The Economy of God

[andrewlittle]

I serve on my presbytery's Budget & Finance Committee. I have also witnessed many heated discussions over the years with regard to the increased tendency to adopt business language and ethics into the decision-making of churches. I am thinking about sending this to other presbytery members, but would like some feedback first - LUCKY YOU. So, if anyone is inclined, please rip it apart. (Warning - it is kind of long.)

THE ECONOMY OF GOD
REV ANDY LITTLE

Having accepted the challenge to discuss economic theology with a Presbyterian session of a large metropolitan church, and having overheard in conversation the “ideal” minister being described as a “CEO” type, I began with a simple exercise – one I had presented several times before to different audiences. The exercise takes advantage of the preponderance of business language and processes being used by sessions and boards of religious institutions.

Assume this church is a “business” venture. Each business venture has three levels of stakeholders:
 Stockholder(s) – those that have an equity position in the venture; those that have invested the capital.
 Secondary stakeholders – those that have a direct material interest in the operations and results of the venture. (For a profit company, these are the customers, suppliers, management, employees, etc.)
 Tertiary stakeholders – those that benefit indirectly from the operations and results of the venture. (Profit business – retailers, community, charities, etc.)
I then ask the participants to come to consensus and write down who makes up each level of stakeholder in regard to their church.

While the answers have varied each time I have presented this exercise, they have not varied substantially. In this case, the answers were:
 Stockholder(s) – congregation (after some bickering about whether this included people who didn’t give).
 Secondary stakeholders – minister, employees, programs that use church facilities.
 Tertiary stakeholders – the community, missions, the unchurched, and the “least of these my brothers/sisters” (poor, sick, prisoner, etc using Matthew 25 as the basic criteria).
Ample opportunity was given to discuss each category and why the people were chosen that fell within it, and I received some quite extensive explanations – along with some discussion about considerations that were contentious.
I then asked the question, “So, where do God and/or Jesus fall into this structure?”
In the multiple instances I have presented this exercise, God has never been mentioned in any of the stakeholder categories. After the question is asked, there is usually the disclaimer offered that, “Oh, well, we assumed God (or Jesus) was the CEO,” which, of course, conflicts with the pre-session comments about the ideal minister being the CEO, or “God’s ownership was assumed.” Each group insists that they never actually forgot God/Jesus, but it seemed so basic that it wasn’t brought up. That is, until the one brave soul who readily admits that he/she never gave it any thought speaks up, after which some others tend to follow suit.

Given that business language has seeped deeply into religious institutions, it is completely understandable that “business” ethics and visioning has accompanied it. The tendency in our culture to separate business and theology has profound implications on how we do church. While God is, hopefully, forefront in worship, ministry, mission and outreach, the door tends to be closed to God with regard to dialogue about the assets of the church. This is not, in my estimation, an intentional effect of adopting the language of business, but is a result nonetheless. We live in a culture in which money and the divine are generally considered mutually exclusive, except for the most notorious instances of TV evangelism (which is another topic entirely).
So, where do God and/or Jesus fall into this structure?
If we take the most basic definitions of the stakeholders, God is the only candidate for stockholder, and the only category within which God fits. To follow this line, both equity and capital have to be discussed economically and theologically.
Equity, in this sense, is relatively easy – it is basically ownership. It can be ownership realized from original formation of the entity, or ownership realized through investment. In either instance, God is the most likely stockholder of the church. While discussion of the reason for the church being formed could develop into a substantial dialogue, I think most Christians would agree that it was formed at the initiative of God (ownership through formation) and through the investment of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (ownership through investment). I can well imagine a present day prophet of God saying, “Equity is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
Capital is not as easily defined. In his 2003 book The Mystery of Capital, Hernando deSoto recounts the answers he received from many economists to the question, “What is capital?” The most common answer, by a large margin, was that capital was the same as assets, which is wrong. Being a classically trained economist, and also one of a growing number of economists seeking a middle way between Western capitalism and socialism for the benefit of the “Third World”, this question – or, rather, the inability of economists to answer this question – was significant to deSoto. To make a long story short, capital does not equate to assets, investment, available funds, equity or any other item that is listed on a financial statement. Capital is that which can be gained and is, by definition, unrealized. Capital is that which can potentially be accrued to equity holder(s) from leveraging or using assets that are owned. While capital is derived from that which exists, it is “not yet.” Capital is potential.
Theologically, I find the most affinity with considering the capital of the church as the Realm (or Kingdom) of God. The equity holder is God; the investment is Christ; the registered fiduciary agent is the Holy Spirit; the capital – the unrealized gain – is the “here, but not yet” Realm of God.

