Giving Away the Wrong Things

Apparently, I’m doing church growth all wrong. Again. In 2010, a church in my hometown, Corpus Christi, Texas, gave away all kinds of great prizes to those who attended Easter services. And like Oprah’s show at times, on that day, everyone got a prize worth at least $300. And this past weekend, Destiny Church in Columbia, Maryland, gave away four cars to randomly chosen attendees of services plus one to a deserving family in need.

I doubt it will surprise anyone to know that attendance at both churches, and many others that have done something similarly gimmicky, spiked for these giveaways. I know that some people go back in weeks to follow; long-term, I don’t know about the success of these events for changing lives because I wonder what it says about these churches’ understanding of God that they collectively believe giving away material things is the best way to introduce people to God.

Actually, I don’t have to wonder much; many of these churches say on their websites or in their publicity about these giveaways that they see this activity as a way to bless people like God blesses the faithful. I imagine a Monty Hall-like Jesus offering what’s behind curtain number 3 in exchange for an extra offering above the 10% tithe. To me, it’s the prosperity gospel—which posits that God blesses faithful and obedient individuals with wealth and material goods in answer to their prayers and good deeds—taken to the extreme.

This is a modern theology based very loosely on the operative theology of ancient Judah and Israel under the kings from Saul to Hoshea in Israel and Zedekiah in Judah. The “blessings and curses” theology proclaimed that God would and did bless all who were faithful to God’s covenant terms and that God would and did curse all who were unfaithful to God’s covenant terms. The key difference between the modern version as it’s practiced and the ancient version is that the ancient version wasn’t mainly about individual behavior but about the behavior of entire community—the whole nation, starting with the leaders. (There is, of course, a nationalist sense of “blessings and curses” theology at work in some branches of Christianity in America today, mainly those that want to proclaim America to be a Christian country from our founding [falsely, I will emphasize] and that therefore want no form of faith but their own recognized as valid.)

I suspect that congregations based on any variety of the prosperity gospel don’t retain people long-term at high rates. I think there’s great appeal to the idea at first, but what happens when you’ve prayed every waking hour for the promotion that goes to someone else or you’ve given your full tithe plus to the missions and ministries of the church but that raise doesn’t materialize. What if that biopsy turns out to be stage 3 cancer despite all the hours you put in on the children’s ministry? The same problems afflicted the people of Israel and made them question their “blessings and curses” theology: Life does not happen the way the theology says it should. Good people, faithful people, children who haven’t yet had the chance to learn the faith, suffer. Bad people, dishonest and disobedient people, mature men and women whose choices have left much harm in their wake, prosper. The book of Job gets at some of this, as does Lamentations. Many of the Psalms address this seemingly unfair reality and we wouldn’t have the Christian faith at all if life were fair the way the “blessings and curses” theology claims it to be because Jesus would never have been arrested, let alone crucified.

Here’s what else I know about the prosperity gospel and its cousins: theologies like that invite us to judge those around us even though that is God’s job and God’s job alone. As soon as we start thinking about blessings and curses, we start dividing people into sheep and goats (to use a Biblical image) or the haves and the have-nots (to use a secular economic image). I think that’s damaging to the Church and I know it’s damaging our nation in its secular version. We don’t have the right or the privilege of telling God who deserves a little more and who deserves to have a little less. 

What we have both the privilege and the responsibility to do is to make sure that everyone has enough. I don’t need a thousand dollar prize or a new car for attending church. What I need is a community of people who are living life with doubts and faith, striving to be better people each day as we do what we can to make curses less frequent and blessings more frequent for everyone, whether we think they deserve it or not, because my theology proclaims God’s unconditional love for each one of us and proclaims that God is in the midst of our lives in blessed and cursed times. I screw up; God loves me anyway. Jesus loves me and you so much that he willing gave his life to change the future. That’s a theology I can give away because I know it comes back to me in love and changed lives, many times over.

So perhaps I’m not doing church growth wrong after all. Perhaps a theology that has legs in 21st century America proclaims this: Life happens. God is here with you, blessings or curses, because God loves you unconditionally and Jesus is the proof. So you can keep the money and keep the car. Give me Jesus any day.