Pastor & CEO

Working in the Tower of Babel, corporate buzzwords and cultural trends are commonplace. It's part of the corporate religion to be in a constant state of self-improvement and it takes on various flavors each fiscal cycle. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but a few years ago the new corporate slang started to include "church words." It was subtle at first, but suddenly “servant leadership” had become a corporate virtue. It was everywhere: in trainings, in performance reviews, in leadership books. It was what one must espouse to climb the ladder. The phrase made people feel like good human beings while quietly pushing them to work unreasonable hours and make unreasonable sacrifices for the company. It created a moral obligation and a moral reward, but neither had anything to do with the biblical telos (purpose) of servanthood.

I had the icks pretty bad.

At first, I was just irritated. Then I was angry. That language is sacred to me. That language changed my life and shaped my discipleship. I show up to work everyday to practice servant leadership as the Bible instructs. Hearing it used as a motivational tool felt manipulative — like someone had taken the vocabulary of sacrifice and emptied it of the sacrifice. It drew the kind of ire that makes one speak in the King James. You know not of what you speak, heathens!

But the more it showed up at work, the more opportunity I had to point people back to the real thing. If the corporate world wanted to borrow Christian language, then I was going to fill in the blanks. I started to get excited about all of the leadership seminars I was forced to attend, receiving it as a challenge to press the limits of correcting Christianese with authentic Christianity. I saw it less as a temu version of my belief system and more like an accidental invitation to witness on the job! I could talk openly about integrity, discernment, neighbor‑love, and the cost of true service because they had inadvertently opened the door.

Ironically, the corporate world’s imitation of Christianity gave me room to speak the truth. The church’s imitation of the corporate world, however, did the opposite.

Where the Cracks Started Showing

I spend most of my day very aware of my outsider status on the job. The otherness of the culture is absolutely everywhere. It is at church where I feel as though I am among my people. That's my true culture. However, it was in the sanctuary in my former church where the worlds collided. We had a new pastor and I had arms wide open to welcome this man God had sent to shepherd us. My husband expressed a bad feeling about the search committee that had issued the call, which I dismissed with an observation about public speaking being challenging for many people. When he arrived, he brought a testimony with him that made people weep. He spoke about his family and his trials and how God saw him through it all and walks with him still. He was full of energy and there was something familiar about him I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I had weirdly gotten used to him using Scripture as the set up for a point he wanted to make about leadership and effective witnessing. I diligently took sermon notes every week, as I always do, expressing appreciation for his clear sign posting and bulleted points. I've had a lot of public speaking and he was doing everything exactly right! How refreshing! Then one day he urged the congregation to “invest in what God is doing.” It stopped me in my tracks. That's a weird way to ask for money. It sounded spiritual, but it was a call to action following a praise about baptisms — give money. Not as cheerful giver, offering out of thankfulness for all God has done for you, but as a shareholder. "If you want more baptisms like these, pay up." Suddenly everything came into focus.

That phrase — invest in what God is doing — was the moment I realized something was deeply off about this preacher and his vision for the congregation. It wasn’t just the language. It was the logic behind it. The sermon wasn’t calling people to repentance or obedience or transformation. It was calling them to participate in a brand. I thought back to his earliest sermons after coming to our congregation and his desire to make the congregation a light on the hill. Most new pastors do this, and even use that Biblical phrase, making a proclamation about their hopes and prayers for their new assignment. This guy, however, was pitching a brand strategy ultimately rooted in moral therapy. And the way he was using his family struggles to do it really grossed me out.

Week after week, the patterns became clearer- using Scripture to illustrate a truth about leadership or self-improvement. Giving is framed as investing, or offering a tip for a job well-done, like a barista spinning around the little screen to “ask you a question.” Sermons lingering in a safe, milky zone, where he’s pulling every conceivable punch to remain as palatable to non-believers who love the world as possible. I’m sorry, but the social pressure Christians actually face in this day and age is not acceptance of Islam as the same as Christianity. It’s defending marriage. It’s defending life. And a pastor who will dedicate a whole sermon to imploring his congregation to be more kind on the internet following a political assassination but won’t make a bold defense of marriage or the life of the unborn is a coward.