But, what of the assets?
While there are likely to be many more, the primary assets would be those making up the church. In an economy, as in business, assets are those things owned. An “economy”, however, has various meanings. In the strictly financial sector, economy is the transactional movement of goods, services, commodities and currency, with each having monetary value. In the larger, but still business, model of economy, commodities include labor and labor value, goodwill, customer base and many other items. Still more broadly constructed is the economy as a social model, in which all transactions have value, including those in which the transaction has solely intangible individual, social or community benefits.
When considered in the broader context of social economy, which is still likely to be more utilitarian than a “divine” economy, the word “asset” takes on a substantially different meaning. For churches, assets are no longer limited to the hard assets like buildings, endowments and cash, or even the more intangible assets like reputation, goodwill or community standing, but also include the most important of the assets – people. Absent the people, no church exists. And, while all the other assets of the church may be used to raise “capital” – to live into the Realm of God – it is most dependent on the efforts of the human assets.
Envisioning the balance sheet of God this way leads us to plenty of questions, not the least of which is, “So, who are the secondary stakeholders?” The likely assumption that the congregation has been bumped down from stockholder into the number two location, now appears to be in question. Consider the statement attributed to the Anglican Archbishop William Temple, “The church is the only entity that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” Overwhelmingly, the mission of the church has been considered the “least of these my brothers/sisters” – whether they are the poor, oppressed, sick, strangers or the unchurched, the primary focus (theologically) of the church is those outside of church/culture. In regard to the unrealized gain or capital – the Realm of God – scripture tells us, primarily through parable, what it looks like. It looks a great deal like loving our neighbors as ourselves and seeing to the interests of widows, orphans, strangers, etc. That would make the “least of these”, or as I prefer the “most vulnerable”, the secondary stakeholders.
As simply assets of God, the congregation would technically have no stakeholder status. Of course, for the community of faith, it may be uncomfortable to consider itself as having no stake, and to come face to face with the fact that it is simply an asset of God. It is also an impractical concept. “The church is an inn and an infirmary for the sick and for convalescents. Heaven… is the palace where the whole and righteous live,” wrote Martin Luther in his Lectures on Romans. Since we are not perfected as God’s assets, we are at the same time beneficiaries or stakeholders in the ongoing ministries of the church. All within the church are on a journey towards God through Christ and, therefore, have a stake in how ministry and mission is done, and are right to be concerned about how the church’s efforts affect them. By nature, however, as tertiary stakeholders, the benefits accruing to by the congregations are valid only if benefit first accrues to the stockholder, God, and those that make up the second level of stakeholders, the vulnerable.

Until the last few decades, in which stockholders have become the primary and, I dare say in many instances, the only people to profit from business ventures, the long-standing pattern of business was to bring value to all of the categories of stakeholders. Decisions were invalidated, generally, if they did not return gain for the stockholders, but also if they failed to profit the other stakeholders. So, in theological terms, what is gain or profit?
A primary econo-theological question is, “What profits God?” I contend that this may be a rarely asked question in the meetings of finance committees on many levels of the church. Another question develops from it with regard to the next level of stakeholder – a question I suggest could be phrased, “How does this decision affect the most vulnerable among us?” Both of these considerations are usually overlooked in favor of questions like, “What should WE do with …?”, or “Can WE afford to do …?” The questions themselves show the perceived locus of ownership. While a sense of “ownership” of ongoing ministries is a good and right thing, these more common questions can actually serve to undermine the ability of any church or religious body to serve as an asset of God. By entering into a tug of war over how to use assets based on who owns or controls them, the ability to realize the capital can be jeopardized.
If we are to accept that business and economic models are valid for the governance of the church, it is imperative that the language and concepts of business be co-opted and translated theologically. The ownership of God and God’s concept of realizing capital (as best we can understand it) must be our primary considerations. The locus of ownership is God; the capital to be realized is the furtherance of the Realm of God; that capital is realized by living into the desire of God to bring value and worth to the most vulnerable among us; then, and only, then we can ask how this affects us.

[keltic63]

I like it.

I think I'll send it to a few people in my church.

[Daniel]

Which has made me thing in terms I had not thought of before.

For me, the root of all that you address comes down the to ethics invlolved, the sticky matter of how economic decisions affect 'the least of these.' That, it seems to me, to be your essential point. And in making it, you are not simply addressing the language of corporate America (which has seeped under the door into the church), but also those who are making the decisions. As such, the matter isn't about God (as a being unto himself) as much as it is what those making the decisions 'hold' in the minds regarding God.

I'm stretching matters considerably here by referencing another school of thought, but the book Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa comes to mind. While a Buddhist of some notoriety, he addresses many the same concerns, noting that the ego can do strange things with 'objects', both internal and external (the ego experiencing proprietary thoughts of ownership of ideas as things to be defended etc). And it sounds like, to me, that this is what is happening in the modern church: a sense of ownership and entitlement has become involved in a way that it has not before. And as such, this bypasses the whole "love one another' model. For, if one is truly enacts love for one's neighbor as oneself, how can 'business' as such enter into the equation? As such, there is no balace sheet. No accounting of who gives what to whom and all that nonsense.

