like a fire

There is a lot of talk about the trend in management called Hamburger Management. Basically this is management that values what has been forced on the streamlining of business brought about by living through constant recession.

“What I believe we are seeing here is not “old style” at all. It is modern, Hamburger Management: the process of doing everything as quickly and cheaply as possible.”

This situation is very common in today’s business. You can see it and the necessity that made it. Where in the past there was a much more market driven competition, now the global market makes each piece of the pie of profit that much thinner. But what about today’s church?

I don’t know if the trend has changed through the years, but there is a consistent story I hear about churches. Twenty percent of the people of the church do eighty percent of the work an provide at least eighty percent of the resources. I have never heard of a church where they have even half of their congregants who give anything at all. So the situation of having to be lean and efficient seems to be consistent with the business world.

So if the same pressures are in the church as in the marketplace, and many churches use business models to manage their churches, then it makes sense the the same management approaches would be used. And indeed, they are.

The Hamburger Church is about using money and resources as efficiently as possible. Who could argue that? And why shouldn’t it be that way? Actually I don’t see a problem with that.

What I see that is a concern is when efficiency and manage subvert the mission of the church.

I recently heard about the cycle of church planting that moves from growth, to plenty, to plateau, to decay. In the late cycles programs become the foundation of the church and then structure. These last two cycles make hamburger management deadly to the church.

When structure and programs are the focus of the church and numbers (bodies, bricks and bucks) drive the activity and focus of the church, then it becomes an atrophy of the mission of the church. People walk through the desert and learn to appreciate the drought.

Under hamburger church discipleship becomes small groups/Bible studies, evangelism becomes outreach, worship becomes familiar and self serving, preaching becomes irrelevant and the church becomes a place to learn and follow the rules.

Youth ministry under hamburger church becomes a place for kids to be safe and be taught whatever it takes to keep them from having sex, doing drugs, swearing or anything that parents are most afraid of. It also becomes the whipping boy for those kids who should happen to struggle with those things. Basically it is a surrogate for parents.

So that is the hamburger church in a nutshell. I will probable be thinking more about this and you will see more posts as my thoughts synthesize.

One full week in good Ole Alabama. The weather was great, the food was even better and the company was exactly what everyone experiences when you go back to your roots (That means some good times, some bad times and some times that you might have to pay a counselor to get past).

This trip was a bit unique in the way our lives played out. First we were stranded because our car was busted (busted is Alabama speak for broke down). We were stranded, part of the time, with eight kids in the house. Visions of mass chaos can come close to this. We had head colds also and several of us had the dreaded parasite - giardia. If you haven’t experienced this particular parasite, then imagine the worst smell that can come out of an anus and couple it with a bowel movement the consistency of a faucet and you getting close.

Having said all of that, it was a good trip. I got to see lots of people I hadn’t seen in too long. I ate Guthrie’s three times. But my favorite is the crisp air that filled my lungs as I walked along the hills of the Alley Valley. Words can’t express how I felt there and I am unashamed of the feelings of beauty that come from the south (Grant, go ahead and make fun).

So 1200 miles, three boxes with no slaw/extra fires/double sauce, one axle, and one brown painted car seat later, I am back to the home I call Orlando.

At least for a little while.