HOW CHURCHESBECAMECRUISE SHIPSA survival guide for the seasick Christian.

2015 © Skye Jethani

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome Aboard 3

Chapter 1: From Vehicles to Destinations 6

Chapter 2: From Reverence to Relevance 12

Chapter 3: From Nimble to Fragile 17

Chapter 4: From Blessings to Burdens 25

Conclusion 33

Subscribe to With God Daily 35

More From Skye 36

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WELCOME ABOARD!

I have a love-hate relationship with the sea. I love the power of the ocean and the beauty of being out on the waves; it provokes awe, and makes me dream about the infinite possibilities that exist over the horizon. Unfor-tunately, since childhood, I’ve also been susceptible to motion sickness. While my heart draws me to the sea, my stomach begs me to stay on land. I feel a similar mix of attraction and repulsion about the modern church. The church is the community through which God becomes incar-nate to me. There, I sense his power and love, and without question I owe my faith to the church and its leaders. However, since childhood, I’ve also been sensitive to the church’s turbulent relationship with the culture; it has a difficult time riding cultural waves without being capsized by them, and at times I have found the modern church so nauseating that I’ve been tempted to abandon it altogether. I am not alone. Research shows fewer people have confidence in the church today than in the past. Even Christians who remain committed to their faith are questioning the role of the church in their lives. A study by George Barna and David Kinnaman in their 2014 book Churchless, says 33 percent of the American population is now “dechurched.” Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope are sociologists researching this phenomenon. They conclude, “People are as concerned about religion as ever and are finding religion in their daily lives. However, the trend across all age groups is to move away from church and religious institutions as the central organiz-ing mechanism for this activity.”

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Perhaps the most striking finding from Packard and Hope’s research, which is reported in their book Church Refugees, was that those who are spiritually mature and most actively involved in church activities are the people most likely to leave. Based on interviews, Packard and Hope found those who left, “Didn’t stop doing things to advance what they believed to be the work of God; they stopped doing things to advance the work of the church.” The evidence cannot be ignored. The shape of the modern church and its operating values are proving to be toxic to many Christians, and even those committed to Christ are questioning their commitment to the institutions that carry His name. This short book is intended to answer two questions. First, how did the church get this way? Second, how can queasy Christians learn to stom-ach its shortcomings? To answer the first question, I’ve discovered an unlikely but helpful meta-phor to explain how modern churches acquired their unprecedented size and qualities and why they function so differently than churches in the past. In the chapters ahead, I will make the case that the transformation of the church in recent decades parallels the evolution of the passenger shipping industry. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, New York harbor bustled with ocean liners transporting thousands of people between North America and Europe every week. These great ships linked the world in an age before air travel or digital communication, but the glory days of the ocean liners began to fade in 1953 when a Comet roared across the Atlantic. The De Havilland Comet was the first commercial jetliner. The dis-tance covered by an ocean liner in six days was traveled by a jetliner in just six hours. Overnight the vast Atlantic Ocean became “the pond.” By the 1960s the great ships were being laid up or sold for scrap. Many predicted the passenger shipping business would never recover. They were wrong. During the second half of the twentieth century, the ocean liners evolved into the modern cruise business, a thriving industry with $40 bil-

Welcome Aboard!

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lion in annual revenue. The link between the ocean liners of the past and today’s cruise ships may appear obvious—both transport people on ocean vessels, but that is where the similarities end. Liner voyages and cruises are fundamentally different in surprising ways. Around the same time that jets were causing waves for the shipping industry, cultural changes were also rocking the church. The way the church has responded to these cultural shifts parallels the cruise industry in uncanny ways, with many churches today bearing little resemblance to those of the past. This look at how churches became like cruise ships will help explain some peculiar features of contemporary Christianity like:

• Why are churches so much bigger?

• When did pastors start acting like CEOs rather than shepherds?

• How has the relationship between churches and their communities changed?

• Why are there fewer churches today and why are they more fragile?

• Why do people demand churches be entertaining and never boring?

• Will the current trend toward larger, program-driven churches continue?

Like the popularity of cruise vacations, it is obvious that the shape of the modern church is very attractive to millions of people. If you are content with what the church has become, the benefit of this book for you may be limited to its explanation of recent church history and trends. If, however, you are like me and millions of others wrestling with what the church has become, I hope this book helps you identify the cause of your queasiness and provides ways to overcome it. Toward that end, I recommend reading this book in community; pro-cessing your thoughts about the church with others may uncover similar stories, or challenge your assumptions in ways reading alone never could. Ultimately, my hope is that together you will be able to discern where God is calling you—and the entire church—in the days ahead. Bon voyage.

Welcome Aboard!

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In the early twentieth century, great ships like the Queen Mary and Normandie were celebrated as floating palaces, but very few passengers enjoyed their luxuries. Most who sailed on them were poor immigrants and refugees relegated to third class accommodations. When you looked past their opulent first class dining rooms and smoking parlors, it became evident that these ships served a highly utilitarian purpose. They were the most efficient way to move passengers and cargo from point A to point B. That’s why they were called “liners.” That efficiency was challenged in the 1950s when jet travel began to replace ships as the preferred way to cross the North Atlantic. The high speed and relatively low cost of a Boeing 707 quickly took business away from the ocean liners. The old floating palaces were sent to scrapyards, mothballed, or converted to carry cargo or livestock. The glory days of the liners appeared to be over.

