Craig Groeschel of life.church: Give me Jesus or Give me a Refund!

life.church or Greg Rochelle and they guarantee Jesus in 90 days or your money back hi yeah this is Church's Lane let's talk about how this breaks the church and what we can do to fix it not happy about that yeah it's it's kind of yeah yeah when I saw this headline like immediately my brain just kind of stopped when excuse me what now um and so you know of course I had to read this article and figure out what what the deal was and and I kind of get it because life churches they are trying or should I just keep saying life.church which is how it's spelled throughout the article I don't know it

yeah I I I I just kind of can't you can't you know but like they're they're they're experiencing the same issue like most churches have which is that there's a very low percentage of of people that attend your church that generally are responsible for the giving um and so I understand that that's a like a thing that you want to kind of combat because there's there's a certain degree of of faithfulness that you want from people the congregation I mean it's like I'm going to church and you know if I want my church to have things that are like you know cool like running water and electricity and pastors then that money has to come from somewhere right so I get it um so they they came with as this whole program which is say if you haven't tied within the last six months then you can enroll and if you're approved then after 90 days then you have 30 days um you know if you haven't seen the Lord's blessings in your life you can request said a whole lot in a very short amount of time so let's unpack all of that kind of Point by Point all right so um first thing you said they're trying to counter the problem of low tithing

um are we at all concerned that like Life Church is running out of money right not in the slightest um and of course I had to check that myself um so you know I went and I looked at um um it's the EK fa of the Evangelical Council for financial accountability it's a good organization um and and they had some numbers that um like life.church has 450 million dollars in net Assets in the last reported year 2021 they had 68 million dollars in excess of their expenses so we would call that profit in the business world so they had 68 million dollars of profit and they're concerned about so I'm sure they would say the same thing that every other Church says when it comes about excess income or excess assets is those assets only exist on paper right it's it's not it's not real money sitting in a bank account you know it's real estate it's land um uh trust things that to be bequeathed in the future but it's kind in my mind it's very dishonest because you can sell land and immediately have money in your hand you can sell a building you can sell you know you can sell all these things and immediately have that cash back it's not necessarily like when Elon Musk says um all of my net worth is tied up in it uh like stock options and they're not even all fully matured yet you know so it's not that kind of financial dance that people do in in the secular world you know in the church World usually these these assets are real assets

