Managerial Christianity

Technique, especially in the form of managerialism, is everywhere, even in the churches. This hinders Christian resistance to the regime. But what are we to do about it?

55. Managerial Christianity

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5

Οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἀποδιορίζοντες ψυχικοί Πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες — “It is these who set up divisions, worldly people [lit. the soulless], devoid of the Spirit.” Jude 19

“Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

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The Protestant churches in North America have a problem. I am firmly of the belief that we are entering, or are already in, a period of hostility against the church. It is going to intensify. I expect some form of hard persecution will be coming.

Aaron Renn

has argued convincingly that this shift in attitude is happening in a piece he wrote for First Things:

We are not ready for this new reality.

We need to know what time it is.

We are not ready because of the ways in which we as a church have adapted ourselves to the culture around us. In many ways, we were undone by our desire to fulfill the Great Commission. We have sought to grow churches. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. All is not as it seems, though.

I have been a pastor myself. The pressure is immense to have a “successful” church. In our society, “success” largely means numbers, facilities and quantifiables. It means better systems and organization. Better facilities. Better programing. Better production quality. There are even systems and methods for quantifying the health of your congregation. I was neck deep into this when I was in ministry. I helped reorganize the organizational chart, getting rid of the committee in favor of project based teams. Yes, we did project based teams in my church. And it did work.

It was the late 90’s. The management consultant was king. I devoured Tom Peters’ writings like they were gospel. Looking back, you can see what he was trying to do. A manger working within managerial culture in an effort to return agency to people. I will still pull out his “The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence” or “The Pursuit of Wow!” from time to time for inspiration in my own business. Now I am basically a one man consultancy hyper-focused on providing excellent customer service. At that time, fresh out of seminary, I was intent to use the very best management thinking to bring renewal to moribund and tradition bound churches. Now, almost 20 years removed from my days in ministry, I can see how wrong I was and what has become of it as a result. Today, megachurches are everywhere. There are now over 100 giga-churches with weekly worship attendance of over 10,000. About 1 in 10 Protestants in the US attend a megachurch.

So what is the problem? Isn’t growing the church what Jesus wanted us to do? Are we not missional in nature as a church? There is a difference between God’s mission and our mission to build successful churches. When you look at their campuses, the architecture tells much of the story. They look like corporate headquarters. And they are run like corporations. They are built and run using technique. Technique, as we have learned elsewhere, takes an embedded process or culture, analyzes it, breaks it down, abstracts it, refines it and turns it into a repeatable process. Thus we see the advent of the seeker friendly church, and the emergence of church growth methods like the “Willow Creek Model.” There are now numerous models that can be used, books that can be read, and consultants who can be hired. Along side of this there are also countless para-church organizations and a whole host of consulting and outsourcing service providers for almost any kind of conceivable ministry or ministry activity.

To be fair, these models and systems can be very successful. It is like the formula for producing a boy band for pre-teen girls. You can employ the formula again and again, producing hit after hit. Because these churches run on technique and, as we have discussed elsewhere, technique is ambivalent, it does not care, there will be good effects and there will be bad effects. Look at these large campuses with 10,000 attending the Sunday worship event and it is hard to argue with the results. But at what cost? The need to make church open and welcoming, to meet seekers where they are at, often means that the content is emptied of anything challenging or discomforting. You get contemporary pop songs mixed with dramas and a talk that is all about helping you live your life. Your life will be awesome with Jesus! And when you see the collection of people in attendance, they often seem to be part of the “cool kids” crowd. Who wouldn’t want to go to church where the cool kids go?

But as we have discussed elsewhere, “the medium is the message.” The fact of the church as technique is more important than the choice of songs or the content of the sermons, although these are also shaped and determined by exigencies of technique as well. Here is the thing: everything is subordinated to the method. Yes, people are getting baptized. This is good to see. God does use these churches. But this is church as a technology. It is managerial from top to bottom. It is guided by corporate style vision and mission statements. There is a plan, a system, a method. Often this method is portable, in that it has been tried, tested and refined elsewhere and is now being employed in new situations, like an ISO 9000 quality control program. Gather the Six Sigma black belts and cut them loose in the church. It uses market research and is customer, “seeker” focused. It gives great power. But the power comes from technique. That is why technique is pursued and implemented. It is a material solution to a question, a problem, a task, that is largely spiritual in nature. In the end, it turns church into just another business, peddling just another product. The product is “Christianity.” We as Christians are now in the “solutions” business.

Why does this matter? Again, as we have discussed elsewhere, one of the things that has happened as the church retreated or was pushed out of the public spaces into the realm of the private, where its role would be that of a personal, private satisfaction, is that the religious void left behind in the public realm was filled by the state. All societies have at their core a religion or an idea that functions like a religion. As Christianity found its place in the realm of private life, the great idea of “human progress” filled the void left behind. This idea was buttressed by rise of the managerial state. Even though it is driven by the religious idea of “progress,” managerialism largely claims that the world is material, that matter is all there is. There are no gods. There certainly isn’t any God like the Christians claim there to be. It is up to us as human beings to engineer and manage society on its way to its utopian future. But this stated materialism masks the religious impulse of “progress” which drives the whole thing. What really gives it solidity is that the managerial state moves in to replace the old metaphysical reality of the “hierarchy of being” which once enframed Christian society. Now the metaphysical reality is provided by the state itself. The managerial state, claiming technical materialism, becomes at once both god and religion.

Why is this important for a discussion of Christianity in North America and the broad embrace of managerialism within the churches? We must understand, that many of the smaller churches implement the same things they see in the larger churches, even if they cannot make the plans and systems work the same for themselves. Almost every church has endured a “visioning” session, or has engaged in a renewal process. Most use some plan recommended by the denominational head office. There will be experts and consultants who will come out to assist in the process. All with the goal of making the church a “success.” The church must grow! It is God’s mission! Managerialism is at its heart a materialist solution for improving society. Churches, by welcoming managerialism, become another aspect of the great societal march to a managed utopia. They embrace the telos that is implicit in technical solutions. In other words, we can usher in church utopia by means of the application of technique to the organizational church.

The church growth movement has all the dynamics and characteristics of the implementation of a utopian ideology, which is essentially what technique and technical thinking is. You “cast vision” of the successful church, buttressing it with a liberal dose of biblical God-speak. You will point to other large churches who have achieved church utopia, that can be seen as examples of “successful” churches. They have world class production qualities for their praise music which is perfectly programmed to reach people where they are at, giving the “seeker” the music that they want to hear. They have cafes. They have gymnasiums. They have lush park-like setting for their “campuses.” There are children’s worship centers. There are educational facilities. They employ numerous staffers. This is where we are headed, they tell us. Even if we are told that the renewal process in our church is supposed to be a bottom up process emerging from the people, because of mimetic desire we all end up wanting the successful megachurch, don’t we? So, of course, this becomes the model that is embraced. The motivated core group which earnestly desires church “renewal” now faces the task of getting “buy in” from all the members of the congregation. Dissenters? They are pushed aside or left behind.

Like all utopian movements, the “glorious future” justifies the cost that must be paid to enter the future. The present and the past must be swept away to make room for the future. And the future cannot be realized unless the present and past, tradition, are swept away. In the name of the “Great Commission,” the church growth and renewal movement has fully embraced progressivism by embracing technique. Tradition must be attacked and undermined. The embrace of technique is an embrace of the character of the ideology of technique. The technical is not neutral. It has its positives and its negatives and they come together. The church growth movement has used them like they are neutral tools which can be given Christian content. That is a mistake. The true content is the techniques themselves and not the Christian context in which they are applied. The techniques shape and determine the character and nature of the church. Understanding this, the widespread use of technique has made churches increasingly materialist and progressive. They are becoming another part of “the state” writ large with its drive to achieve utopia. As such, they will become increasingly progressive in their theology and their politics because they now run on the same operating system as the state.

Why is this important to understand? What are the political implications? I have argued that because the technical administrative state in all its forms, in government, business, NGOs, and non-profits has taken on a metaphysical role in society, enframing us within the technical —within which we live and move and have our being— that our essential battle is a religious conflict. We are not merely trying to topple a government or stamp out an ideology. We are essentially battling a usurper god to the Living God. Looking at it purely in a practical, material, sense, you cannot fight the managerialism of the state with Christian managerialism. You just end up with more or different managerialism. The medium is the message. It could be argued that Managerial Christianity, because of its embrace of technique, has already chosen its side in the coming conflict. It has chosen the ways of the regime.

Christians, if they wish to resist the regime, must do Christian things in Christian ways. Christian institutions must be distinctly Christian. What does this mean?

As I discussed recently in my piece on NETTR, Christians draw their power from the same source that fed the 5,000 and fed the 4,000.

The Ongoing NETTR Discussion: Agency and Authority

Essentially, the argument is that for us to topple the “god,” the metaphysical reality that is the technical administrative state, we must be deeply immersed in the source, the transcendent supernatural God whose power fed the 5,000 and the 4,000. The same God who led Israel out of Egypt. The same God who fought the Midianites with Gideon as his front man. The same God who brought down Jericho. The same God who used a shepherd boy named David to bring down a giant (a Nephilim?). You get the idea. Ours will be a clash of powers, a fight between gods. Our faith is that the God of gods reigns supreme. With every passing day, I believe more and more that this will be the character and energy of our fight:

Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

But we are not these people. The underlying message of our embrace of technique to grow churches is that we really don’t trust God. We say all the right things, but we have placed our faith in technique. We are:

“having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

We are a people without the Spirit. We are the ψυχικοί, worldly people, people without soul, without Spirit. We have, in many ways, quenched the Spirit’s fire. We say all the right things. But mostly we live like we are philosophical materialists, that God is the watchmaker. He made everything, set it in motion, but is distant, in the background. We don’t really expect him to engage us in our lives.

So what are we talking about here? Some kind of “Pentecostal” revival? Perhaps. Or, is it rather some sort of mysticism? Perhaps. What I see is some kind of both/and amalgamation of the best characteristics of the two streams. Ever since the “New Prophecy” movement that began in the 170’s —yes, we must remember that our faith tradition stretches back that far— the institutional church has struggled with the wildness of Holy Spirit movements. There is no denying that spiritual realities are dangerous and the evil one has power and can deceive. Discernment is often hard. In the main, the church has tended to lean on scripture, the teaching of the church, and the apostolic succession as embodied in the hierarchy of the church rather than on the direct power and move of the Spirit. The Spirit works, but always indirectly through the above means.

With the Protestant Reformation, in order to combat the corruption in the hierarchy and teachings which it saw as a distortion of the gospel as presented in scripture, it developed and leaned into the teaching of “sola scriptura.” Within my own Reformed tradition there even grew up a theological argument for “cessationism,” essentially arguing that things like the gifts of the Spirit, including prophecy, were a unique feature of the ministry of Jesus and the apostles and stopped once the church was established and we were able to collect the writings of the apostles.

There are problems with both teachings. With sola scriptura, you really have no mechanism with which to resolve disputes between differing interpretations. If scripture is its own authority, the only authority, you quickly run into the problem of the interpreter. With the Bible, as a written means of communication, you are very quickly confronted with the reality that words and their meanings are not connected. The conveyance of meaning is always a challenging and fraught affair, never guaranteed. Misunderstandings abound. Honest disagreements over textual meaning are common. As are dishonest interpretations. How do you resolve these disputes? In the end, as I have written before, it comes down to persons, to wise trusted guides who can make a pronouncement that will then be accepted by all. But if persons are deciding between differing rational arguments made from the text of scripture, you can’t really make the claim that your faith is grounded solely on the text of the scriptures.

Myth, Originalism and Natural Law

So what is our faith grounded on then? Perhaps a bigger problem I see is that practically it tends to turn the Bible into an object of study, an end unto itself. You will hear people say all the time that they try to conform their lives to scripture. But the scriptures are not, as Augustine argued, themselves a “thing.” They are but a “sign” that points to the true “thing,” that is, God himself. Once you point this out to people, though, they are quick to acknowledge that is what they mean. Of course scripture points us to God. But in practice, it is quite common to treat scripture like it kind of stops there, with the words. The words themselves are vested with importance. They are the word of God. They are the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, the apostolic witness. In practice, though, we tend treat the Bible very similar to the deist idea of God as watchmaker. God gave us his word, and then he sort of retreats from our direct experience. The Bible is a special book, given by God, but we read it as a material object, something special, God given, but at the same time inert, in which the meanings God placed there must be exhumed through interpretive techniques and methodologies. In many ways, there is a strong comparison in how we read scripture to how we grow churches.

In regards to cessationism, as noted above, the church as institution has always had an uneasy relationship with those who claim to manifest the gifts of the Spirit. How do we know they are authentic? How do we know they are not being deceived by the evil one? What of those who claim that evidence of the gifts are proof of authentic salvation? All of these are valid concerns. And there are more. What of its place in ordinary worship? If I don’t see evidence of the gifts in my life, does this mean I am a lesser Christian, or not saved at all? I understand the temptation to want to make things simple and just argue that this was a feature of the apostolic age, no longer needed now that we have scriptures. But given the nature of the conflict and the opponent faced in the regime, now is not a time to shy away from things because they are hard. I believe it is on this specific issue that our resistance hangs. If we are to emerge on the other side with anything close to a victory, it will be because we gave real attention to this problem in particular.

We will not prevail because we are better organized or have more money. The question hangs on the scientific skepticism of the liberal enlightenment. Is there a God if you can’t prove there is a God? The “big bang.” Evolution. What of the postulatory atheism of Marx? Or Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead” and we killed him? How do we answer these questions? How do we challenge the materialist atheism of the regime? How do we challenge the power that technique and machine can harness? How do we amass the kinds of money to challenge the trillions at regime’s disposal?

We don’t. But the one thing we can offer is a real alternative to the empty materialism of the technical world which enfolds and enframes us. Many are looking for church to be the means by which they can secure the kind of life which our society tells us to want. Happy. Prosperous. Healthy. Fun. The kind of life you see on TV. It can be all yours with Jesus and church. We substitute the easy emotional experiences of rock concert like Sunday morning events for the challenging work of prayer. We want messages which “inspire” or “feed” us. The problem is that we are looking for the experience as an end, a goal. It becomes a substitute for the thing itself. Every spiritual journey begins as an intense experience. This is the nature of conversion and faith. For most, it is intense and real. We love that feeling. Most of us want to hold on to it for as long as we can. But the feeling is not the thing itself. The spirituals all tell us that at some point in our journey, God will pull back the sensations and feelings. You will feel nothing. God will have brought you into the desert. What will you do now? Will you pursue God himself without any feedback? Without feelings? Will you stay the course? Will you still do the work of prayer, the word, worship and service? What if our society is wandering in desert?

The purpose of the enframing of the technical world, if it can be given an intent, is to cut us off from God. In that regard, our first and primary act of resistance is to connect ourselves to the real presence of God, to genuinely participate in the divine essence.

“…he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature…” 2 Peter 1:4

θεός - λόγος “theos” - “logos” “God” - “word”

Theology. We generally, especially in the west, think of this word as meaning something along the lines of “words about God” or “talk about God.” And so we have invested significant effort in talking about God. Scripture, as the written word, becomes a natural data set of words for our analysis. This is why the idea of a closed canon is so important. Not all words are proper words about God. The canonical books of the Bible as the acknowledged “words from God” naturally become the source from which we properly and rightly form “words about God.” This is why a spiritual gift like prophesy becomes complicated for some. If this is really a word from God, is it on the same level as scripture? This is not a light question with an easy answer. Does a God given word of prophesy today undermine the very idea of scripture? Of theology?

“Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.” 1 Corinthians 12:1-2

This opening to Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts struck me as odd for a long time. Then I realized that he was drawing a contrast between our God and all other gods, including the technical administrative state. Their gods are mute idols. Our God is not. Our God is the God who speaks, who speaks through his Spirit.

“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” 1 Corinthians 2:10b-13

What Paul is saying here that it is the Spirit of God who draws us into the presence of God and ministers to us the very heart of God, who teaches us the deep essence of God himself. The analogy here is between us as persons and God as the divine person. Think of knowing a friend, a spouse. When you know that thing that makes them uniquely them, that is shared with no one else, is there even a language for that? That is the “language” we are being taught. The language of the very essence of God himself, a language beyond words.

This is the language of wisdom. This is the language of the Spirit. This is the teaching that will inform you in the moment as to whether or not you should correct the fool or not. In this sense, “theology” is not so much “words about God,” but rather “words to God” or better “words with God.” Or maybe the true content of theology is those Spirit-taught words which cannot be translated. You can meet and know God, but like seeing the essence of your spouse, this knowledge is part of your union with the divine essence. Prayer is the heart of theology. We enter the Holy of Holies to participate in the divine essence, the divine nature. We speak with God about spiritual realities with Spirit taught words.

We look at the rational parsing of the words of scripture as the ground of theology. But theology is so much more. The words of scripture are, as Augustine taught us, not things unto themselves, but rather they are signs which point us and lead us into the divine presence. The ground of theology is not scripture, but the essence of God himself, from which the words of scripture come. God grounds our faith. God grounds our knowledge. He is the substance of our prayers. We experience God as the ground, the datum for knowledge, but not the knowledge of the technical, rational world. It is a knowledge that can use words, but at the same time does not seek to contain God within words. Just as with the essence of all persons, so too with God. There is something beyond words. Yet it is a reality that can be communicated to us with Spirit-taught words.

The regime claims that such things are not possible. They would deny them to us. And, yet, look all around. See the lost. See the lonely. People hunger for meaning. For purpose. For God. And not some knock off substitute for God. They want the real thing. God’s promises remain:

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13

This is the ground, the foundation, the source of our faith, our life, our knowledge and even our resistance to the regime. Even if it is never toppled, we can still be islands of resistance, islands of refuge. Elsewhere in our circles you are urged to lift and to eat well. This is all good. But even more than that, you should pray. You can become a theologian, someone who talks with God. The regime tells you such things are impossible. They will mock you for it. But this is where it begins. This is how you topple the god that we know as “the administrative state.” You make sanctuaries for the living God in your heart, mind and spirit. You make sanctuaries for the living God within communities of believers. The work of resistance is the work of prayer. Theology. Words with God.