THE MODERN CRUISE SHIP

A handful of innovative ship owners, however, developed a new way for their fleets to produce revenue: cruises. Rather than crossing the Atlan-tic from point A to point B, cruises sailed in a circuit, embarking and dis-embarking passengers from the same port. Their goal was not to transport passengers, but to get tourists to buy and consume more of the products and services on-board the ship. Whereas the old liners were primarily ve-hicles, the cruise lines marketed their ships themselves as the destination.

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The shift from crossing to cruising was really a shift from transportation to consumption. Because of this, over time cruise lines sought to increase the number of entertainment options on-board their vessels. This triggered a rapid increase in the size of ships being built, each one incorporating more of the features vacationers wanted. As a result, many of today’s gargantuan cruise ships dwarf the ocean liners of the past—something no one would have predicted 50 years ago when passenger shipping was believed to be on its deathbed. Around the same time jetliners were challenging the dominance of the shipping industry, cultural changes were challenging the role of the church. Before the 1960s, most congregations in America were small with a very utilitarian function–they transported people into communion with God by providing the basic necessities for living a Christian life. Church buildings in most communities were relatively small. They had a gathering space for worship, an office or two for the ministers, and a few classrooms for Sunday School. A church with a kitchen and fellowship hall was welcomed but often unnecessary, and only a select few—often in urban neighborhoods—had a gym, and those were usually shared with a parochial school.

THE BABY BOOMERS GROW UP

By the 60s and 70s, however, the Baby Boomer generation reached adulthood and many stopped going to church. The culture had changed—secular values, youth culture, and entertainment had taken root, and the small, simple churches could not compete with the gravita-tional pull of malls, multiplexes, and rock concerts. Traditional church-es, built for utility, struggled, but like some ship owners at the time, entrepreneurial pastors began tinkering to see if a new purpose for the church could be found. What these “pastorpreneurs” found was that people would still attend church in a post-Christian culture if it appealed to their felt-needs. Rather than viewing the church as a vehicle that connected people with God,

From Vehicles to Destinations

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the innovative pastors made the church into the destination. Put another way, old churches were a means to an end, the new generation of churches were an end in themselves. The logic was simple: if the Baby Boomers did not feel the need to connect with God, then perhaps another felt-need would draw them into the church: the need for community, or entertainment, or help with their children and marriages. While they consumed the upbeat music, support groups, dramas, and therapeutic sermons, the hope was that they would find God as well. By starting with consumers’ desires for something other than God, this new breed of pastors were mirroring the shift in passenger shipping away from liner voyages to cruising. They were focusing on the church rather than where it was supposed to take you. New jargon was even developed to articulate this shift. The goal was no longer connecting “non-believers” to God, but rather getting the “unchurched” into the building. This subtle but important re-framing of the goal triggered explosive growth in the size of congregations. Logic dictated that larger churches, like larger cruise ships, could offer consumers more choices to address more of their needs and desires. As a result, church growth went from a byproduct of the mission to its goal, and the programs and facilities churches incorporate today would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. Coffee shops, bookstores, health clubs, recreation centers, even auto mechanics and production studios. THE MODERN MEGACHURCH

Just as modern cruise ships have redefined the passenger shipping, today’s megachurches have redefined our understanding of ministry, and like the cruise industry, megachurches have flourished. In 1970, only 500,000 people took a cruise, and there were only 10 megachurches in the United States. In 2015 nearly 25 million people cruised, and there are now nearly 2,000 megachurches. Today, half of all churchgoers in the United States attend the largest 10 percent of churches. What rarely gets reported, however, is that on

From Vehicles to Destinations

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average 50 smaller churches close their doors every week in the U.S. The church-as-destination model hasn’t advanced the church in North Ameri-ca, it has consolidated it. Of course, just because a church is large does not mean it is no longer a vehicle, and it is dangerous to assume that a smaller church is better at connecting people with God than larger ones. There are many smaller con-gregations that have swallowed the Kool-Aid of consumerism, just as there are megachurches that have not. The key is recognizing the difference between a vehicle-church and a destination-church. Consider the Queen Mary 2, launched in 2004. At 150,000 tons, she is one of the largest ships in the world, but she was not designed to cruise the placid waters of the Caribbean. She was built to cross the punishing seas of the North Atlantic. Queen Mary 2 is the only purpose-built ocean liner still making regular voyages between America and Europe. QM2 is a very large, twenty-first century ship with a nineteenth century purpose. Likewise, there are large, modern churches that remain focused on the dif-ficult work of transporting people into communion with God. They have not abandoned this ancient calling to become a theater, shopping mall, or country club with a veneer of Christianity. At first glance, Queen Mary 2 looks like a cruise ship with decks of balconies, lifeboats, and swimming pools. A closer inspection, however, re-veals significant differences. Her hull is constructed with extra thick steel and her bow is tall and narrow to slice through rough seas at high speed. QM2 sits much deeper in the water for greater stability and her forward superstructure is upright and flared to deflect crashing waves. Her life-boats are nested much higher than a cruise ship’s to avoid the damaging swells of the North Atlantic. Queen Mary 2 was designed to be a liner and not a floating hotel. She was meant to move, not cruise. If your reason for attending a church is to find communion with God, you must look for one that is designed to do that. Don’t assume that is the goal of every church no matter what the website says or what rhetoric is broadcast from the pulpit. A cruise ship might be nostalgically marketed

From Vehicles to Destinations

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as a “liner,” but its shallow hull, stubby bow, and slow speed cannot survive a ferocious winter storm in the North Atlantic.

CHURCH INSPECTION

Therefore, be mindful to inspect a church for evidence of its true purpose. The best question to ask is not, “Is the church large or small?” or “Do I enjoy what this church has to offer?” Instead, look for signs that the church’s highest priority is growing closer to Christ and not growing its programs. For example:

• Is prayer a central part of the church’s life and leadership? The obvious pres-

ence or absence of prayer is a good indicator of the church’s desire for God.

