The Focused Church<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Dr. Randy White
 
Rethinking Church, Part Eight
In my last article in the Rethinking Church series, I shared why the church calendar may be your church's worst enemy. In an effort to defeat that enemy, today I want to talk about church focus.
The activities of the church are not usually un-biblical. In most churches that I know, the calendar is filled, sometimes overflowing, with fantastic programs that minister to people of all ages and all walks of life. These programs truly are a ministry to both the members and the community. The programs are not the problem; the problem is the church as the "doer" of the programs. The modern church has gathered all Christian ministry within its doors, and in doing so has created an unfocused, unmanageable, ineffective monstrosity. What a difference focus would make!
The Problem
The problem is that over the past three or four generations the church has professionalized Christian work. That is, the church became a great ministry vacuum, sucking up all ministry in the community by insisting that it be done through the church. With each new ministry gained, the church lost more of its focus. Furthermore, in the professionalization of Christian work we have, by necessity, organized the church into a business model. When the church's focus was mainly on teaching the apostles doctrine, prayer, fellowship, and ministry, a business model was not needed within the church. As soon as the church professionalized all Christian work, however, all ministry was brought under the domain of the organized church and a business model became a practical necessity.
The solution is church focus!  Focus means reprioritizing, thus getting rid of many of the ministries which churches should have never taken up in the first place.  This article will attempt to show that ministry is more effective when it is outside the church and independent of the budget and organizational aspects of the local church.
Churches need to realize that Christian ministry does not have to be done on the church level. I am convinced that churches need to learn to give away their ministries. Churches should find ways to free the membership to serve. Many, if not most, of the ministries carried out by the church should be divested to its members who can carry them out quite effectively.
In fact, such a model of ministry was commonplace until the past few generations. Though reliable information is challenging to discover, my investigation revealed that, until post-World War II, most churches (if not all) were little more than preaching stations. I do not at all mean this in a derogatory manner, but in a very positive manner.  For generation after generation, churches had been the gathering place for believers who hear the word of God preached, minister to the saints of God gathered, and then depart for the service of God.
In fact, the best information that I can gather is that the great preachers of old, leading some of the greatest churches of all time, operated these churches almost single-handedly. Men like Charles Spurgeon, D.L. Moody, and George W. Truett led churches with thousands in attendance and yet had little staff beyond a personal secretary. What change took place so that now it is a norm for many church plants to have multiple staff before they even have a congregation? I am convinced that the church, over time, adopted ministries that were previously carried out by members outside of the church walls. For whatever reason (ego, competition, or institutionalism?) churches professionalized the ministries previously done by laymen. When you consider the examples below, you may have to come to the same conclusion that I have come to: ministry is done better when it is done by laymen outside the organization of the church!
The Sunday School
The Sunday school has become a mainstay for most Protestant and evangelical churches. In my denomination, the Sunday school is the centerpiece ministry of the local church. For most of my ministry, the only attendance ever counted or recorded was based on the Sunday school, not the worship service. But Sunday school is relatively new as a church-based program.
In England during the 1780s a Christian layman named Robert Raikes began a program of Sunday education for children. His program literally was school, including reading, writing, arithmetic, along with biblical instruction. Many of the children involved in these first Sunday Schools were working as child laborers in the factory, six days a week. Robert Raikes felt a Christian compassion to provide these children an education. Sunday School was not born by a local church, in a local church, or for a local church. It was born in the heart and mind of a Christian layman, and was carried out by like-minded laymen.  The first Sunday School had no need for church approval, funds from the church budget, space in the church building, or a church nominating committee to provide for its staff. The church was able to continue a focused ministry, and Robert Raikes and his friends were able to carry out a beautiful Christian ministry.
In the United States, the American Sunday school Union was organized in 1824. In the 1830s, the Union set a goal to "establish a Sunday school in every destitute place where it is practicable throughout the Valley of the Mississippi" within two years. Unbelievably, the union established 5,000 Sunday Schools in Mississippi in 1830s. This amounted to half of all Sunday schools in America at the time! It is recorded that over 50,000 people accepted Christ as a result of these Sunday Schools. Such tremendous Christian ministry was done without becoming an organizational burden for the local church. The Sunday School consisted of Christians doing the evangelistic work that the church called them to do during the Sunday worship services.  The old adage was completely true, "Enter to worship, depart to serve."  I submit to you that the Sunday School was one of the most effective ministries ever carried out by Christians anywhere or anytime in history.  Along the way, however, the church sensed a need to incorporate this ministry into its organizational structure, and the problems began:  now the church needed a Sunday School budget, a Sunday School Superintendent, a nominating committee to select workers, and a bell on the wall to say "Time's up!"  Soon these needs grew to a professional Minister of Youth, then a Minister of Education, and then Ministers of every age-group-all to accomplish what laymen were previously doing outside the church!  With all this addition to the church came a continuing loss of focus as the need for a business model brought the development of the CEO pastor, and the introduction of political conflict in the church.
Missions and Tract Societies
Missions and evangelism is another area in which ministries that were once carried out by Christian layman became almost exclusively a ministry carried out by the church. In 1815, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was established. This was quickly followed in 1816 by the establishment of the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society in 1825. These societies, along with many others, allowed believers from local churches to cooperate together in tremendous campaigns to spread the gospel throughout the United States, and around the world, and they were doing it without hindering the work of their local church. These ministries allowed the church to remain focused and allowed the members of the church to carry out the ministries they were gifted and equipped to lead. 
Through the years, some of Christianity's greatest ministries were started outside of the local church. Ministries like AWANA, YMCA, the Salvation Army, Youth for Christ, and Campus Crusade for Christ were all started outside the local church and carried on a ministry that would rival anything the church is doing today. One of the most impressive organizations is that of the Gideons.  Unless you came from another planet, you know of the work of the Gideons. What hotel room in America does not have the ubiquitous Gideon Bible placed conveniently in a drawer by the bed. Gideons international was both started by and continues to be organized and carried out by laymen who operate their camps without the aid of the church organization. I would venture to say that no church or denomination could have come close to accomplishing what the Gideons have accomplished through their silent but steady work.
What happened?
Through the work of these lay led ministries, untold billions of dollars were given to missions, effective biblical resources were created, and the gospel was spread throughout the world. Somewhere along the way, however, many of these tasks became denominationalized. Somewhere the church became very suspicious or even jealous of the Christian activity that took place on a local level outside of its own walls. Somewhere the church lost its focus as a preaching center for the Christian family, and determined it needed to be in Christian Ministries Clearinghouse. With each new ministry that the church adopted, it also lost a bit more of its focus. Furthermore, it developed a need for a business model in order to effectively and efficiently carry out these ministries. Now, years later, the church is a ministry institution (rather than a faith family), led by a CEO, instructed by a Board of Directors, and often beset with political infighting, jockeying for position, and enough hard feelings to spare.
What needs to happen?
I am more than convinced that the church must refocus. If the church can get back to being a preaching center, focusing its ministry on doctrine, prayer, fellowship, and the Lord's Supper, then the church can once again reap the benefits that come with focus. Infighting will cease, learning will increase, the need for the business model will disappear, and the people will be set free to become the Christian leaders that our society so desperately needs.  The church members should certainly carry out ministries under the watchful eye of their under-shepherd, the Pastor, but they do not need to carry out ministries only under the administration of their Pastor.  How wonderful it would be if the church could learn to divest itself of ministry, and free the member to minister!
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Dr. Randy white is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Katy, Texas, and the preacher on the daily radio program Word for the World. He is the author of The Antichrist and The Three Statements of Thomas. To join his mailing list and receive his free, 90 min. DVD on the Antichrist, click here.