The Industrial Revolution advanced productivity, decreased cost and decreased craftsmanship.
I am an application developer. When I was just out of college, I was asked by a company that provides insurance for horses to develop software that they could use to track the policies they sold and to whom they sold the policies. It was a simple inventory management and accounting software they desired. Instead of buying a generalized inventory management and accounting software, they wanted it to be tailored to their horse insurance business and their business processes. So, I was asked if I could build something in my after-work hours. They thought they could save money and have a personalized solution. I thought this may be the first step of having my own professional services business. We both learned a lesson in the process. They learned that everything took longer. I learned that I was barely making minimum wage with the hours I spent.
This is why most companies buy off-the-shelf, de-personalized solutions. The craftsmanship for a personalized solution is far too expensive. Having different people involved in different parts of the solution and mass selling is far more beneficial to everyone.
Industrialization has its benefits and its drawbacks.
The American church has adopted industrialization in its practices. It takes a large number of paid staff and volunteers to just keep any church functioning. When I was a pastor, I had 150 volunteers and believed I needed 250 volunteers to provide all of the services the church required to function. Many hours were spent by those volunteers to keep the church functioning. Many sermons were developed to encourage the people to “serve.”
They were not serving “God.” They were serving the church industry. They were not serving “others.” They were just spreading the chores to serve themselves.
There is nothing wrong with serving the gathering community. Yet, if the church organization requires so much from so many to keep itself functioning, maybe we should rethink.
I have heard pastors lament that people were not attending some church function. I have heard pastors lament that people only consume and do not serve.
If we exhaust the people by requiring attendance to all of the gatherings and then challenge them to serve in the gatherings, when will they have time or energy to impact the community outside of the gatherings?
Industrialization of the church may seem like we have succeeded in “mass-producing” citizens of King Jesus, but are citizens better “crafted” than “mass-produced?”
First posted July 17, 2021
Leave a Reply