Want to Start a Church? Then Get a Job, Pastor - But Only Until You Get Enough Followers to Pay You to Stop Working

In his blog post "How to Plant a Church With Little or No Outside Funding", Les Puryear gives 6 tips on how someone who feels led to start a church can do it without tapping into the SBC resources.

I commend Les for this kind of thinking. Yes, a church can be started without having to tap a financial straw into the SBC Cooperative Program. It can be done with putting no one's money at risk.

But as Les points out, it would require the church planter to do something they are not prone to do, and for which their years at seminary have left them completely unprepared:

They must get a real job. Or what Les calls a "secular" job.

1. Get a Secular Job" is Les's # 1 tip.

Les' plan is for the planter to start a "bible study" in the home, with the idea it will grow into a church plant. So toward this end, Les' offers his explanation about this "secular job", and how long the "planter" must endure it, and how to get out of it, and why it would be good for business:

"Don't take any salary from the new church until the church can meet its financial needs for startup costs and weekly expenses. Also, when you are in a secular job, you are actually around lost people. These are the people you are trying to reach with your new church plant."

Let me give you the Watchdog's "WIV" interpretation of that paragraph:

"Get yourself a real job, but only until you can get enough members into your home bible study to the point you can begin collecting money they earn in THEIR secular jobs, take that money, rent some space for your church, quit your real job, and then begin drawing an income as a "pastor". And in the meantime you can use the opportunity of rubbing elbows with lost people in your secular job to invite them to your bible study, where you can teach them tithing and they can begin contributing money toward the goal of quitting your job and becoming their pastor."

I know that is cynical. But if a pastor can get a "secular job", and if they are a solid bible teacher and have a bible study in their home, why must the natural progression be: get job - start bible study - collect money from those who do work - quit job - rent space - become pastor - have church?

Why can't a church planter just do what most committed Christians do: they have careers and families, and they serve the body of Christ for free as a part of their time away from work. I have seen the most committed Christians lay people work a full time job, AND be incredibly productive in ministry at a church for no pay at all.

I think Les' use of the word "secular job" is significant. I know he is using it to differentiate from a "religious" job such as a pastor...but let's be real. I wish pastors would stop viewing their jobs as ministers as something different or "special" from those who work in "secular" jobs. Their jobs as minister is "secular" every bit as much as a school teacher's or a doctor, or anyone else. They have a job, they have an employer, they have a boss to whom they are accountable, they have a job description, and they earn pay in exchange for their services. They get evaluated, and they earn raises based on their tenure and performance. I know pastors and ordained ministers say they were "called by God" into their ministry, but they are working stiffs like anyone else is. A pastor or a minister is not any more called into their profession than an engineer, doctor, or educator, or electrician, etc.

I also noticed that Les advocates "have your wife get a secular job" and putting the kiddos in public school. Yes, "have" her (make her, as she must obey you) go out and get a secular job, too. Les says she needs to be around "lost people", so get her out there to make a buck to help you start your church.

My advice for Les: keep your secular job, maybe even go to night school and re-educate yourself to get a better job, but keep your Bible study in your home. If you teach tithing to your attendees, have them tithe and imagine what good you could accomplish in your community helping people with that cash flow that does not have to go to buildings, utilities, and salaries. If the bible study gets too big, then sure, rent out the YMCA for your meetings. Or meet at a library or a conference room of one of your attendees' employers.

It is called "home church" or "organic church" - a church without a team of men who demand payment for their ministry services, and they are becoming more and more popular.

You, Your Pastor, Non-Tithers, NIV-Readers, and the Will of God

In the spirit of wanting to educate my readers at every opportunity, I am providing the visual aid to the left so that Watchdog readers know where they stand in relation to the will of God, their pastor, non-tithers, and everyone else.

The large circle is the "permissive will of God", the inner circle in which the pastor resides, is the "perfect will of God".

This came from the website "Stuff Fundies Like" (definitely need to add this to your Google Reader list), so visit the site (direct link to the article here) and read the commandments concerning the will of God for your life.

On a side note: I hope you like my new outfit I'm sporting in my new profile picture. Lately I've been reading the "Fashion Fridays" posts over at Maurilio's blog where he gives fashion tips for males (I'm being serious now), and decided to upgrade my wardrobe to a seersucker suit, monogrammed cuffs and big honkin' cufflinks...and a Rolex watch underneath my cuffs. When I read that Maurilio prefers his genuine Rolex to those fakes he bought overseas, I became very jealous and invested in a genuine Rolex. Just trying to keep up with the mega pastors and their "generosity consultants"!

Christa Brown: Pontius Pilate Washing His Hands - Lesson for Baptist Leaders

"Pilate had the power to release Jesus. But instead he washed his hands, and then he handed Jesus over for crucifixion...So Pilate evaded responsibility and passed the guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion on to others. He made a big show of it. He had a wash basin brought out, and he stood before the crowd washing his hands....Southern Baptist leaders make a big show as well....Rather than use their power for the protection of innocent kids -- a power they have surely shown when other issues troubled them -- Baptist leaders choose to do nothing. They wash their hands of clergy sex abuse and leave the problem up to the crowd." Excerpt from Christa Brown's article "Pontius Pilot holds lesson on clergy sex abuse", 4/18/11.