• What does the church measure and celebrate? If it only measures the ministry

ABCs (attendance, buildings, and cash) it’s probably a destination-church. Do

the stories told always reinforce how wonderful the church is, or do they focus

on the power of God? Are stories shared that celebrate his works unrelated to

the church?

• How does the church relate to other churches and ministries in the communi-

ty? Are they seen as co-laborers or competitors? How freely does the church

share its resources with outside groups?

• Interact with the pastors and leaders. Are they genuinely concerned with your

communion with Christ, or are they primarily focused on your contribution to

the church’s mission?

• Is the church regularly adopting new trends and styles, or is there a sense of

identity and security that frees it from chasing fads?

• Do the people at the center of the church’s life—the leaders and pastors—

exhibit the signs of people abiding in Christ? Are they marked by love, joy,

peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control

(Galatians 5:22)? Or are they anxious, driven, burned out, angry, abrasive, and

aggressive? If those closest to the church look the least like Christ, that’s an

indication that something is very unhealthy.

From Vehicles to Destinations

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• Finally, is the need to grow numerically championed over the call to grow

spiritually?

In the chapters to come we will look at more characteristics that distin-

guish a destination-church from a vehicle-church. I will also share some

examples of congregations that are defying the church as cruise ship trend.

From Vehicles to Destinations

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In the early years of the cruise business, ship owners believed the airlines were their competition. Rather than flying to Bermuda, the Caribbean, or Mexico, cruise lines tried to sell the romance of an ocean voyage. Remem-ber “The Love Boat”? Reverence for the sea was pitched as superior to the speed of air travel. Eventually, however, cruise lines accepted that they were not really in the transportation business. They were in the vacation business. Their true competition was not United Airlines or TWA, but Walt Disney World and Las Vegas. To win more of the vacation market, cruise lines began to downplay the allure of the sea and instead focused on adding amenities tourists expected to find at land-based resorts. Royal Caribbean even painted the slogan, “Like No Vacation on Earth” on their ships’ hulls. Today there are cruise ships with water parks, roller coasters, golf courses, planetariums, bumper cars, even tree-lined parks with carousels and ice skating rinks. Step on to Oasis of the Seas’ cavernous main boulevard with fountains, cars, street performers, and a bar that ascends four stories through a glass canopy, and you’ll hear awestruck passengers saying, “I can’t believe I’m on a ship.”

LOST AT SEA

That is the problem. By trying to compete with land-based resorts, cruise lines literally lost sight of their unique value proposition–the sea.

CHAPTER TWOFrom Reverence to Relevance

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Ships are so crammed with amenities designed to lure vacationers and their dollars, it is now possible to spend all day onboard a cruise ship and never see the ocean. While a passenger may catch a musical, play golf, or ride a roller coaster, the inherent limitations of a ship, no matter how big, means these experiences will never match what is possible at a land-based resort. Broadway will always have better productions and Six Flags will always have better rides. As a result, the modern cruise industry is engaged in a strange delusion. It is ignoring the one thing it can offer that no one else can–the allure of sea travel–to compete in areas where it can never win. The church can learn an important lesson from this delusion: Rele-vance backfires when it overshadows your uniqueness. THE INTOXICATION OF CULTURAL RELEVANCE

Not every cruise line has succumbed to this temptation, nor has every church. Some, however, find the accolades of cultural relevance too intoxicating, and the pressure to fill thousands of seats every weekend too demanding. These churches will spend millions for state-of-the-art theater equipment, will stock their children’s departments with video game systems and three story playgrounds, and even run live social media feeds during worship. Even smaller churches that can’t afford these “wow” factors may still feel the pressure to offer an expanding array of programs normally found at a community college or YMCA to attract consumers away from their smartphones and health clubs. At the same time that these churches seek to mimic the trappings of popular culture, they often strip away their unique Christian qualities. Gone are the crosses, stained glass windows, steeples, hymns, pews, and liturgies. Sanctuaries become auditoriums. Choirs become bands. Com-munion becomes a coffee bar. Like a cruise passenger who never experi-ences the sea, some church attenders may be so occupied with programs and productions that they never experience the reverence that marked Christianity and its practices for two millennia.

From Reverence to Relevance

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A pastor recently told me about a convicting conversation he had with a newcomer to his congregation. The man, from a Hindu background, came to the large church about a month earlier because he was curious about Jesus. “Everyone here has been very friendly to me,” he reported to the pastor, “and my family has been enjoying all of the programs. But I do have one question: When am I going to learn about Jesus?” The church’s reason for having its mega-facility and buffet of programs was to more effectively draw people to Christ, but the pastor wondered aloud whether they had gradually confused their methods and their mis-sion. After all, a church can survive if people don’t meet Jesus, but a church can’t survive if it doesn’t meet budget. The pastor’s story reminded me of recent research conducted by the Barna Group. While pastors are scrambling to discover the secret sauce for attracting more young adults to their ministries, Barna found the top reasons twenty-somethings attend church are to be closer to God (51%) and to learn more about God (31%). This is like discovering people want to take a cruise because they are attracted to the ocean–no roller coasters necessary. Is it possible for that the very things church leaders assume will draw people in—the limitless programs, techno-savvy auditoriums, and coffee bars—may actually be a barrier to a deeper life with God?

