Church Refugees

Why are some of the best and brightest leaving the church in significant numbers?  They are not mad at God, but they are mad at the church.  Here is one reason why according to the book
Church Refugees.  The author, Josh Packard, writes the following:
"I recently talked to a pastor of a church of about 100 worshipers.  We added up all the time it took to produce the service, prepare his sermon, produce the podcast of the service, set up, practice, and so on.  When we finished, we figured his church was spending around 137 hours a week  and a full 60 percent of its budget to produce the 90 minute Sunday morning service.  The pastor was stunned. . . . The de-churched saw this devotion to the Sunday morning gathering as a resource hog."

Here is a different way of doing ministry.  I would like to cite the example of HCDF--Haiti Christian Development Fund.  HCDF focuses on Christian Community Development--a strategy to rebuild poor and oppressed communities.  Probably 90 percent of its budget and ministry is in the community of need, not the church.  So when Jean Thomas goes to work, he is not going to work to prepare a sermon, he is going to work to strategize and operationalize Christian Community Development.  

For example, HCDF working closely with the community, provided clean water for the community.
When disease wiped out the pig population, HCDF created a pig nursery to repopulate the pigs in their spot in rural Haiti.  HCDF and the community have planted over five million trees.  HCDF created a credit union.  HCDF started a farming project.  HCDF is now educating around 1,000 students.

After 35 years of Christian Community Development, HCDF has made a lasting impact in this oppression-ravaged, poverty-stricken portion of rural Haiti.

In addition, eight churches have been established, but HCDF is not content to just do church.  A major portion of their ministry is out in the community addressing the urgent needs of the people in the community.

What could the American church learn from HCDF?  Probably every American church should be spending at least 50 percent of their budget on some form of community outreach, community development.  A church that is spending the majority of its resources on itself, is not really biblical though it thinks it is.