Over my years as a member of the church, I have occasionally heard someone say something like this:

“If the church were a business, it would go bankrupt.” Or “If the church were a company it would go out of business”.

What they have meant by this is that there are a lot of members or ‘employees’ who do not bother to show up.  And if they do show up, they do not do very much.  Thus, they feel that the church is full of slackers who do not pull their own weight.  And a company or business could not be successful under such circumstances.

In a way these folks have a point.  We could all do better or more than we do.  But I also feel that we can often beat up ourselves, and others, unnecessarily.  So I would like to refute this idea.

Picture a business that has roughly 12 million employees worldwide, and that there is functionally no payroll whatsoever.  All these employees are volunteers.  Not only that, but many of these employees have income from other sources, and willingly donate ten percent of this income to the business to cover all the overhead and expansion expenses.

Hundreds of thousands of these employees put in meaningful time and effort in various work assignments, and willingly attend many training meetings, with no financial compensation whatsoever.  They are even willing to train each other.  Many of them are willing to do things ‘by the book’ and fulfill their assignments as they are trained to do.  Others are also willing to show initiative and creativity in fulfilling these assignments.

Tens of thousands of these employees are willing to go to all parts of the world, at their own expense in order to recruit new volunteer employees, with remarkable success.

So let me see…..No payroll, no overhead, and a worldwide leadership structure that is largely self motivated, self trained, and self regulated.  Many of whom do excellent work.  I’m no business major, but yeah, I think that is a business plan that can work.