THE SEEKER-DRIVEN MEGACHURCH MOVEMENT

Willow Creek Community Church was founded in 1975 and is consid-ered a flagship of the seeker-driven, megachurch movement and a pioneer of the destination-church model outlined in this book. Amid this complex, modern ministry, two leaders wondered what would happen if a simple community was formed to focus on communion with Jesus. In order to find out, Aaron Niequist, a worship pastor, and Steve Carter, a teaching pastor, launched an experiment at Willow Creek called The Practice. They meet on Sunday evenings in the small chapel at Willow Creek’s main campus. There are no screens and no theater lights. There is no countdown clock to let worshippers know when the show will begin, and

From Reverence to Relevance

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there is no celebrity pastor to deliver a helpful sermon to seekers looking for practical biblical solutions to their problems. Instead, the group of 200 are seated in the round with an altar as the visual focus of the gathering. Traditional Christian symbols, which are absent from Willow’s main audi-torium, are prominently displayed at The Practice, including a cross and the communion elements. A pastor will teach at The Practice, but the sermon is not the main event. As Niequist told me, “When we look at what we do in most church gatherings it’s centered on a lecturer. It’s a classroom. But if I want to learn how to run a marathon, I wouldn’t want to go hear a lecture about a marathon. And so we asked, ‘What if a church was more like a gymnasium than a classroom? What if the church gathering was a time when we came together to practice rather than just listen?’” For that reason, the group that meets on Sunday nights in Willow Creek’s chapel focuses, “on the disciplines of the Christian life,” Niequist said, “and on the different practices that train us to go out and practice what Jesus said Monday through Saturday.” They emphasize different forms of prayer, fasting, confession, silence, and reflection. These are not programs designed to attract religious consumers; they are ancient prac-tices designed to transport disciples into communion with God. Niequist and Carter recognize that The Practice is not innovative in the way Willow Creek often uses the word. “We’re not really creating any-thing,” said Carter, “we’re rediscovering.” “My hope is to draw from many traditions of the church to rediscover what forms and practices can help us grow as disciples,” added Niequist.

THE VEHICLE-CHURCH MODEL What they are rediscovering is the vehicle-church model that has marked Christian communities for centuries. They are rediscovering that the call to make disciples may never be easy, but that doesn’t mean it can-not be simple. They are also rediscovering the freedom of being authenti-

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cally Christian, rather than trying to keep pace with cultural trends. Eventually we will learn that no matter how much money, effort, or innovation the church possesses, it will never be as cool as the culture. Relevance is a race it cannot win, and in our misguided attempts to compete with the culture we risk losing sight of the only thing of value the church has to offer the world–Jesus Christ.

From Reverence to Relevance

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We have already explored how the desire to compete with land resorts fueled the construction of larger ships with more land-like features. Rele-vance was not the only motivation for building larger ships, however. Huge ships also create operational efficiencies. Putting 4,000 passengers on one hull is much more cost effective than putting the same number of passen-gers on four hulls. Just as it costs less to take a bus than a taxi because the costs of the driver, fuel, maintenance, and tolls are spread across more passengers, so larger ships benefit from an economy of scale.

THE BIGGER, THE BETTER

In the cruise business, a ship’s price is often calculated as the “cost per berth,” or the total cost of the ship divided by the number of passengers it carries. The Seabourn Quest, with only 450 passengers, cost $540,000 per berth to build. The world’s largest cruise ship, Allure of the Seas with ten times as many passengers, has a per berth cost less than half that of the Seabourn Quest. This is why cruise lines have come to believe bigger is better. But is it? While large ships are unquestionably more economically efficient, there are tradeoffs. One of the advantages cruise ships have over land resorts is mobility. If a hurricane hits the Caribbean, hotels may lose an entire season of revenue. Cruise ships, however, can relocate to Bermuda, Mexico, or South America. Similarly, a recession in the United States may

CHAPTER THREEFrom Nimble to Fragile

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cause a cruise line to move ships to Asia or Europe where the economy is stronger. In other words, ships are nimble; they can react quickly to chang-ing conditions. Mega ships, however, are much less nimble than smaller ones. The Al-lure of the Seas, for example, is too large to transit the Panama Canal, and therefore its area of deployment is limited to warm weather areas of the Atlantic. Similarly, its massive size means it cannot dock at smaller ports or serve smaller emerging markets. Its size makes the ship efficient as long as market conditions remain stable. Large ships exchange flexibility for efficiency. The same is true for megachurches. One example occurred in 2005 when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday. Large churches across the country announced they would not have Sunday worship services on Christmas Day while most smaller churches remained opened. One megachurch leader admitted, “Organizing services on Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources.” The church spokesperson said each gathering requires 90 staff and up to 700 volun-teers. Factoring the expense of lighting and heating the huge facility, the cost of opening on Christmas Sunday would not be offset by the smaller attendance and offerings collected. In this case being big was a limitation to ministry rather than an advantage.

ADJUSTING THE SAILS

If megachurches cannot flex for a predictable anomaly, like Christmas falling on a Sunday, how will they adjust to more dramatic and unpredict-able market changes? What happens when a generation values cities more than suburbs where most megachurch are located? Or when young adults prefer to buy smart phones rather than cars (which most megachurches are predicated upon)? Or when confidence in large institutions plummets in favor of smaller organizations? Building a megachurch may appear efficient today, but church leaders are making a risky gamble that market conditions will remain favorable for decades to come.

