If churches wish to be run like a corporation then they should be evaluated like a corporation in terms of its profitability.

How does one measure the profitability of church? Let me submit to you that it can be represented by number of dollars per baptized person in year. If a church’s annual budget (excluding overseas missions) is one million dollars and one hundred people were baptized by the church in the same year, then the profitabiity of the church is $10,000 per baptized member. In other words, this church spent $10,000 to evangelize one person and bring him to the point of baptism. (This is merely a hypothetical case so that figure will probably be larger.) Is this a reasonable amount? Or can the same task be accomplished with a lesser sum of money?

Some will insist that this is the way it is because of the world we live in. If that is true, are we giving our missionaries who serve in ‘hard grounds’ $100,000 so that they can plant a church of ten members? No church, as far as I know, will do that. There is a double standard here: one for ourselves, one for others.

If the church was inded a corporation, I wouldn’t want to be one of its investors or shareholders.

Parc Sen