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One of my modern-day Christian heroes is Christa Brown. She has stood up for clergy sex abuse victims for a long time, calling for Baptist churches and leaders to put resources into tracking predator pastors and paying for counseling and healing of victims....and she has done it all in the face of criticism from Southern Baptist leaders like Frank Page and Paige Patterson.

Christa herself is a victim of rape and sexual abuse as a teen at the hands of her baptist pastor who committed his deeds while quoting scripture. As she tells in her book This Little Light, when she finally came forward to tell her story she was shocked to find this pastor, Tommy Gilmore, still serving in the Southern Baptist Convention.

While the Southern Baptist Machine has no problem "disfellowshipping" churches who ordain woman pastors, they say they can't establish a database to track predator pastors citing the autonomy of SBC churches. No problem meeting and voting to kick out churches who hire female pastors, but they claim they are powerless to take action against churches who harbor pedophiles.

So while the SBC does not track them, Christa Brown does at her website "Stop Baptist Predators". Clergy sex abuse is not just a Roman Catholic Church problem, it is a huge problem amongst Baptists, and we should all be grateful for people like Christa Brown who will not let the issue go.

I know clergy sex abuse is not a beautiful thought for Easter weekend...but as we remember the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we should remember that Jesus Christ in his earthy ministry called for justice over the oppression of the innocent and powerless.

Perry Noble Blames Homosexuality on Non-Tithing Christians

Pastors say the darnedest things; especially when trying to twist peoples arms to convince them they must fork over 10% of their income as the starting point to begin enjoying God's blessings.

Take Perry Noble, pastor of the fast-growing Newspring Church based in Anderson, SC.

As you'll see in the clip below from a sermon in March 2011 entitled "Greed" - which is a sermon about "greedy Christians" and how like a mob boss God knocks off greedy people - Perry declares the following:

"Maybe there would be less homosexuality in the world today if there were less greedy Christians who actually cared enough to tithe and spread the gospel."

If in Perry Noble's world there is a direct correlation between "greed" and the rate of "homosexuality" - then we have to lay the blame for homosexuality right at the doorstep of mega church pastors like Noble who despite raking in millions and millions in revenue, in their greed misuse scripture to guilt their congregations into forking over more and more of their income so they can enjoy God's blessings.

For a preacher to believe this and actually preach it should not be surprising. After all, Southern Baptist Mac Brunson tells us that our current economic troubles are a result of God punishing our country because of non-tithing Christians. Brunson also has portrayed God as some sort of cosmic loan shark who collects on what he is owed (10% of your income) by bringing personal misfortune, so you might as well save yourself the trouble and just fork it over. Another SBC'er, Ed Young, Jr. teaches that your career, your family, and your marriage will all suffer if you don't fork it over - in fact he says you're wasting God's time if you show up to church without your tithe check.

Perry Noble is not just some obscure preacher. As I've written about before, Perry is one of the most popular "emergent church" pastors in the world. He started NewSpring Church in 2000 and already it has grown to over 10,000 in attendance each week on five campuses - and with over $20 million dollars in revenue for 2010.

Although Perry was trained at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and did serve as youth pastor in several SBC churches before starting NewSpring in 2000, Perry now has jettisoned most of the SBC traditions in his church except one: he still preaches hot and heavy the false doctrine of storehouse tithing.

If you want to watch the entire sermon entitled "Greed", click here, but be prepared for lots of scripture twisting as Perry regularly does on the topic of tithing.

On the positive side, Perry does help us see just how ridiculous the doctrine of storehouse tithing is. Perry takes the doctrine to its logical conclusion: that all ills in the world can be traced back to people who are robbing the God of the universe by not giving God's man (the preacher) enough money to fulfill his mission of spreading the gospel - by building bigger churches and taking larger salaries.

Thanks, Perry.

FBC Jax Knocks it Out of the Park With Passion Play

I watched the Sunday night FBC Jax Passion Play broadcast live over the Internet. It was the third performance of the weekend.

Truly remarkable - it was an incredible portrayal once again by the FBC Jax musicians and lay people of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as they have done in years past. Luke Whitmire, the son of FBC Jax music director Jim Whitmire, did a great job again portraying Jesus.

The FBC Jax media department tweeted that they had a full house Sunday night, and several hundred in overflow, and over a thousand watching on the Internet.

Kudos to Jim Whitmire and the choir and the orchestra and the media team and all those involved in the production of this event. I doubt you could find a production like this anywhere else - and FBC Jax provides this for free for everyone to attend.

I recall last year on their local TV broadcast FBC Jax played a video giving a behind-the-scenes look of the making of this production, and it is truly amazing what all of these lay people do.

If you missed the Passion Play this year, be sure to catch it next year live, in person - or on the Internet which is broadcast in crystal clear HD.