| Is the Church of God going the way of Kmart?(link) (Image)Every time you turn on the T.V. news, you hear about the decline of the once notable American business. Kmart stores are closing all across America. The business side of me wants to ask why. What goes into the anatomy of a declining business that at one time was very successful? Then I had a friend at a large, successful non-denominational church recommend the movie When God Left the Building. This movie chronicled the decline of the church in America and what we can do to salvage Christianity in our nation before it is too late. (Here is a link to watch the trailer www.whengodleftthebuilding.com) This movie got me thinking about the present state of my church and even more so what my organization is doing to help me fix it. Then a light bulb went off in my head. I feel like I am a manager at Kmart. No matter how hard I work or how well of a job I am doing, my organization is still crashing because I am not given the tools to be successful.Kmart's demise is a result of not responding to a market with modernization. When you walk into a Kmart, look at the marketing materials look at the things the corporation has a hand in. The branding they have is very out of touch. It is either so far behind that it looks like the sign was dragged out of the bottom of the store room from where it sat in the 80s, or they brand so idealistically with overselling that it does not match anything that they sell. From a middle management level, how do you fix the problem with the tools you are given? This is how out of touch Kmart is. When my wife and I walked into a store, we noticed the electronics department was still called Music and Video with the logo of a CD and videocassette. No one buys music at a physical store any more, and the videocassette is dead. It has been long replaced by DVD, Blu-ray and Internet streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. How can you still have the advertisement of 1999 and still be considered competitive?Kmarts marketing and branding is dead. I have not walked into a Kmart in the last fifteen years and said; hey they are doing something right. In reality, every time I have walked in a Kmart, I was thinking, why didnt I just go to Wal-Mart? Even better, I wish they would do some things like Target. Wal-Mart and Target in the late 80s were not the success story you hear about today. Kmart was still a large player in the department store landscape at that time. Kmart had just the same opportunities as Wal-Mart or Target. Kmart, in reality, had more opportunity because they were a market leader at that time. Kmart made one HUGE MISTAKE. They would not invest in a new computerized inventory system. They had huge backlash and rebellion from their management not to go with computers. They claimed that paper inventory was more reliable. In reality, management was intimidated by a technology they did not understand and could not fathom how this technology was about to change the very way of how they did business. Both Target and Wal-Mart were investing in computers. They eventually could keep inventory of everything electronically and could tell when they were running low on something when a customer checked out of the store. Kmart still had to have employees with pens and clipboards walk the aisle and do inventory by hand. This created a huge gap in Kmarts ability to compete; and they eventually fell to the point where they are today. They had to cut prices with the same cost when everyone else was cutting cost because of saving money.Don't get me wrong; we have some very successful churches just like Kmart has successful stores. It is just our successful ministries do not reflect the average run of the mill Church of God Church. The successful ministries do things very differently than what the mainline of the Church of God is required to do by our overseer. The discipleship, marketing and even the church look are a very different product from the average sized Church of God church. Even when I looked to these large Church of God churches for guidance I soon discovered these guys don't go to State office to be trained. A lot of times they only involve themselves in state business like district overseer just to get the state off there back, or to not be controlled by the 50 member church that is involved in state politics. They operate with a pay the tithe of tithe tax mentality, or worse for fear of losing there church property. When I probe as to why a smaller church cannot do what the successful churches do, I get told they bring in the money so no one on the state office level interferes with them unless it is politically necessary. Then when I try to do the very same things that made this church successful, my organization fights me and nearly dismantles the progress I am trying to make for the sake of tradition. For example, how many here have had an overseer fight them for trying to take Church of God off the sign or name? Leading to the corniest phrase in churchdom SUCH AND SUCH CHURCH A Church of God Congregation. Or have had to get rid of their church logo because it was not the corny knock-off Church of God swoosh that we stole from the Methodist Church.Our identity problem does not stop there. I noticed that we took a logo from Sam's club for our prayer initiative. This is a very real problem with plenty of our more younger and successful pastors just leaving the denomination out of frustration. They think I send my tithe of tithes, but I get nothing in return but horrible brand micromanaging officials. Then, we act shocked when the congregation goes with the pastor when they decide enough is enough. This is because the organization really did not provide any real value to the relationship to the church except that they get money for missions and tithe of tithes. To quote one pastor friend that pulled out over ten years ago and is doing just fine said, The Church of God officials only contacted me twice the whole time I was in the organization. The first time because I broke the state tithe record and the second time when I stopped paying reports because of hardtimes. Also we have ministers like Perry Stone and Judy Jacobs starting ministry centers off the publicity the Church of God camp meetings gave them without sending off tithe of tithes or reports. I recently witnessed an overseer, fight for a licensed Church of God minister, a job at one of our larger churches, whose current church would not join the Church of God because of the tithe of tithe issue. He told that overseer I will help your organization as much as you help me.I love all these people very dearly and believe they have been strongly used of God. But, just to prove my point, let�s go to Bryan Cutshall's former churchs website trwc.comThere is not one mention of the Church of God anywhere on the site. Let's go to Mount Paran Church of God's website. mountparan.comThey call themselves Mount Paran Church. I had to go to the history page to even find a mention of the Church of God. Even Loran Livingston tries to call his church Central Church, but I guess someone got on him and forced him to change his church sign in the parking lot to Central Church Church of God. Just look at his website www.centralchurchofgod.org.It is in the website name, but on the homepage, the church is named Central Church. Pastor Marty Baker of Stevens Creek has no mention of the Church of God on his website www.stevenscreekchurch.com/, and when you Google his church, Google even has him wrongly listed as Church of Christ. Then when you check to even see why they got involved in denominational politics it was for 1 of 2 reasons #1 they wanted the overseer to leave them alone and let them pastor their church, or #2 they are afraid if the wrong person comes to power on a state or international level and the church they are in is on hard times they will lose their church though politics because church of God property is deeded to the denomination. They are involved out of fear. They may lose everything they have worked for. Some are in politics for the right reason, but many others are there because of fear. I believe Jentezen Franklin is in our organization for the right reasons. It scares some people that he is there because the hierarchy of our organization does not control his church. This is because his church campuses in Georgia are congressional holiness his satellite campus in California is Church of God. My prayer is he gets traction enough to turn the tide before it is too late. Also if you look at these churches some of them have very little to do with state events or youth camp. They usually do things just for their church alone. Just recently I came across a horror story where a kids and youth department of a church were told by the state youth director that they had no use for them unless they go to camp. Why would anyone want their youth and kids exposed to legalism. My only experience with youth camp was my kids being forced to listen to a 20 minute sermon on why mixed bathing is a sin before entering the camp ground swimming pool. It was not the moving services or the altar calls that were remembered from that week. It was the fear of parents thinking they were in a cult because of all that they encountered on that fateful weekend. I know we don't need to be a seeker sensitive movement, but on the other hand we cannot be a legalism sensitive movement either. |