From Nimble to Fragile

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The earliest Christian churches—which did not have cathedrals, hun-dreds of employees, or acres of parking lots—were capable of adjusting to the rapidly shifting cultural and political landscape of the Roman Empire. When early church leaders were arrested, imprisoned, or otherwise re-moved from their congregations, the churches only seemed to get stronger and spread faster. In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s language, the early church was not just nimble, it was “anti-fragile.” The same quality is evident in many parts of the world today. It is often where persecution and poverty are most severe that the church grows stronger and the mission advances most rapidly. Even in developed countries, the pace of technological and cultural change is so rapid that large, inflexible organizations are those most at risk. The Eastman Kodak Company, for example, dominated the film and photography industry throughout the twentieth century. It was one of the most successful com-panies in the world—until digital photography emerged in the late 1990s. Ironically, Kodak invented the technology that made digital cameras work, but the company’s massive structure was slow to incorporate its own innovation. In 2012, the company filed for bankruptcy.

THE UNSINKABLE SHIP

Megachurches, like huge ships, project an appearance of stability and security, but it is precisely these qualities that make them vulnerable to disaster. The Titanic was called “unsinkable” because of her unprecedent-ed size, but it was her size that made her unable to turn quickly enough to avoid the iceberg. Similarly, many church commentators continue to affirm the growth and stability of megachurches without recognizing the inherent fragility of these ecclesiastical Titanics. Large churches are far less nimble than small churches. Not everyone is naive. Over the last 15 years more megachurch leaders have come to acknowledge the risks—particularly their inflexibility. They have tried to overcome this by pursing a multisite model that franchises the reach of a large church beyond it’s immediate 30-minute drive radius

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by launching multiple smaller congregations in distant communities. This allows a church to engage emerging markets, adjust to changing conditions, and spread the costs and risks across a larger number of people. The mul-tisite model appears to be a perfect solution. It incorporates the efficiencies of a megachurch with the flexibility of small churches. However, most of these multisite churches still remain vulnerable to the Schettino Effect. Captain Francesco Schettino was the master of the Costa Concor-dia, an Italian cruise ship, who took over 4,000 passengers and crew off course to do a “fly by” of the Mediterranean island of Giglio in January of 2012. The ship struck a rock, capsized, and 32 people died. Schettino was convicted to 16 years in prison for negligence, abandoning his ship, and manslaughter. Five other officers from the Costa Concordia have also been convicted. Financial losses from the accident are estimated at over $2 billion, the worst in maritime history. While putting 4,000 people onboard one cruise ship under the com-mand of one captain is very efficient, if the captain is a Schettino all you’ve done is ensure an efficient disaster. As vessels get larger, they are required to have redundant safety features, but the growth in size simultaneously exacerbates whatever human failures may occur. Multisite churches try to limit risk and expand their missions by decentralizing many of their functions. Most of these churches, however, are still driven by a central personality—a “captain” who serves as the lead pastor, preacher, and CEO of the organization. Video and digital simul-casting allows a single person to speak at dozens of church campuses. In many cases these leaders are mature, godly pastors, but what happens when the pastor is a Schettino who takes his congregation of thousands on a joy ride to destruction?

LEADERS WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

Sadly we have seen too many stories of large churches led by Schet-tinos who view their ministries as personal kingdoms to rule over and

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exploit. There is something amiss when the mission of an entire church, and the wellbeing of thousands of Christ’s people, are entrusted to a single person with little or no accountability. Yet this is the case in many contem-porary churches that lack denominational oversight or sufficient internal checks and balances. Don’t assume this is a case against all large churches, just as all cruise ships are not destined to end up like the Costa Concordia. Instead, we simply need to acknowledge the incredible responsibility pastors of megachurches carry and the inherent risk of placing so much power in the hands of one person. We should also remember that our pursuit of missional and organizational efficiency comes at a cost. It usually means sacrificing the flexibility and robustness that has marked the church and enabled it to expand into every continent and culture. Rather than making the church in America stronger, the values many Christian leaders have pursued for the last 40 years have made the church more fragile.

NOT THEIR GUY

A few years ago, I was invited to preach at a megachurch in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. 30 years ago, the church benefitted from that growth but now it is a victim of it. In the 1980s, the church built a huge campus and assembled a staff with hundreds of pastors. Decades later, the church was no longer on the growing edge of the metropolis. It was in an aging, deteriorating community and left in the wake of newer, more popular churches in the suburbs. The superstar pastor was now in his 70s and not seen as relevant to the young people the church desperately wanted to engage. The congregation had diminished to one-third of it’s former size, and the buildings were falling into disrepair. The church leaders had become painfully aware of their fragility. Circum-stances had changed but the church’s size had made it inflexible. An elder from the church was kind enough to drive me to the airport. “We’ve unofficially begun the search for our next senior pastor,” the elder

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shared. “Would you ever be interested in the role?” he asked. “That depends,” I said, “what do you expect the next senior pastor to do?” “We need someone who can restore what the church used to be,” he admitted. “We need another gifted speaker and someone who’s younger to bring people back.” His answer was disappointing. It revealed the leaders hadn’t yet realized the fragility of their model. Rather than adjusting to the new realities of their city and neighborhood, they were looking for another charismatic captain to pilot their ship back to glory. “I don’t think I’m your guy,” I told the elder, but I didn’t want to end the conversation without offering some help. “Rather than looking for another golden-tongued preacher, have you ever considered a different model of ministry?” “What do you mean,” he asked? “What if your church changed in response what’s happening around your community? Your part of the city needs good housing and jobs. What if the church sold some of it’s parking lots to be developed into housing and businesses and parks to bless the neighborhood? What if you scaled back the size of the church to a level that is sustainable for the congrega-tion? And what if you hired a team of leaders that focused the resources of the church outward, rather than one superstar preacher to draw people in from the suburbs?” I may as well have been speaking Swahili. The elder had no framework for imagining a church that didn’t adhere to the destination model. “Well, if you’re not interested,” he politely responded, “would you let me know if you bump into anyone in your network who might be a good fit for us?” Thankfully, there are other churches that have learned from the fragili-ty of the superstar pastor model. They’ve been run aground by a Schettino and decided to rebuild a more robust, anti-fragile ministry. The Next Level Church in Denver is one example. The congregation started in the 1990s as a thriving young adult ministry of another megachurch led by a gifted pastor. Eventually, they launched as an independent church and grew rap-

