In his book, The Company of One, author Paul Jarvis is mapping out a proposed shift in how business leaders can reframe their thinking from bigger-is-always-better to questioning growth and, at times, choosing to stay small on purpose. He argues, “There’s a core assumption that growth is always good, is always unlimited, and is required for success. Anything else is pushed aside as not being a top priority.”1
As Jarvis turned his attention to explaining the shifts that have occurred in the business world, specifically as it relates to consumer products, I could not help but notice some of the same trends occurring in the modern church.
Jarvis writes, “It’s not news that companies separate product ideas, marketing, and sales from physical production.” He goes on, “In the beginning of separating branding from production, large companies believed that great fortunes could be made by achieving the lowest common denominator in production, and in recent years that belief has been propelled by the forces of globalization.”2 The “branding” of a company—its image, reputation—is separated from the product—that which it makes and gives to the consumer. When these two ideas are divorced, the game becomes a game of reducing production costs as much as possible.
Citing author and activist Naomi Klein, he continues, “globalization has had negative effects on workers, including poor conditions, low salaries, and unfair treatment.”3
It is the separation of branding and production of companies that reminded me of a major through line in John Mark Comer’s book, Practicing the Way. He argues that the church has created an environment where one could be a “convert” and not a “disciple” of Christ. Comer warns, “in the West, we have created a cultural milieu where you can be a Christian but not an apprentice to Jesus.”4
Or to put it differently, the church could “produce” things (converts) that did not uphold the reputation and integrity of its “brand” (the Church of Christ).
We have divorced the character of Christians from the conversion of Christians.
Making Sunday Happen
A strange thing has occurred over the last 50 years in the Evangelical church where we have by-and-large opted for an industrialized, consumeristic vision of the church. This mindset has led many to confuse ministry with hosting events, running countless programs, and having a good online presence, to name a few things. Even further than that, the church has confused ministry with making Sunday service happen.
I don’t want to discredit all the hard work of our worship volunteers who get to church at 6AM to rehearse for Sunday, or the childcare volunteer who changes 4 diapers in between teaching toddlers about Jesus.
Like the highly industrialized companies mentioned above, many churches are more concerned with that things can done, rather than how they get done.
Citing Klein again, Paul Jarvis submits that a new movement is in order, a movement that “…is breaking away from global brands with questionable morals that focus on maximizing profits over people, and that this movement will shift businesses toward slower, smaller, or on-demand strategies, making them more “fair” in all senses of the word.”5
Producing Good Fruit
Jesus does care about production; he calls it fruit. But, Jesus does have a category for good and bad fruit. Meaning how fruit tastes when it’s plucked off the branch matters. He says in Matthew 7:17-20, “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”6 We should bear fruit, but when the production of fruit is separated from the quality of the fruit, there’s a likelihood, that even in the name of trying to do good things for Jesus, we actually produce bad things.
That’s what Jesus is getting at a few verses later when he says, “On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’”7 It is entirely possible that we do the things, but do them in the completely wrong way.
If Christ has a “good” fruit category, it means that we can’t simply produce converts, we must produce disciples—sold out followers of Jesus who will bear fruit in keeping with the Spirit. When we divorce conversion (production) from character (the brand of Jesus), we create low-quality people; when we realize that a church’s character matters as much as conversions, we create people that have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There’s no law against those things, Paul says.8
Paul Jarvis’ proposal of a company of one—smaller, slower, more hands-on—could be just the philosophy the modern church ought to consider in an age that has seen a lot of bad-church-fruit plucked off the vine. A church that questions growth could perhaps be the church that produces true disciples, men and woman who bear good fruit where they live, work, and play.
Nicholas J. Weyrens 