To my way of thinking, Love doesn't keep track of the numbers as much as it gives of itself freely and unconditionally. Cup running over.

In that sense I agree with you totally: God makes for a better CEO than anyone who says - either directly or indirectly- that they speak for her.

That said: matters fall back squarely on what people believe about God and what they attribute his/her characteristics to be. In that sense, ideas can be both a wonderful and a terrble thing.

Perhaps the answer lies in self-awareness. And thats always a tricky matter to pull off, isn't it?

[andrewlittle]

Originally Posted by Daniel

Which has made me thing in terms I had not thought of before.

Cool! Ihope my colleagues might say the same thing.

For me, the root of all that you address comes down the to ethics invlolved, the sticky matter of how economic decisions affect 'the least of these.' That, it seems to me, to be your essential point. And in making it, you are not simply addressing the language of corporate America (which has seeped under the door into the church), but also those who are making the decisions. As such, the matter isn't about God (as a being unto himself) as much as it is what those making the decisions 'hold' in the minds regarding God.

I absolutely agree. What has become the pattern in church - keeping matters financial and theological separate - has allowed the "church" to believe one way (or, at least, profess to believe one way) and yet act in another. My primary motivation in writing this piece is to draw attention to that disparity - to bring what we think God is and would want into direct confrontation with how we use our resources in the church.
If God is understood as as an opportunistic, profiteering God of prosperity, decisions will change little because of it. If, however, God is understood in terms of standing in solidarity with the most vulnerable, then decisions to add on a nice fellowship wing, or to direct mission money towards efforts that bring people in the front door of the church, or to limit funding for more "risky" ministries to marginalized peoples because money is tight, have to be considered counterproductive to our vision of what God would want.

It is, basically, a call to honesty.

I'm stretching matters considerably here by referencing another school of thought, but the book Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa comes to mind. While a Buddhist of some notoriety, he addresses many the same concerns, noting that the ego can do strange things with 'objects', both internal and external (the ego experiencing proprietary thoughts of ownership of ideas as things to be defended etc). And it sounds like, to me, that this is what is happening in the modern church: a sense of ownership and entitlement has become involved in a way that it has not before.

This doesn't sound tangental or stretched at all. This is exactly what has occurred and, with declining numbers of members, most churches have begun to hang on to what is "owned" because it gives them a sense of security and relevance. They unerstand little that money sitting in a bank is, if anything, detrimental to "solving their problem."

And as such, this bypasses the whole "love one another' model. For, if one is truly enacts love for one's neighbor as oneself, how can 'business' as such enter into the equation? As such, there is no balace sheet. No accounting of who gives what to whom and all that nonsense.

Again, I couldn't agree more on an ideological level. The truth is, however, that business ethics, strategy and tactics have entered the equation and is, if decisions are any indicate, displacing the actions of loving one another. We still get to say we love the other in church, but the hands and feet of love are being limited by our fear of material loss.

So, this is an effort to co-opt the language being bantered around and redirect it. So, the fact is that most church boards do see in terms of income statements and balance sheets, unfortunately, and in terms of asset ownership. I am, I guess, speaking to where I believe they are, in the hope that they will consider in terms of moving to where they ought to be.

To my way of thinking, Love doesn't keep track of the numbers as much as it gives of itself freely and unconditionally. Cup running over.

In that sense I agree with you totally: God makes for a better CEO than anyone who says - either directly or indirectly- that they speak for her.

That said: matters fall back squarely on what people believe about God and what they attribute his/her characteristics to be. In that sense, ideas can be both a wonderful and a terrble thing.

Perhaps the answer lies in self-awareness. And thats always a tricky matter to pull off, isn't it?

Most churches suffer from a theology of poverty, as opposed to abundance. The cup running over makes them think of things that are being "wasted", instead of being proof of giving lavishly of God's good gifts to us. It is indeed all wrapped up in how we see and comprehend God - as well as the way we lie to ourselves by saying we see God one way and then acting in an entirely different way.

Self-awareness requires honest self-appraisal - not a traditional church asset, I think.

Thank you for the feedback and the nudges and pushes, Daniel Much more to think about.

[BenL]

Originally Posted by andrewlittle

Most churches suffer from a theology of poverty, as opposed to abundance. The cup running over makes them think of things that are being "wasted", instead of being proof of giving lavishly of God's good gifts to us. It is indeed all wrapped up in how we see and comprehend God - as well as the way we lie to ourselves by saying we see God one way and then acting in an entirely different way.

This is precisely what makes thanksgiving the single proper "economic" response to God's love and the only "legal tender" of God's kingdom. We can only act as if we hold everything on loan from God and will be called to a reckoning by a loving but exacting stockholder. The balance sheet is not calculated in dollars and cents but in acts of mercy done in a spirit of thanksgiving. Churches believe this but feel so insecure about money that they can't act in that belief. It's what we hold back from God that separates us from unity with the divine, for nothing has been held back from us.