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idly. The young pastor in the spotlight was celebrated around the country as a next generation megachurch leader; a dynamic stage presence with a golden tongue. Sadly, the pastor’s inner life was not as glamorous as his outer appear-ance. When the truth was discovered, his ministry ended, and The Next Level Church nearly did as well. Thousands of people left the church and only a fraction remained to pick up the pieces. As they reassembled, the church’s board of advisors told the remaining pastors that finding another dynamic speaker was essential if the church was to survive. “But some of us didn’t want to find another bug light to attract the flies,” recalled Jared Mackey, one of TNL’s pastors at the time. “We wanted to be more than an event. We wanted to be a church.” “There is something systemically unhealthy about becoming depen-dent upon a single leader,” added Brian Gray, another TNL pastor. Following the loss of their senior pastor, the remaining pastors at The Next Level reorganized the church with a team leadership structure. The church is no longer associated with a single leader, pastors are given leadership responsibilities based on their gifts rather than their popular-ity, and teaching is shared among them rather than built on one person’s personality. When I interviewed the pastors at The Next Level Church back in 2008, they were quick to admit their team structure had problems. “We recognize that no structure is perfect,” said Gray. “If you change structures, you’re just trading liabilities.” Since then, TNL’s pastors have faced a number of signif-icant challenges—including leadership transitions, conflicts, and divorce. In a fragile system dependent on a single leader, any one of these could have sunk the church entirely, but TNL’s team structure provided a robust redundancy able to absorb and rebound from these hits. As more people experience the inherent fragility of the destina-tion-church model and the illusion that bigness equals permanence, there is a growing hunger for something different. We aren’t looking for another superstar preacher to entertain us, but a church that is strong enough to

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outlast the ever-shifting trends of the culture and the unreliable character of human leaders. We’re looking for a church that moves forward because the Spirit of God is present in all of his people, not just one man, and everyone uses their gifts to manifest his presence in our midst. We are looking for a church where everyone is valued but no one is indispensable apart from the church’s only head—Jesus Christ.

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My father immigrated to the United States on an ocean liner. After arriving in New York, he settled in Chicago where he practiced his trade, built a business, and raised a family. Eventually, he became an American citizen. In a sense, everything he has contributed to the United States was made possible by the ship that carried him here. My father’s story is similar to millions of other immigrants. For cen-turies, when ships and ocean liners docked in Manhattan, or Brooklyn, or Hoboken, the passengers and cargo they carried were unloaded and distributed throughout the continent. These ships supplied the resources needed to build a flourishing society. The same was true of liners sailing from North America back to Europe. During World War II, for example, ocean liners carried the troops and supplies necessary to defeat the Nazis and rebuild the continent after the war. Because of the vital role ocean liners played in the life of nations, most were operated as ships-of-state with shipping companies receiving fund-ing from national governments. This allowed liners to be less concerned with earning profits and more focused on contributing to the flourishing of the lands they connected. They operated with an integrated vision of the world—if the countries the ships served prospered then the shipping lines prospered. Modern cruise ships measure success very differently. Their goal is to enrich the corporations that operate them, not the ports they visit. They function with a dis-integrated vision that divides the world into two

CHAPTER FOURFrom Blessings to Burdens

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categories—things that generate revenue for the cruise line and things that take revenue away. This dualism motivates cruise ships to keep passengers and their money onboard the ship because every time a person disembarks the company risks losing revenue to the restaurants, shops, and tour guides ashore. To minimize this risk, ship owners started selling their own shore excursions in every port-of-call, and they directed passengers to shoreside shops and restaurants that gave a kickback to the cruise lines.

HELPING OR HURTING?

At first, many of the ports in Central America saw cruise ships as a blessing. They believed the ships would bring resources and economic growth to their small, often impoverished communities like the ocean liners of the past. Over time, however, they came to recognize the cruise ships as a burden. They dumped thousands of passengers on their shores for a few hours putting enormous strain on the community’s infrastruc-ture, and then departed without any significant benefit to the local economy. Today, many ports severely limit the number of cruise ship visits and they are increasing taxes on the ships to offset the expense of their presence. Eventually the dis-integrated, dualistic vision of the cruise lines led to an innovative idea. They realized they could maximize profits if they owned the ships and the ports. In the 1980s, cruise companies started buying entire islands where every dollar spent on a Pina Colada, t-shirt, or snorkel went into the corporation’s coffers. Today every major cruise line owns and operates it’s own ports in the Caribbean and Mexico. Rather than releasing resources to bless the lands they visit like the ocean liners of the past, today’s cruise ships measure success by how many resources they managed to keep for themselves.

DIS-INTEGRATED DUALISM

Like the passenger shipping industry, the church in different eras has fluctuated between an integrated and dis-integrated vision of the world.

