Have you ever heard these scriptures preached in church?
The lack of money is the root of all evil
Seek ye first all the wealth of the world, and it's luxuries, for the Kingdom of God shall be added to you.
The weapons of our warfare are carnal through the legislation of righetousness, the election of the Republicans, big homeschooled families with vouchers, "blab it and grab it", and damage control orchestrated by spiritualized spin doctors when scandal and sin happens within Christianity.
In many churches today, the answer is "no" when thinking in a verbal mode, but in a sense of reality by sensing the environment and atmosphere present, the answer is "yes". Why? The answer is very simple. The church has gone corporate. In most churches today, the leaders and board members that run our churches also by their respective careers, run our corporations. Is this wrong in and of itself? Not necessarily. But running a church and running a Fortune 500 corporation is two completely different and seperate entities. In one realm of light, a church can not be ran like a corporation. In another realm of thought, a corporation can not be ran like a church. What was the primary influences that made the church become more corporate than it was spiritual?
Very Simple: More numbers and More money!
In the 1980's, scandal of sexual, spiritual, and finacial matters shook the foundations of the church. Where the church should have admitted these failures and addressed them, they decided instead to call the news media "secular humanistic devils", ridicule the pastors in sin instead of counseling them through repentance, and because some of these pastors brought in tons of money and numbers to their respective denominations, the church tried to justify the sin as "not as bad as it seems". It was here that church attendance (ie: numbers and money) dropped drastically and the grand designs built to house thousands only housed hundreds and were forced to sell and move to smaller buildings. Even Philip Yancey, in his book "What's So Amazing About Grace" stated that when he witnessed to people about Jesus, most people did not want to talk about becoming Christian. When that person rejected God, the two main reasons were: "(1): If the people at PTL can not live according to the Scriptures, how do they have the nerve to expect me to live by the scriptures? and (2): I do not want to be one of those Jerry Falwell self-righetous Moral Majority bigots?" The same spin doctored statements and methodoligies that huge corporations use to cover up such issues as: (1): Abuse and oppression of the repetitive-labor blue collar sector; (2): Hiding known product defects because it's cheaper to let a person have a "freak" accident and die rather than recall the product, fix the defect, and lose "respect and customer loyality" (still numbers and money) to the brand name; and (3): Implement revisionist history through gag orders and prepared statements to avoid a sexual harrassment judgement; used these same practices and tactics to operate the church and attempt to cover the church (actually immoral and crooked church leaders) from being exposed of their sins. Such similar tactics used in the church were: (1): To the non-leadership within a congregation: "Touch Not Mine Annointed, or you will live in the wilderness for forty years due to your complaining and grumbling." (2): If our misguided ideologies made into theologies caused one truly annointed Christian to leave and stumble, but we gain ten dysfunctional and non-productive Christians, we still win because we are a net +9 in numbers and money; and (3): There is sin within our leadership, but "You, the body cannot talk about it to anyone especially other Christians at other churches and the secular news media, and this also apples amongst yourselves" (a manipulation tactic). While all this time, the world has come to the conclusion that "Gee, I thought the church was supposed to be different than the world, but they appear to be worse than the world". Then we re-backlashed at the world without realizing that the world is sometimes smarter than we think they are.
Few churches saw the error of their ways (either through exposure and/or realization of a possible problem) and repented for this arrogant and oppressive attitude and did a complete turn around back to the throne room of God. Some churches said "Thank God it's not us" while continuing to deny that the corporate mentality exists in their churches today. However, many churches did see the error of their ways and made a legitimate attempt to apply a stop-gap, corrective/preventive action to rectify their problem of corporate churches. Unfortunately, these stop-gaps proved ineffective as more people (along with their more money) made their exodus out of the church for good or to another church with the same corporate mentalities in action. Seeing the declines in attendance and offerings, what was implemented to attempt to rectify this problem? A re-packaged, restructured, streamlined, and so-called more efficent version of what they had that went wrong. What did it take to re-implement this new, but refried old plan not found by prayer, fasting, and reading of the Word?
Very Simple: Even More numbers and Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money!
Yes, many churches decided to go corporate again. Instead of the hardball mentalities that existed in the past, those churches took another approach to reach the same means of becoming corporate. The church became more like a Multi-Level-Marketing model of business (as known as; MLM, and "pyramid schemes" Amway is a good example of MLM in action. Many MLM schemes involve the selling of personal products such as hygene care and vitamins. In fact, MLM is very popular among Christians who are very deeply rooted either charismatic, renewal, or Word of Faith Theology or with women who are "stay-at-home" moms but sell Amway, Tupperware, or Avon at night. The "get rich quick" mentality of the MLM along with the "being on top of the pyramid" concept really appeals to people who practice the charismatic, renewal, or Word of Faith theologies.). In a basic MLM structure, the pastor (sometimes the founder) of the church is at the top of the pyramid. Underneath the pastor is the rest of the paid specialist ministers and remaining staff. Under the paid specialist ministers/staff is the deacons/elders/operations board. Under the deacons/elders/operations board is the volunteer support ministry leaders (ushers, musicians, womens/mens ministries). Under the volunteer support staff is the congregation. Under the congregation is the visitors and unsaved. A pictoral diagram of the "Christianized MLM" is drawn below:
