How's Your Church Been Treating You?

Dear Auditors:

The problem with welcoming doorways is how they work both ways—if it’s easy to get in, it’s easy to get out. In the 1980s and ‘90s, the seeker-sensitive megachurch offered a slow and gentle ramp extended to the unchurched. The goal was to make the church experience less churchy and more in line with an individual’s secular tastes. Narthexes became Welcome Centers, Sanctuaries became Worship Centers, and pastors traded clerical collars or suits and ties for waffle henleys and denim. Sunday School became Life Groups, and traditional liturgies were traded for motivational sing-alongs followed by self-improvement lectures.

On the one hand, it worked extremely well. The gathering crowds dwarfed the attendance at more traditional churches, and it appeared the megachurch, with its economy of scale and high production value, quickly outstripped the modest accouterments of neighborhood and community congregations. Few of these massive, quick-growing institutions owned the fact that most of their attendees were not the previously unchurched, but rather refugees from smaller congregations being decimated by the draw of high-energy, high-tech, high-feel-good experience. The primary draw wasn’t the easy bar of secular familiarity, but the low-bar expectation. Congregational ownership and institutional participation were outsourced to an elite few, and the dirty business of institutional maintenance was no longer in the hands of the members. It worked great, until it didn’t.

Unfortunately, low accountability resulted in high costs for the institutional underwriters. The initial investors believed their start-up donations to be seed money, anticipating that as the congregations grew, attendees would gradually share the cost of operations. But low-expectation environments attracted a pool of participants who felt liberated from the institutional pressures to contribute. Many had arrived from smaller churches facing the fiscal stress of big buildings with shrinking membership. Keeping the lights on had become a continual battle; worn out and burned out, they found flashy crowded churches with shiny new buildings to be a welcome relief. 

Seeing the business model as unsustainable, church executives realized they needed to spend more time talking about money, and less time sharing a relaxed welcome, that’s when the swing of the doors became a little tighter. Some preachers defaulted to a prosperity gospel, teaching that deeper levels of good feeling were only possible through higher levels of contributed cash. Others worked to control more and more of their members’ personal lives, hoping to capture not only their religious benevolence but also every last entertainment dollar. Often hiding behind class fees or retreat encounters, some even mutated into spiritual pyramid schemes, where each level of community honor required an increased charge for participation fees. All of them resorted to some form of shame/manipulation, at best telling people not to let the church down, at worst communicating how only those who gave enough were good enough.  

Meanwhile, the founding principle of a low-expectation church morphed from the religious seekers to their institutional overlords. With unchecked power and unaudited process, megachurch leaders set off an epidemic of scandals resulting in several high-profile resignations, with many retaining substantial severance packages. Whistleblowers also were shown the back door, after signing non-disclosure agreements for fear they would shatter the front-facing, feel-good vibe.

None of this is new. Medieval church leaders found themselves strapped for cash, having undertaken the massive construction projects of European cathedrals as well as this foreign mission program called the Crusades. Cantilevered for cash, they found new ways to milk the faithful in the name of God’s eternal kingdom, when in the end they were only funding private temporal empires. Corruption and manipulation gave way to cries for Reformation. The cycle has occurred again and again throughout the history of the church. When left unchecked, what starts as evangelism can devolve into exploitation.

As one former megachurch employee wrote on Reddit:

They put up a wall of flat screen TVs behind the main stage in the sanctuary so that they could have cool digital backgrounds while the band played. They did this just before Advent (Christmas season) started. Then, in our December staff meeting, the head pastor asked us all to pray really hard that the congregation would find the generosity to give and make up the $1 million shortfall in the budget.

And another former megachurch member from the same thread:

The main pastor a couple of weeks ago posted that anybody who showed up in person or online for their Sunday service would get a gift from the church valuing anywhere from $150-$150,000, because with inflation we’re all struggling and could use the help. Since I knew the church had a pretty large congregation and substantial finances, I thought they might actually be giving back to people. So, I reached out to some of my friends who I knew were struggling and gave them a heads up. What an opportunity for outreach and an understanding of the needs of your congregation, right? Nope. The ‘gift’ was a code to use on Dave Ramsey’s website for Financial Peace University.

I share this musing as a cautionary tale. Following worship on the last Sunday in February, we will be doing something we do every year—hold our annual meeting. While only current active members may participate in voice and vote, everyone is invited, and our Annual Report will be available to anyone who requests it. In that document you will find not only a narrative review of our facility management, programmed events and shared mission, but also a detailed financial accounting for how our funds were spent and distributed during 2024. Members will even vote to approve my compensation, including expense accounts, housing allowance and benefits. As in the past, we will publish the names of those who pledged toward operations and missions, unless anonymity is requested, but the names are listed alphabetically, not clustered by size, nor do we flag those who gave less than their pledged amount. The list is intended as an expression of gratitude, not an opportunity to shame or brag.

I also provide written reports each meeting to our Session, outlining the use of my time each month and highlighting my joys and concerns at each meeting. I appreciate the scrutiny, not because I am untrustworthy but because I respect their leadership, and your selection of them to serve as Elders.

In what may be the first book written in what became the New Testament, the Apostle Paul concluded his First Letter to the Church of Thessalonica with these words:

…[W]e appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form (some translate as, abstain from even the appearance) of evil. (I Thessalonians 5:12-22 NRSVUE)

This is neither a gentle ramp of welcome nor a manipulation of faithful hearts. It is an invitation for us to encourage one another while holding each other accountable as we, by the Spirit, “test everything,” wherever we sit on Sunday.

Praying always that we never become jerks, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor