Breaking the church cycle?
Is the current church structure relevant to today’s society? Are the silos that we gather in relevant to today? Is the church slowly going the way of the buffalo, pushed to the margins of society, no longer important enough to make a difference? These are some of the questions I and others I associate with have been discussing in light of the current church climate.
I believe the current church setup with a single person or even a leadership team is a setup that creates a vicious cycle. It starts with people meeting together as a church and then, as membership grows, there must be consideration on how to keep the lights on and the pastor(s) paid. When enough people have been added, they need a new building or even multiple buildings. Once expansion has occurred, then a certain amount of tithing, books sales, and conferences need to happen in order to keep everything running smoothly. As the church grows, an increase in revenue is needed. More people are needed to provide the tithe, buy the books, and attend the conferences. My question is where does it stop?
In most cases, I believe church leaders are earnest in their desire when asking people to come to their church to encounter God. I think where we go astray from this is when we treat the church like a business. The current church set up does not set up a leader for success from a spiritual perspective and can create snares to living a Christ-like life.
How can we as prophetic people make an impact in this landscape? I believe we can impact those new to the faith by casting vision— speaking to their future and destinies as followers of Christ. This includes reminding them, and ourselves, of our freedom to pursue who God has created us to be. This will help to remove the onus to meet all the spiritual needs of a believer that has been put on the church. By speaking the destiny of a person and prophesying it to that person, in truth and love, I believe it awakens ownership of that destiny. In Philippians, Paul writes to the believers in Philippi to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:11).
With this call to pursue your own relationship with God and not relationship by proxy, we can start to remove that desire by churches to be the end all be all for followers of the faith. Please understand, I agree that we should not forsake fellowship with other believers, as fellowship serves to strengthen our community and gives God the opportunity to show how the fruits of the spirit work practically, not just in theory. The times when we gather with hundreds of others should be special times where we experience God together and see Him work mightily in and through those who are present. After this awe-inspiring gathering, we go back to our smaller communities and continue the good work in our areas of impact and strengthen each other in these endeavors which include becoming more like Him.
A prophetic community can help break the current church cycle in setting people free and calling out the destinies therein. I don’t have an answer yet on what the church should look like. What I do know is that we are each responsible for our actions and, more importantly, our pursuit of Him. In this pursuit, God will gather like-minded people so we can support each other in callings. We can speak words of encouragement, wisdom, and love.
