Should we ever think of the church as a business?

I love spreadsheets! I tell people all the time that my love language is spreadsheets, and if I ever have something I don’t understand, I put it in a spreadsheet, then it all becomes clear. When it comes to being a part of the church, almost everything can fit in a spreadsheet. Attendance, baptisms, prayer requests and of course all things financial. They all belong in a spreadsheet. I want to be upfront with everyone, I am not a spreadsheet expert. I know just enough to be dangerous. I think so many things are easier with spreadsheets, and everyone should know at least a bare minimum amount about spreadsheets if they want to understand how things work. The issue with thinking this way is that sometimes things become a number and they shouldn’t be thought of that way. People become a formula on a spreadsheet instead of someone that needs attention. The other issue you can run into with people is that you can easily replace one number with another. So, if your goal is to have 100 people in attendance every Sunday, it doesn’t matter who it is, it only matters that the number is at 100 or above when you look at it. So many easy to point out flaws that you really don’t have an answer for. I remember hearing a story years ago about a church that was fighting about whether they should be using a piano in church. The argument got so bad that finally people started hiding the piano so it couldn’t be used. It escalated so badly, that finally they found a place to hide the piano where no one could find it. Years later they finally found it, it was sitting in the baptismal. That story is supposed to be a joke about what happens when we focus on something other than loving people. You can take out the word piano and put in so many other words. The church is often guilty of focusing on something other than doing God’s work. Most of us that have been going to church for a long time know about the great commission. We know that Jesus, right before going to heaven told his disciples to go and make disciples. We also know that we are supposed love God and love our neighbor. If all we ever did were things that had to do with one of those three things, we would be a good Christian. Still not perfect, but I believe people would view us as successful. So, what happens that makes us lose focus on loving people? I think sometimes we lose focus on loving people just like as parents we lose focus on what is most important to our kids. They want time and attention; we give them the newest gadget and tell them we don’t have time to spend with them because we must work. We justify it by saying that we are working to pay for the necessities. No one can argue that we must have food and shelter. As a church, do we do the same thing? We need somewhere to meet, and we must pay for the lights to be on. Someone must preach, so we must pay for that. So how often do we need to look at the church as a business? If we can’t pay our bills, we can’t show love to people or work on the great commission.  Years ago, I think the secular business world made a change. They started looking at the church and other non-profit organizations to see what they could use to help them run their business’s better. They realized that loving the people that worked for them helped them to work harder. They started listening to the needs of the people. The church turned around and started to wonder what they could learn from the business world. So, is the church a business? A lot of older Christians like to make the argument that the church isn’t a building, the people are the church. I understand that, but I also understand that parents aren’t going to allow their kids to come to a place where background checks haven’t been done on the adults who are working with their kids. They want cameras and computers set up, so they know that their kids are safe. People now more than ever want to be able to go online and find out what that specific church believes. All those things are things that a business would do. So, now what? First, the church needs to understand that times have changed. The days when someone stood up at the front of the church and said something and everyone just automatically believed are over. We are at a point where some churches have full-time security. The church needs to do a better job of acknowledging that safety is a number one priority just to walk into the church. If you want someone to no longer feel lost, then you have to make sure that they feel safe. Second, some older Christians have to know that the church is a business. We must do everything we can to make sure that we are making good decisions, to make sure that the doors never close. Lastly, no matter how many things we can point out about the church being a business, the number one goal still must be loving people. Jesus gave us very specific instructions to go and make disciples. We can’t ignore that! Lost people are not numbers on a spreadsheet, they are God’s children! We need to listen to them, we need to love them!