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For example, the European church during the Middle Ages was dominat-ed by a sacred/secular dualism that believed God only cared about the “sacred” work of church leaders because they were devoted to the things of heaven. Every other person’s work was ultimately unimportant because they were focused on the things of earth. In order for anything to have value, it had to be done in, for, or through the church. This dis-integrated dualism led to the massive institutional expansion of the Roman Catholic church. Every sphere of the culture—government, the arts, education, commerce, etc.—was sanctified by being brought within the church’s con-trol, just as a cruise line tries to bring every part of the cruise experience under its control. Eventually, the people came to see the church as self-interested and even abusive. Rather than blessing the community, the church was a bur-den that exploited those it was supposed to serve. By the sixteenth century things reached a tipping point. The sacred/secular dualism of the church was challenged by reformers from outside like Martin Luther and John Calvin, and from new movements inside the church like the Jesuits led by Ignatius Loyola. The Protestant Reformation rejected the sacred/secular divide and introduced an integrated vision of the world that said all of life and work mattered to God. This led to a dramatic shift in the church’s role. An inte-grated vision allowed the church to shrink its institutional footprint and simplify its ministry to preaching the Scriptures and administering the sacraments. It also empowered Christians to carry Christ’s presence into the various channels of the culture through their vocations, rather than forcing the entire culture to exist under the church’s control.

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHURCH

Consider what a typical church’s ministry looked like in the early twentieth century: Each Sunday, the community gathered for worship, sacrament, and the preaching of Scripture. Offerings were collected and

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apart than what was needed for the small building and one or two minis-ters, the rest was redistributed into the community—primarily to the poor. The pastor spent most of his week outside the church building engaging his flock. He visited their homes, farms, and factories where he blessed their work and encouraged them to live faithfully with God and one anoth-er. He also made calls to the sick and perhaps to those in the jail. Ministry happened out in the community and was intended to bless the communi-ty. Churches, like ocean liners, measured their success by the flourishing of the places and people they connected. In the last 50 years, however, the church in North America has revert-ed back to a dis-integrated vision. The same sacred/secular dualism that led to the massive growth of the Medieval church is evident again in which the world outside the church matters less than the activities within it. Today, fewer pastors are trained to do their ministry out in the communi-ty. Instead they are expected to stay inside the church all week operating programs and overseeing a staff. Rather than visiting people where they work, churches now expect the people to visit the pastor where he works. Likewise, the flow of resources has also reversed. Rather than em-powering and releasing people to use their gifts outside the church for the benefit of the world, many churches feel pressured to get more people to volunteer their time within the church and to give their money to main-tain the church’s ever-growing list of buildings, programs, and employees. As a result, what people do to advance the church’s agenda gets celebrated while the good they do outside the church is usually ignored. Andy Crouch shared a story about a pastor he met in Boston who operated with a dis-integrated vision of the world. The pastor told Andy:“There’s a woman in our church who was the lead litigator for the Environ-mental Protection Agency for the clean up of Boston Harbor. It’s occurred to me since then that she played this incredibly important role in one of the great environmental success stories of the second half of the Twenti-eth Century. When I started high school, no one would put a toe in Boston Harbor, it was so polluted. And now there are beaches, and people go to

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the beach and swim. This Christian woman lawyer succeeded in litigating that case.” He said, “The only time we have ever recognized her in church was for her role in teaching second grade Sunday school. And of course we absolutely should celebrate Sunday school teachers, but why did we never celebrate her incredible contribution to our whole city as a Christian, taking care of God’s creation? Because churches and their leaders have been conditioned to focus on their “sacred” work and ignore what is considered “secular” work, many pastors have no idea how God is using their people to cultivate the order, beauty, and abundance of his Kingdom in the world. We have lost the Ref-ormation’s theology of vocation and reverted to Medieval—and unbibli-cal—dualism. We have foolishly believed there are parts of this world God doesn’t genuinely care about. Accounting, for example, is viewed as secular work without any eternal value and accountants are unlikely to find any validation for their calling by the church or its leaders, but if you do accounting for a church—well, now you’re counting beans for heaven. Rather than affirming the work of Christians serving as counselors, mechanics, or fitness trainers out in the community, in order for these activities to be blessed, they must be incorporated into ministries of the church where God’s work really happens. Over time, this desire to validate our work results in very large churches housing restaurants, auto repair shops, fitness centers, retail stores, clinics, and a plethora of programs for volunteers to staff.

VIP ONLY

This emphasis on the church’s growth rather than the community’s flourishing explains why more cities view churches as a burden rather than a blessing. Like the cruise ships calling at ports in Central America, churches are seen as private clubs that exist for the benefit of their mem-bers while contributing little to the surrounding community. Increasingly, local governments are reluctant to welcome new churches, especially large

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ones, because they bring unwanted traffic on the weekends and remove large parcels of land from the tax rolls. This dis-integrated dualism is so pervasive and unchallenged that it’s striking when a church operates differently. My friend Robert Gelinas leads Colorado Community Church near Denver. I was walking with him through the foyer of the church building when I saw something odd paint-ed on the wall. It said, “5 + 5.” “Do you have a mathematics ministry?” I joked. “No,” said Robert, “that’s our church’s philosophy of giving. It’s based on a 10 percent tithe.” He went on to explain that members at Colorado Community Church are encouraged to give 5 percent of their income to support the church, but they are challenged to give the remaining 5 per-cent somewhere else. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Most churches I know discourage people from giving to other organizations. You want people to give elsewhere?” “Yup,” he said, “and once a year we ask people to self-report all of the other things they have financially supported in our community and around the world. Then we have a service where we show all that our people are doing outside of our church. We celebrate and pray for those organizations. It gives us a much better picture of what God is really doing through the generosity of his people.”

