I have to break from part two of my series on whether “Church Marketing is a Sin” to rant about how Christianity in America has become a highly lucrative business. Check out the current list of church conferences on the calendar this year (and this isn’t all of them):

• Healing Place Church Experience (have I ever said how sick I am of hearing the word experience and church together?)
• Unleash 2008
• Q (very short name I’d say but at least this looks like it actually has a bigger purpose)
• Orange: We hope you will join us this year for an authentic, dangerous and UNCENSORED experience! (Does this mean they’ll drop the F-Bomb?)
• Coast 2 Coast
• Externally Focused Conference: Transform your community. Transform your life. Hmmm…
• The White Board Sessions: You can get a whiteboard for under $20 at Staples.
  

PLUS, and I love this one…I can spend two days following the Senior Management Team of Granger Community Church for a cool $1,500.00 to get an inside look at how they do ministry. Are you really serious?!?

Please understand that I do not mean to sound harsh towards any of the people or their teams presenting at these conferences. I personally only know one presenter out of all of them (who has an ego the size of Texas) but I am sure that most of their hearts are for helping others build the Kingdom. I also ask Jesus for forgiveness in that this may not be the most Christ-like post or way to communicate my feeling about this topic. However my question is this:

Do we really need all these conferences to tell us how these leaders do their ministry or how to be effective at ours?

I don’t know whether it’s a conviction of the Spirit or common sense but it grieves me to think at how much money will be spent to attend and hear these speakers. I did some number crunching based off of an average on each conferences fees and the number of attendees they allow or “guestimate” based off the size or speakers at the event.

My very rough calculation = $2,185,940.00. That’s over two million dollars not including airfare, hotel, meals, and the “I was there” t-shirt.

Do we really need to spend over two million dollars to follow teams around for a day and watch how they interact with each other or to have churches who have been blessed with great growth tell us how “they” did it? Is it worth going to another conference to hear about another innovation, theory, or technique that may or may not work for our individual situation – or one that a church staff will never implement because they’re still working on the method from last year’s conference?

I know of many church planters who have been called to plant in their community who are doing a great work but are struggling because of financial support. I see people in my city who can’t afford a hot meal or warm place to sleep for one night. I know of single mothers who are working at least two jobs just to feed their children and keep the electricity on. I could mention the fact that some “on-fire” Christian leaders give more to buying conference tickets, books, and lattes than sending support to missionaries who look death in the eye every day for fulfilling the Great Commission.

I pray that church leaders, their teams, and congregations will wake up and realize that “the Church” has become just like corporate America. We have been blessed way beyond our dreams and we are now taking advantage of it. We talk of being missional yet some of us can’t even break beyond the missional motivation speech. Shame on us! American prosperity has definitely been a curse.

How about we spend more time in prayer, fasting, serving in our community, and listening to the hurt of others over spending more money on an expensive trip to tell us how we might do it and give it to better causes? And I point this to myself – an addicted lover of books and technology. Maybe it’s time to just go out and do it and learn for ourselves. After all, experience is the best teacher and Jesus Christ the best leader we could follow.