yeah I mean you're talking about you know facilities I mean there may be things like mortgages that are held on there so like you know my church like we have a mortgage on our property and so you know if you look at you know our assets you're going to see like the land but then you have would have to sit there and so in and subtract you know so what's the what's the value of the mortgage that we have on that which is where this number that I got from ekva has net assets and that's the important number there you know so it's like if my church is net assets it's not going to look anywhere near as pretty as life churches net assets and we certainly don't want any emphasis on church so life.church right okay by the way I should just mention real quick just for the sake of full disclosure that you know I'm in the I.T world and I've been in the church I.T world for a long time and I do know some of the guys over on staff at life.church in the I.T department and so um do I feel a little conflicted about this story today a little bit not much because they're not the ones preaching they're not the ones making policy you know they're just pressing keys and make telling people to restart their printers you know uh but just just as full disclosure I do know some of those guys and I you know we're good friends and I and I love them to death um okay so let's let's keep going here so you enroll in a class for 90 days where you get to test and the test is whether or not you see God's blessing in your life and if you don't see God's blessing as it is defined to you in that class then you can have a 30-day you can have a refund um 30 days after the 90 days so that would be 120 days in yeah and like and just like the the air quotes that you were pronouncing them was such aggression it's it's a beautiful thing um because yeah it's it's like I want to know like who is setting the the criteria for seeing God's blessings in your life um because I I can think of many ways in which that you know process can be abused and I mean yeah it's just it's it's goofy because it just like there's no way for me to sit there and say okay well what are God's blessings in your life because and there's no doubt in my mind that that whoever's teaching this class or giving you know heading up this uh this strategy they're going to be like if you see the sunrise in the morning that's God's blessing you know the rains that that fill our stomachs and Keep Us Alive that's God's blessing if you have children that's God's blessing and so they're basically going to set the bar so low that you're gonna have to work now to trip over it yeah and like I would want to give um you know life Dutch or you know a little bit more you know credit than that um but at the same time you know it's like when when when you know what we do is you know we look at you know Christian news and go that doesn't sound right you know it's like maybe you know maybe think about things a little differently um and and I think like the worst part of it is um you know it's it's of course trying to find a scriptural justification for it um and and it's citing Malachi uh 3 10 to 11. yeah as like saying like well and and it's like it's like a virtual you know like money back guarantee in the Bible it's like that's an interesting take on on the prophet Malachi um not a takeaway I got from it in the slightest um considering that like Malachi from beginning to end is is really chewing out the entirety of Israel the people the the priesthood everything it is just chewing them out and like the section's saying you know like hey bring your tithe to the storehouses and see if I don't open the floodgates that's I mean in Context it's an incredibly you know sarcastic statement you know it's like you would find this out if you did it but you're not going to is kind of the tone it's said with um and and beyond that like this is old Covenant stuff um if you don't you know if you think we're under the the same Covenant as you know Israel was back then then you need to go and read Romans because it makes a very strong argument that we're not you know and and this was part of the Covenant blessings and curses you know and Israel was on you know in line for getting all the Covenant curses and this is trying to call for a reversal that behavior so it's like I'm sorry just because something mentions money doesn't mean that you know we as Christians can make Doctrine out of that to make some sort of like Financial uh teaching in our church our watching listening who who aren't uh theology nerds um so there's kind of two sins going on here right the one sin is just interpreting the scripture wrong and and like you said leaving out that that sarcastic part part of it which is really important right it's I talk about it all the time when I talk about how Jesus talks about the women in their two final petties putting it in the offering right everybody teaches it wrong and then the same thing goes here um but then on top of that yeah there's the hypocrisy of of every Pastor in America getting you to uh to buy into this whole thing by saying there's a new covenant and the New Covenant replaces the old Covenant and then they go back and they teach the old Covenant as if the other the old covenants all that matter especially when we want to do things like get money out of your pocket or hate gay people or push women down or push minorities down then we can go back to the old Covenant all we want right but when we want to pull people to accountable standards we go whoa whoa whoa New Covenant brother New Covenant don't talk about the don't talk about the speck in my eye when you got a plank in yours right so so there's a whole laundry list of things gone wrong the minute you go to this verse in Malachi for most pastors

yeah and and it's just it's just like the way um money is talked about I think that like what like I've said this before basically like if you really really turn the heat up and reduce down what a pastor is a pastor is a professional communicator of of spiritual things but essentially is a professional Communicator you would think in centuries after centuries of of of training up and and releasing pastors into the world that we'd be so much better about talking about money in the church and we are just so god-awful at it generation after generation talking about money yeah I mean and the funny thing to me is that you know when we talk about tithing right like like you know in you know going back to the old Covenant right that original Covenant you know every tribe had some sort of land inheritance except for the Levites they had no inheritance in the land their inheritance was that they were cared for by the other 12 or by the other 11 tribes and so it was critical for that tribe's existence that like you know Israel be tithing um you know the Apostle Paul in the New Testament you know he uh he uses uh a verse he was like do not you know muzzle and Ox while it's threshing um which is to say when you know like the ax is doing work it needs to you know munch on some food now and then so it's like you know you know you know the teacher um that you you want for your church deserves to be paid wages you know and if you're if your church is like ours it's like it's a building that we we go to you know like you might have rent or a mortgage or something like that like there are costs associated with it and you know Paul makes it very clear in just a couple of verses like what the expectation is and why it's there and and then we get this garbage from life.church um understands why you need to give to the church right she gets it like there are mortgages there's an electric bill there's staff to pay and by the way we you know we want our staff to to not just you know barely live above the poverty line we want them to be to have any you know any sort of life that has um what's the word that that has value right we want them to have a life that we we value you it's not just that we want you to to work like a mule or like an ox like we value what you bring to our lives and so we want to pay you accordingly right my eight-year-old gets that so it's not like you gotta put all this stuff in biblical code in order to get money out of people's pockets right it just it drives me nuts that you kind of that that we would rather kind of take the spiritual hammer out and beat people up instead of just saying like look you know if you value what we do throw some money in the pot otherwise we got to close the doors right and if you don't throw money in the pot that's fine like we're gonna keep doing what we do but we're not necessarily going to look to you like if you're if you're if your secret goal is the week man I want to be on the worship team or I want to be a leader in this church like well if you're not helping us keep this thing alive then we're probably not going to look to you that way right and it's a very practical thing and there's no need for us to spiritually bludgeon each other with money in the church wouldn't have to and you know um I mean we've already kind of slid sideways into like how this is breaking the church but just to to put the fine point on it you know like um if if low tithing is a problem um what you're doing here like using like this mattress sale approach to selling god um to your congregation like that's not fixing the problem and I would I would maybe throw in there on top of that that um the problem is the leadership of the church is the issue not that people aren't seeing God's blessings low tithing right well like I I hate to sound as simple as this right but tithing is down because giving is down right and well why is giving down well there might be a lot of reasons but I think what like you kind of like hit it really really well there I think people tend to tend to get behind um something that inspires them right and it's it's not

