Want a good, 46-word overview of church his-tory? Here’s one from former U.S. Senate chaplain Richard Halverson:
“The church began as a fellowship of men and women centered on Jesus Christ. It went to Greece and became a philosophy. It went to Rome and became an institution. It went to Europe and became a culture. It came to America and became an enterprise.”
When you derive your paycheck from Christian enterprise, as pastors and Leadership editors do, are you “marketing Christ”? The late Dr. Halverson’s perspective helps bring clarity.
Every age makes its unique contribution—and wrestles with its prevailing temptations. The church of the third and fourth centuries majored on philosophical issues (the godhead is composed of exactly how many persons, natures, and wills?), which resulted in doctrinal precision and creeds that remain helpful today. But it also resulted in well-meaning Christians being banished because they used imprecise terms to describe the mysteries of Christ’s divine and human aspects. I hope those at Nicea and Chalcedon were aware of the dangers of “philosophizing Christ.”
If philosophy filled the air Christians breathed then, today we’re living in a climate of enterprise. Anyone who provides Christian books, music, videos, study Bibles, colleges, counseling services, and, yes, magazines for church leaders, knows the atmospheric conditions. So does anyone who preaches this week to people who may choose to go to another church (or to no church at all) next week.
We monitor our “audience,” keenly aware that we must win them, usually by being winsome.
Some Christian thinkers bemoan this “market mentality” as a danger to the gospel. But what are the alternatives?
History knows at least two: monopoly (having a state church) and military (conquering and converting “infidels” by force). Neither particularly fosters spiritual vitality and integrity. I’ll take my chances in the free-market world.
To minister with integrity in this world of “enterprise” in which God has placed us, we must seize the opportunities and flee the temptations. Having been in Christian publishing for almost 20 years, let me confess the worst temptation.
It is not to water down the gospel. Our free-market world is self-correcting—if a doctrine or practice is not biblical, someone will eventually publish a book or launch a church as a corrective.
Nor is it to focus on felt needs to the exclusion of the real spiritual need of reconciliation with God. Eventually, those who focus only on “feel good” faith will be revealed as empty. Only a Christ-centered, God-dependent faith can endure over the long haul.
For those of us who get paid for our Christianity, thereal temptation is to assume we should receive an earthly return on our ministry investment. The gospel becomes a means to earn a living, rather than seeing our life as a means to proclaim the gospel.
In addition, we’re tempted to false pride when people respond, and to false guilt when they don’t.
The answer: we are not marketers but witnesses. Witnesses give testimony to what they’ve seen. They want to be believed, but they’re not preoccupied with profiting from their message.
In a world of Christian enterprises and comparison shopping, the words of the old hymn say it well:
If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, You can tell the love of Jesus, and that he died for all.
Marshall Shelley is senior editor of Leadership.
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP journal
Last Updated: September 18, 1996
