Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raising Them Right at Church and Change":
C&C takes a capital intensive approach instead of a labor intensive one. The cost spirals out of control as they make one high-risk maneuver after another saying God will provide the means. This is testing God as much as the Devil telling Christ to jump off the temple mount.
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GJ - That is a good point, one which I have been thinking about. Lately I have been reading books about the tycoons of the 19th century: Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan. Rockefeller and Carnegie owed much of their success to looking at costs, down to the penny. Rockefeller figured out how many rivets to put on a kerosene can and saved millions by reducing the total. Carnegie knew how much a steel factory cost to run, so he could calculate profits. Both were far ahead of their time in using statistics and paring costs (often at the expense of the workers, the competition, and the public).
We have just seen an era where the facts did not matter in regard to stock prices or home values. Illegals were getting mortgages and flipping houses in six months. I remembered someone who went bankrupt doing that in another era of hot housing, so I was not tempted - not that I could have done it anyway.
The old way of running a denomination and a congregation was to count the pennies. Mischke's entire operation consisted of an office at NPH with his wife Gladys as his secretary. That was not long ago. But he and Gurgel built a kingdom at The Love Shack with Thrivent, Schwan, and offering money.
I served in two congregations with very good incomes for their time. No one would have imagined me going to a distant conference one month plus flying to another one the next month. Ski and Glende did that, with others still in hiding. Nor could I have published a parish bulletin which lied about where I was going and what I was doing. Glende's bulletin misled his congregation both times by omitting all the key information, such as where and what. And the money spent! Mercy.
When the big money rolls in, common sense goes out the window. As the writer says above, the concept suggests that money will replace labor. A wise pastor wrote me that pastoral conferences (Hybels, Beeson, Driscoll, Sweet, Stetzer, Stanley, Groeschel, et al.) come from congregations reaching a plateau. Their new money-raising phase is incredibly greedy - "Come spend a few days with us and we will share our secrets."
I went to a Church Growth conference in Columbus because a Lutheran lay leader asked me to report on it. I counted about $60,000 in fees, not to mention the books sales. Many were leaving with 10 books in their arms and a glassy look in their eyes. Selling dreams is a great gig. One of my students goes to events like that just to get pumped up, but he leaves his wallet, checkbook, and cash at home.
The Church and Chicaneries are all addicts of these mirages. Certainly a few of them have learned to prostitute themselves and adulterate the Word enough to look good to others. When they adulterate the Word and offer coaching instead of the Gospel, they attract rich adulterers who purr at their words. Nevertheless, they all end up buying Hell when they could have heaven for free.
I have seen the glassy eyes so many times, it makes me sick to think about it. A District Mission Board chair (LCA, then another in WELS) crows about "people moving into this zip code," because Fuller told them that was the key to a growing church. Get in there and spent a hunk of dough, but spend it at Fuller first, then go back for refresher courses at Fuller. And send some of your people, so the underlings are up to speed.
I have talked to people who listened to Paul Y. Cho, a creepy guy so deep into the occult that he would have been burned at the stake in better times. No matter what I said, the addict would murmur, "But he was so exciting and inspirational." Yes, bow down to me and all this will be yours.
The Church Shrinkers have all gotten high on the Kool-Aid. Now their names are coming out in the open. Using money as their substitute for trusting in the Word, they have enjoyed the good things of life while dogs licked the oozing sores of Lazarus. The Church and Chicanery gang need a confession of sin and a battery of criminal lawyers, a veritable Dream Team for their Mission Vision.