um it's not just the message that Jesus loves you that that keeps you going the the realization that Jesus loves you is what gets you started right but bringing the kingdom to Earth we talk about this week after week making the kingdom real here on Earth um meeting people's needs um healing people's hurts you know feeding the hungry clothing the naked you know doing the things that Jesus did while he was on Earth that is the vision that people get behind and are willing to pursue across the boundaries of time and it's all those things that the church has largely stopped doing yeah yeah and and that's just really sad uh to me but I mean I think that is like the reality we're talking about and then you know I think another thing is like you know I said you know that it reinforces kind of a consumer culture approach to it and you you brought up the word like a transactional approach to God I think that's a much better way of putting it than I initially did um because it yeah it's like insert money and get out God blessing it's I I don't you know God's not a vending machine we should not treat God as if it's a vending machine um and it's it's just gross um but then I mean like I've already mentioned you know the net assets of life.church and it's which is massive and how like you know in 2021 they they profited just 68 million dollars um so it's like when you think of like that um you know that that stereotypical image of of just a sheisty televangelist you know begging for money um like that Kenneth Copeland guy for instance you know like how many airplanes is too many airplanes he doesn't know um and it's just like that it's the same thing it's a guy that's got more wealth uh than he than you know he needs uh his ministry has more money than it needs to do what it claims to be doing and then it's begging for more money it's just it seems so disingenuous to me it is a massive operation like um multi-campus the I.T department at life.church is larger than some church staffs you know it is a massive operation you know that Bible app that everybody has on their phone that's life.church okay so they they are massive player um in the space doing massive things okay um some of them good right like we know that there's money that goes from life.church you know into those very things you know feeding feeding the hungry uh clothing naked right so this is not to bag on on um or this is not to put a microscope and call balls and Strikes on how they spend this is to put a microscope and call balls and Strikes on how they Inspire or don't inspire right and like

