Rant on the woes of ministry
I wonder how often this happens. A church service is held that is neither educational nor an exhortation to goodness. Rather, the service is put on by certain professionals going through the motions to earn a living.
Humans are fantastically inflexible in their religious tastes. Most people connect religious belief to deeply held social relationships. Furthermore, modern religions (after 500BC) deal mostly with the deeper existential questions. Where did it all come from? What is the purpose of it all? Given this, how then should we live? And finally, where will it all end up? These are the big questions and people usually don't change them. Religious demand is incredibly unmoving.
Therefore you can do exactly what I am wondering about. You can do a service that is neither educational nor an exhortation to good deeds, and people will still come. You will still get paid. Therefore, money is made by controlling the supply, not the demand. What you find is a system of professionals who pat each other on the back as though there is education or exhortation going on. In reality there is little of either. Most of what is said is already well known to the listeners and has long been absorbed and incorporated into their lives. They aren't learning things. Furthermore, Dallas Willard observed in his ministry that he did a lot of work that didn't seem to do any good. Specifically, he noticed that people basically lived the same as everyone around them. People don't appear to overcome temptations and in many cases don't want to.
Research also shows that there are religious demand niches. Any society will have people that fit into all of these. What sets these apart is how much cost it requires to be part of the religious life they entail. Some groups will be very expensive and place many requirements. On the other extreme, some groups will be hard to distinguish from nonreligious groups. The range is Ultra Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Strict, and Ultra Strict.
One thing that interests me when it comes to Christian groups is the lack of honesty about what the Bible clearly says. Strict groups can't seem to make up enough extra rules that are nowhere in the Bible. Jehovah's Witnesses require total abstinence from voting or else you lose your friends and family. Mormons require giving ten percent or else you can't be married in heaven. But liberal groups can't be honest about the Bible either. Barack Obama claimed that the Bible can be used to defend and attack slavery. This is simply not true. It just isn't. He then went on to argue that therefore the Bible can't be taken literally and so that's why he has no problem with homosexuality. But then on the other hand he said very clearly that Jesus Resurrected from the grave and that we must believe this to be saved. In other words, he was squarely in the liberal camp.
What fear is the case is this. Some people want a costly religion, so certain churches provide this. Some people want a cheap one so other churches sell that. In both cases, people twist the truth in order to give people the basic thing they want. When I was younger it used to really bother me how there were such good speakers out there. But so often people attend services in good faith and have to sit though a service of nothing. What I mean is there appears to be a little system that exists where certain people get to control who provides the good that people demand. People's demand for the good is so inflexible, that the church business doesn't have to do a very good job of providing it.
People will come anyway. And as much as it bothered me in the past, now I'm thinking that nobody is really upset by it because they are accustomed to it. It's like there are two churches. Every so often, people actually learn something or something comes along that really changes how they want to live their lives. And I think some churches get to have this sort of service on a regular basis because the ministry team is trying to do something called ministry.
But given the inflexibility of demand, it's inescapable that ministry teams will take advantage of the fact that it will take quite a bit of failure before anything happens to their jobs. You can't blame people for being inflexible with religion. It is so serious of a thing. But that directly leads to lack of quality in the service of a church service. People will come anyway, but only to a point.
The internet is a game changer to be sure. People are following tons of teachers that they wouldn't have been aware of in 1999. But there really ambitious people in ministry are still forced to focus on controlling supply. It amazes me, because they often create rapport with each other by public compliments. The compliments often amount to false claims of education and exhortation. But rarely is that actually going on. Furthermore, anyone who means to engage in doing precisely that will be opposed by not going through proper channels.
I guess you can see why Jesus harped on false prophets, christs, teachers and leaders so much.
Humans are fantastically inflexible in their religious tastes. Most people connect religious belief to deeply held social relationships. Furthermore, modern religions (after 500BC) deal mostly with the deeper existential questions. Where did it all come from? What is the purpose of it all? Given this, how then should we live? And finally, where will it all end up? These are the big questions and people usually don't change them. Religious demand is incredibly unmoving.
Therefore you can do exactly what I am wondering about. You can do a service that is neither educational nor an exhortation to good deeds, and people will still come. You will still get paid. Therefore, money is made by controlling the supply, not the demand. What you find is a system of professionals who pat each other on the back as though there is education or exhortation going on. In reality there is little of either. Most of what is said is already well known to the listeners and has long been absorbed and incorporated into their lives. They aren't learning things. Furthermore, Dallas Willard observed in his ministry that he did a lot of work that didn't seem to do any good. Specifically, he noticed that people basically lived the same as everyone around them. People don't appear to overcome temptations and in many cases don't want to.
Research also shows that there are religious demand niches. Any society will have people that fit into all of these. What sets these apart is how much cost it requires to be part of the religious life they entail. Some groups will be very expensive and place many requirements. On the other extreme, some groups will be hard to distinguish from nonreligious groups. The range is Ultra Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Strict, and Ultra Strict.
One thing that interests me when it comes to Christian groups is the lack of honesty about what the Bible clearly says. Strict groups can't seem to make up enough extra rules that are nowhere in the Bible. Jehovah's Witnesses require total abstinence from voting or else you lose your friends and family. Mormons require giving ten percent or else you can't be married in heaven. But liberal groups can't be honest about the Bible either. Barack Obama claimed that the Bible can be used to defend and attack slavery. This is simply not true. It just isn't. He then went on to argue that therefore the Bible can't be taken literally and so that's why he has no problem with homosexuality. But then on the other hand he said very clearly that Jesus Resurrected from the grave and that we must believe this to be saved. In other words, he was squarely in the liberal camp.
What fear is the case is this. Some people want a costly religion, so certain churches provide this. Some people want a cheap one so other churches sell that. In both cases, people twist the truth in order to give people the basic thing they want. When I was younger it used to really bother me how there were such good speakers out there. But so often people attend services in good faith and have to sit though a service of nothing. What I mean is there appears to be a little system that exists where certain people get to control who provides the good that people demand. People's demand for the good is so inflexible, that the church business doesn't have to do a very good job of providing it.
People will come anyway. And as much as it bothered me in the past, now I'm thinking that nobody is really upset by it because they are accustomed to it. It's like there are two churches. Every so often, people actually learn something or something comes along that really changes how they want to live their lives. And I think some churches get to have this sort of service on a regular basis because the ministry team is trying to do something called ministry.
But given the inflexibility of demand, it's inescapable that ministry teams will take advantage of the fact that it will take quite a bit of failure before anything happens to their jobs. You can't blame people for being inflexible with religion. It is so serious of a thing. But that directly leads to lack of quality in the service of a church service. People will come anyway, but only to a point.
The internet is a game changer to be sure. People are following tons of teachers that they wouldn't have been aware of in 1999. But there really ambitious people in ministry are still forced to focus on controlling supply. It amazes me, because they often create rapport with each other by public compliments. The compliments often amount to false claims of education and exhortation. But rarely is that actually going on. Furthermore, anyone who means to engage in doing precisely that will be opposed by not going through proper channels.
I guess you can see why Jesus harped on false prophets, christs, teachers and leaders so much.
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