Management: Don't Do This (Updated)

Update: This is my experience at LifeChurch.tv. It serves as a review, and a warning to those who consider attending there. I’ve read other reviews and found major complaints about lack of budget auditing (no accountability) and lots of other people pushed out the door for daring to ask questions about anything. Thus, I decided it was justified to ID the organization I was describing.
Original post follows…
If your organization is based entirely on voluntary involvement, tight central control will exclude a lot of people, regardless of the methods and flavor of control.
Actually, it can be made to work, and could even look like a real church. It depends on demographics; the scripting has to match their instincts. If you hit the sweet spot on making all the Betas and Deltas comfortable by making them feel they are the real men, you’ll have a solid core of loyal followers. Anyone with Alpha tendencies will have to be neutered, because only a select few are permitted to display those traits. Sigmas are permitted to come and go without getting involved any more than they like. Because a vast investment in high technology is utterly necessary for operations, the Gammas abound. There’s even a place for Lambdas, it seems.
But I am a prophet, and Ezekiel 33 applies, so there is most certainly no place for me.
The whole thing is gentle and friendly, and the selected Alphas will make you feel bad if you step out of line. You won’t be permitted to question significantly whatever is the day’s orthodoxy. The books, videos, and all programs are the breath of God. Of course, the terminology is set in terms of how very good it is, and how disappointed the leadership are when there aren’t enough people buying into it. The sales pitch never stops, and the money is critical. If you are poor, they’ll take care of things for you, but only if you are a serious team player. The help is typically limited to high PR value items. Everyone has to feel warm and fuzzy, you see.
It’s not that good things — even God things — can’t happen. God can’t be kept out of anything. But a significant portion of the population will always be excluded. There will be no strong leaders in the membership, unless they are properly neutered by conditioning. They call it “leadership training.” Those truly hurting may not get any real answers. Anything depending on real spiritual solutions tends to fall apart more often than anyone admits. Meanwhile, the cultural mythology is embraced without question. Real growth toward a genuine biblical model is out of the question. Instead, it’s a series of discrete programs, each more exciting than the last, it seems. Excitement is critical, because that’s the primary sign of God’s presence, as they see it.
It works, but poorly. That is, it reflects the vast majority of all evangelical churches in effects, but is growing so very fast because the basic methods appeal to the cutting edge of local culture. It certainly looks good, because of all those people, all that big budget, the breakneck pace of building, and a very powerful sense of giving to human need. But those needs are carefully selected.
Honestly, I doubt it’s entirely conscious. It’s the social mythology itself which seems to limit the leadership’s understanding. They don’t intend to hurt anyone, but they can’t see past the boundaries of the world in which they live, prisoners of their times. However, I believe I now understand better how some religious organizations which are not cults can be accused of cult-like practices. There is a very subtle, yet very heavy-handed control exerted, mostly by the system utterly excluding any mention, any thought, of alternatives. There is a distinct effort to wipe away certain measures of free thinking. They are buried under noise, and the leadership reflexively pan anything they can identify as “old fashioned”. It’s not entirely different from the Rick Warren method of church take-overs, except these are built from scratch that way. You never really hear about the folks firmly escorted out the back door because they “just won’t let Jesus rule.”
Only when someone comes along fully conscious of all this does it become apparent. They love it, and are utterly certain it’s the power of God. He’s there, obviously, and will use what’s available, but when you dig into the details, I don’t think He’s really trusted to take it as far as He would like. God is patient and forgiving, and some holiness is better than none. So I’m not bitter, just disappointed by what my poking uncovered.
Granted, the ancient tribal social structure I promote is also centralized in a certain sense. However, there is typically room for a great deal of individuation. The elder’s aim is not control, but restraint from destruction, the proverbially “managed chaos.” Truth is high-risk. We allow things to come as close as we can to the edge, because that’s where the most powerful things happen, where the miracles are thickest. It’s the deepest part of God’s favor, because He has always maintained this world is broke and can’t be fixed. The spiritual symbolism of the Law of Moses pointed to social stability in the midst of expecting a lot of human mistakes; that’s what the ritual offerings were for. The New Testament version of that is freer yet. Instead of restrained by the sword of man, we are restrained by the Sword of the Spirit. Yes, we lay hands on those who threaten the very fellowship itself, but only to the minimum necessary degree. It’s better to rebuild from scratch by the power of God than to use too much the power of arms.
Against the string of videos depicting only well off, middle class people (subtle hint: if you aren’t like this, you must be irresponsible), and the promotion of meeting real needs in third world countries, I see outside my own door people who can’t get ahead. I see people whose lives are unmanaged chaos, despite honest best efforts to do what’s right. I see people next door who could never find themselves in those snappy video clips, or the dramatic recovery from unspeakable evil, because their lives are mired in a much more mundane evil. Yes, I’m doing what I can to reach them already, but it feels pretty lonely most of the time. These people can’t be reached by a high tech, tightly scripted and centrally controlled, most up-to-date loud rock worship, and TV Internet preachers with Hollywood production.
I wish them well, but I don’t want to walk through that again.