to me this is the strategy of what happens when we like you know like to write down in Hollywood there's a writer strike going on like well this is what happens when you run out of writers or creative minds that then let's let's go back let's go back to the hits like let's like this is literally like as seen on TV like get my sham wow we're 90 days money back this is literally as seen on TV like how can you claim the church is different from the world if you are engaging in the exact strategies that you see on like midnight QVC commercials you know yeah and and just like you know um you know like when I think of that it's like okay it's like well how do we begin to fix this nonsense and I think um I think the first thing which you know I didn't think about earlier but hey you know eventually the horse eventually gets to the Finish Line right um it's just that like like with how we run our churches in the world because you know like there are numerous verses that's like basically you know the other nations or the Gentiles or non-believers or whatever you want to say yeah they they curse God because of you and and like that's that's an important lesson that we need to it's it's in Malachi uh I think it was in the other chapter um so it's just like we need to think about that when when our churches are operating like are we doing things in such a way that just the world outside is going to look at what we're doing and then immediately call it in a question and and we need to do our best not to do that I think you and I are of the same mind that instead of money coming first the mission or the way you said it serving should come first right you serve first and then as the money comes you figure out how to reconcile all that right but what happens in churches now is you have an annual meeting right you need annual meeting the church body votes on the budget well here's our you know 60 million dollar annual budget and so now all of a sudden your whole world becomes about raising money to meet the budget instead of doing the thing that you know you ought to be doing regardless of the amount of money you're bringing in right and and like this is not to be like a dig on a big church because every every church I've seen at any level this is kind of how it works like you know like the word I often hear is you know it's it's the aspirational goal um you know because you know when you're when your entire operation is giving based you know I mean like you're you're looking at Trends you know over time you're looking at you know over the the seasons and how like annual trends go and you're trying to like suss out this stuff and it can be a very big challenge um but yeah I I'm with you that like it needs to be a reaction to what we have and not like trying then to like put um you know pressures and expectations on the congregation to like do what you expect of of moving we're moving to a new house um and today I called lawn services because there's going to be about a month stretch where I can't be at the house to mow the lawn right and some people some neighbors get a little antsy about that and so I was calling the lawn services today now imagine so imagine you're a lawn service and and um you're you don't have enough money to meet the payroll right you have two options you can go to your existing customers and say I'm raising all your rates right and that's how I'm going to meet payroll or you get your butt out and you hit the streets and you start knocking on doors you start like hey can I mow your lawn and I'll you know find new customers maybe at a discount right and it seems to me the church is always more comfortable going back to raising people's rates instead of finding ways to inspire people to to to follow Jesus and to become part of this um this organism that we call the Living Church and part of that organism part of feeding that organism is feeding it financially which I have no problem with right but it is an organic process it is not a guilt-based process right you know and I like I wrote in my notes like just stop being greedy which I know like just saying that isn't really a fix um but like what I was really meaning by that is is that you know whether it's because you know you want um you know more money coming in so you can justify increasing payroll um that might be a consideration it might not be but there's also like a really strong um um like Pride elements that you know like if you're if you're uh Ministry is growing it's getting bigger and it's expanding like there's there's a lot of Pride that can go with that and that's a thing that you know pastors and leaders can get greedy for I mean real easy I mean because you're just like oh look how big you like like in your life that church is a big church right so if it's getting bigger you can be like oh look at how great this is you know I work for this ministry that feels good and it's like really like you're you're being emotionally greedy um and that can lead to mistakes and Leadership and and so like I guess what I want to say more actively and be like um you know you know we need to set a much um a much higher expectation for humility and Leadership and then and then some sort of accountability From Below because like accountability you know like our answer for everything because we're at now like radical accountability radical transparency is still really every where we end up every time absolutely and that's probably the perfect place to put a pin on this and uh and and just you know hopefully oh here's let me say it this way my hope and prayer is that this that this new uh Adventure they're on in their six-month challenge is a Successful Failure like uh one of the things that the leadership at Google what they say is yeah we start a lot of projects we start a lot of projects and our goal is to fail fast right the things that you learn by failing are just as important as the little things you learn that's succeeding and so um hopefully this thing um Withers and dies and they get the message loud and clear like as as the you know in you know uh referencing the Mandalorian this is not the way you know you know all right all right anyway we are churches lame you may have listened to this episode or watch this episode and thought Man Mark and Scott they really do not dig the church and the that could not be further from the church truth words is hard we love the church we are actively involved in churches we want to see the church grow we want to see God's kingdom made real on Earth but we are convinced that the church in America especially is Its Own Worst Enemy and that when churches ask the question why aren't we more relevant they're not really being sincere when they kind of go we don't really have to have an answer for that well Mark and I we've got several good answers for that and we put them in this podcast every week for you so if you'd like to like be part of the conversation we'd love to hear from you um is life.church the best thing since life spread are we being too hard on them um are are they starting to tilt a little bit too much looking like the Prosperity Gospel kind of guys I don't know we'd love to hear from you so you know if you're on YouTube by all means leave us a comment and give us a thumbs up and thumbs down and all those things and if you're listening on your favorite podcast player uh give us a rating or review and if you really just want to get to us without any of the filters send us an email at churcheslanepodcast gmail.com and with that go in peace and serve the Lord and hey if you like this video and you want to see more like it check out the playlist that is theoretically right there Prosperity something my brain turned up for jumping in there the way you did usually that's my job but you just grab the bull by the horns there [Laughter] hey I'm Scott and we're splitting up really no so here's the deal I'm sure that you've noticed that our release schedule has been not as um what's the word disciplined not as disciplined as it needs to be and that's my fault and what's happening is I'm moving away from Mark Mark and I literally live like down the street from one another like it just it takes us mere minutes to get from one house to the other and I couldn't take it no more and I said Mark I can't take you no more and I'm out of here no I I just um the wife and I decided it was time to pull up stakes and uh check out uh the crossroads of America in Indiana and we are heading to Indiana and so all this kind of moving stuff is kind of like take being busy and so I'll just make sure that you know family comes first and making sure I get my family moved well um but we're gonna keep coming at you with episodes so stay tuned and thanks for watching