BLURRED VISION

What a church does with its financial resources, what it measures, and who it celebrates are all indicators of whether it has an integrated or dis-integrated vision of the world. The fact that Colorado Communi-ty Church encourages members to give generously outside the church, it measures this external generosity, and celebrates what is happening through other ministries and organizations reveals its leaders have not succumbed to sacred/secular dualism. But what if a church has already been infected with a dis-integrated vision of the world? Is there any hope of healing the sacred/secular divide? Thankfully, yes.

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Tom Nelson started Christ Community Church about 25 years ago in Kansas City. The church grew significantly and launched a number of addi-tional campuses. By most popular measurements it was a very successful megachurch, but after 15 years Nelson stood up in the pulpit of his church and confessed to being guilty of “pastoral malpractice.” After deep study of Scripture and reflecting on his own ministry prior-ities, Tom Nelson realized he had fallen victim to a dis-integrated dualism. “I spent the majority of my time equipping people for what they do with the minority of their lives,” he said. He was teaching them how to serve within the church, but he gave no attention to the work God had called them to in the world. There was no connection, as he put it, between Sun-day worship and Monday work. He did not have a theology of vocation. Since then, Christ Community Church has abandoned its old way of operating for an integrated vision. It remains a very large church, but now its pastors focus on equipping people to serve Christ through their callings in the world. A significant part of this is getting outside the church to visit people where they work in the community. Nelson believes this is an essential practice for any church leader hoping to shed the sacred/secular dualism they’ve inherited from popular ministry models. Visiting people where they spend most of their lives helps pastors understand the challenges they face, and it will change the way they teach and lead. It also helps them recognize the incredible ways God is using his people to bring flourishing to the community. When first challenged to get outside the church, some pastors are intimidated by the thought of engaging people on their turf. “I don’t know anything about medicine or business or finance,” one pastor told me. “How am I supposed to engage all of the work people in my church do?” It’s been so long since pastors accomplished their work outside the church, a question like this is understandable. Church leaders don’t have to be experts in every field to affirm and shepherd their people, but they do have to be genuinely interested in what people do Monday through

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Saturday. That means asking questions, listening to the stories of how peo-ple were called to their work, and praying for the challenges they face as followers of Christ in their vocations. I have little doubt that a pastor who regularly—perhaps weekly—meets with people at their work and shows this kind of interest will have a difficult time maintaining a dualistic vision of the world or ministry.

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As we come to the end of our exploration of how contemporary churches are like cruise ships, it is important to remember why ocean liners evolved into cruise ships in the first place. The arrival of jet travel had made liners an unnecessary, uneconomical, and undesirable mode of transportation. When that happened, the shipping companies faced a crisis of identity. They had to decide what their calling was. Were they called to operate ships, or were they called to transport people? Similarly, the church in the modern age has faced a crisis of identity. As engagement with churches declines, Christian leaders need to reexamine their calling. Are they called to keep religious institutions operating, or are they called to connect people with God and one another? If the goal is to keep religious institutions open at any cost, then churches will follow the same course as cruise ships. They will need to grow larger, less focused on Christ, and cater to the whims and desires of fickle religious consumers. If, however, Christian leaders decide their primary calling is connect-ing people with God and one another, a new set of possibilities appears on the horizon. Today, very few people board a ship to move around the world, but last year 4.4 billion people flew on a jetliner—nearly half of the world’s population. Similarly, the fact that fewer people will pass through the doors of a church does not mean fewer people want to connect with God. They just don’t expect an institutional church to take them there. What new ways of being the church might we discover, and how might God engage with his people, if we recognize the institutional vision of the

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church we’ve inherited isn’t the only one? Is it possible that the church isn’t being called to remain a cruise ship, nor return to the age of ocean liners, but is being invited forward into the age of jetliners? I’m encounter-ing Christians all over the world who are experimenting with new models of church. Some are rediscovering old forms long forgotten—like The Prac-tice at Willow Creek. Others are trying new models—like The Next Level in Denver. And there a many, many others. What they all share in common is a different definition of success. They not focused on the perpetuity of their institutions, but on their faithfulness to connect people with Jesus Christ. Before he passed away in 2013, I had the opportunity to interview Dallas Willard on a few occasions. The last time we were together, he ar-ticulated many of the problems in the modern church that I’ve included in this book (without the nautical metaphors, of course). He saw the failure of the church to connect people with God, its inability to provoke spiritual maturity, and its emphasis on institutional measures of success rather than an integrated vision of the world. At the end of that final two hour conversation I asked him, “When you look at how off track the church is, do you ever just throw up your hands in despair?” He smiled at me and said, “Never.” “You’ve just spent hours outlining everything that’s wrong. How can you not despair?” I asked. He went on to explain that many of the institutions we call “churches” are facing great problems and many will disappear, but the true Church—the community of children, women, and men redeemed by Christ, filled with his Spirit, and living in communion with him and each other—will always prevail. “I do not despair,” he calmly replied, “because I know Christ is the head of his church, and it’s doing just fine.”

Conclusion

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A LIFE WITH GOD

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WITH

By exploring the biblical narrative alongside stories of faithful men and women throughout history, WITH demonstrates how we can stop living our life for God and start living in communion with Him.

FUTUREVILLE

In Futureville, Skye Jethani offers us a vision-shifting glimpse of the world of tomorrow described in Scripture. He reveals how a biblical vision of the future can transform every person’s work with a sense of purpose and dignity today.

THE DIVINE COMMODITY

The Divine Commodity explores spiritual practices that liberate our imaginations to live as Christ’s people in a consumer culture opposed to the values of his kingdom. It will open your eyes to how consumerism has distorted our faith and equip you to live differently, articulating what so many have been feeling and offers hope for the future of a post-consumer Christianity.

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