The Franchise Is Not the Church

The word "church" once described a people. In the filings we reviewed for our Shell Ministries investigation, it increasingly describes a brand — one whose assets, trademarks, and even sermons are held by a central corporation that local attendees neither elect nor control.

This is not an argument against structure. The New Testament church appointed elders, counted money, and sent it where it was needed. It is an argument about who the structure serves.

When a campus pastor is an at-will employee of a distant board, when the deed to the building your grandfather paid for sits in a holding company's portfolio, when the sermon is a video licensed from headquarters, the congregation has become something the epistles do not describe: a customer base.