It is a common and disheartening trend in modern ministry when the rhetoric of corporate leadership seminars—"vision," "legacy," "effectiveness," and "passion"—is overlaid onto the text of Scripture. When a preacher treats the Bible as a resource manual for personal success or a strategic guide for "impact," they often end up treating the text as a prop rather than the final authority. The preaching starts to feel hollow — not because it lacks passion, but because it lacks the Gospel.

Leaving that church wasn’t hard. While we were sad to leave our comfort zone behind and all of the cherished memories, God made it clear that whatever He has in mind for that congregation, it does not include us. But watching people I love stay — and speak glowingly of the pastor — has been painful. I’m honestly baffled by the endorsement and insistence that this man is not just a great preacher, but somehow an exceptional human being. Why aren't their discernment alarms going off? Why don't they see the problem? Beautiful facilities and friendly faces can hide spiritual danger. 

I’ve been wondering if it’s harder to recognize the danger if you don’t operate in an extremely corporate world, as I do. A pastor who would fit very comfortably among the executive tier at my company is a valuable person I could learn a lot from, however it’s not someone I can trust for spiritual guidance. But, then again, my husband is not in the corporate world and he seemed to pick up that something was amiss before the man even arrived. Is it a spiritual maturity thing?

The Dangerous Middle: A Lukewarm Synthesis

The real danger isn’t the corporate world borrowing church language. That’s an opportunity. And there’s certainly risk in the church borrowing corporate tactics. But what’s terrifying to me is the middle ground where the two things merge.

That middle ground is seductive. It feels practical. It feels effective. It feels safe. It feels like growth. But it produces a Christianity that feels productive while producing no transformation. It’s the lukewarm zone Jesus warns about in Revelation, which should send a chill up your spine.

It’s Laodicea — self‑satisfied, comfortable, convinced of its own effectiveness. It’s the Nicolaitans — blending truth with cultural convenience, compromising without noticing.

In this middle ground passion replaces faithfulness and leadership replaces true discipleship. Recruitment takes the place of evangelism and vibes stand in a place intended for the Gospel. Underneath it all is a works‑based theology that leaves believers constantly wondering if they’ve done enough or given enough to make God happy. It’s a Christianity built on performance reviews that can hit KPIs and drive to outcomes but cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit.

This is not the faith Christ calls us to. This is not the life the Spirit forms in us. This is not the Gospel.

The Call to Vigilance

I understand the attraction of this middle ground—it feels good. It promises results without the "gritty" cross-bearing that real discipleship requires. It is the path of least resistance and there is an abundance of positive reinforcement.

However, the church must be unapologetically counter-cultural. Real discipleship is about community, the clear preaching of the Gospel, and being known. These cannot be scaled, branded, or turned into a "habit."

We need to return to the "scandal" of the Gospel. The Gospel should offend the corporate mind because it refuses to be optimized. It should humble the CEO-pastor because it requires he decrease so that Christ may increase. There’s nothing efficient about leaving the 99 to save the 1.

Vigilance means refusing to settle for a Christianity that feels productive but produces no transformation. It means refusing the comfort of a faith that blends in with the world you were never meant to be comfortable in. It means recognizing that the middle ground — the lukewarm zone where corporate efficiency and spiritual language merge — is precisely the place Scripture warns us about.

Revelation does not speak softly here. It names the danger of compromise, the seduction of comfort, the ease of self‑deception. And yet it also holds out a promise that is far greater than anything the corporate‑church hybrid can manufacture:

To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat from the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.

That is the telos. The purpose. That is the reward. That is the reason vigilance matters.

Pray for discernment, my friends. Stay focused on what God is forming in you — not just what He is fixing around you. The middle ground may feel safe, but only those who overcome it receive the promise. And overcoming begins with seeing clearly. May the Holy Spirit reveal these uncomfortable truths that pull us back from the ledge.