling of looking into an unknown future, knowing that I would probably never again serve a local congregation as pastor and receive a salary for it.

Ministry was my profession. From the time I left college in 1971 it was all I had ever done, the only way I had  ever supported my family. Though I had a B.A. in political science, I had no real qualifications or experience to do anything but be a pastor or mission executive.

But as my wife and I embraced and pursued a home-based model of church — simple church, house church, organic church — I had nothing but uncertainty about what in the world I would do for a living.

My hunch is that there may be quite a number of salaried pastors who are thinking about organic church and asking themselves the same question. “What in the world could I do for a living when being a pastor is all I’ve ever known?”

I also have a hunch that the absence of an answer keeps no small number of pastors right where they are, doing ministry in the time-honored and traditional way where they are mostly unable to equip the saints for real ministry and let the church be the church — when what their heart longs for is the simplicity, beauty and power of doing church organically.

To any pastor in this bind, I would say these things:

First, the Lord is well aware of your situation and is as willing to take care of you outside paid ministry as he was inside paid ministry. God does not favor the clergy with his provision. God cares about all those who belong to him.

Second, you have skills and abilities, either innate or learned, that helped you succeed as a pastor that can be plied in the marketplace. Former pastors are doing all kinds of things — teaching in public and private schools, doing financial advising, selling real estate, playing the organ and directing church choirs, working as stock brokers, and driving a bus. Since leaving the pastorate, I have been a bookkeeper, office manager, and controller of two small businesses. I have also delivered free publications. And I have done side work as a consultant, writing reports for a telecommunications company.

Third, there are Christians who will appreciate the step you’ve taken and come alongside you to help. My first employer outside the pastorate is such a person. We’d known each other for a few years and I’d done some light work  for him. When I left the pastorate he almost immediately offered me part-time work. That quickly grew to full-time work. Recognizing my abilities, he paid me more than he’d paid any previous employee, even for the same work. He gave me all the hours I needed to make a decent living. Several years after I left his employ, another friend asked me to help with contract work for the telecom company she was working for. I was working full-time for my current employer but was  able to take the telecom contract work as a side job as long as it lasted. When the economy went into the toilet, I was cut back to part-time and qualified for unemployment compensation. It isn’t fun being in this situation, but I still experience God’s provision.

Lastly, you will find great satisfaction in being a “tent-maker” who discovers a whole new mission field in the businesses, large and small, where most of those who do not know Jesus and might never grace the door of  a church spend eight or more hours a day. I went to work for someone who almost did not  hire me because of certain biblical convictions he questioned me about. He has still not become a disciple of Jesus. But I can humbly say that he has seen the fruit of  such a life in me and he trusts me with the finances of his company.

If you are a pastor wrestling with a desire to do church organically rather than organizationally, but who can’t imagine how to make a living outside pastoral ministry, be of good cheer. A grace-filled adventure is awaiting you.