Should We Bribe People To Come To Church?

Should we bribe people to come to church?  Maybe we already do.

In the September, 2011 edition of Fast Company magazine, Esther Duflo’s passionate and unconventional work in serving the poor is profiled.  Udaipur is an extremely under-resourced city in the nation of India.  It had a child immunization rate of less than 2%.  There are several reasons for this:

• Some feel it causes autism.
• Superstitions.  Many fear the “evil eye” which cause many to keep babies contained inside the home for their first year of life.
• Most are simply very poor. 
• As a result, quality nurses can’t afford to work there.

Duflo then created several “incentives”, some call bribes, to address this issue.  Nurses were paid only when they showed up to work.  Families, however, were given a reason to have their children immunized.  Each time a family showed up they received a free kilo of lentils (seeds which yielded food).  If the family completed a full round of shots, they got a set of plates.

The results were compelling.  Simply making the shots easily accessible caused the immunization rate to go from 2% to 18%.  But when the incentives were put in place the rate jumped to 38%!

Sadly, not everyone was happy even though children were healthier and health care costs dropped.  Some felt this was patronizing.  Others could not understand why we should pay people to do the right thing.  Still others thought the poor should take responsibility for themselves. 

Author Anya Kamenetz says, “Bribing the poor is a notion that could offend just about anyone.  We all like our philanthropy pure: Give the money, volunteer at the shelter, act with good intentions, and things will just get better.  That’s not a mode of thinking that allows the less fortunate to have human motivation.”

She adds, “If we really want to make change, we have to discard what Duflo calls our ‘cartoon visions” of the poor.  Doing good means engaging with what people really need and getting it to them by any means necessary.”

Upon reading this article and knowing people really need a relationship with Jesus Christ, I immediately had the following conversation with my wife:

“Should we bribe people to come to church?” 

“Absolutely not!” she exclaimed. 

“Why not?” I calmly asked. 

“Because the Holy Spirit should draw them.”

“What about Singing Christmas Trees, Christmas programs, concerts, guest speakers, inflatables for kids, Moonwalks, Mothers Day guilt, Fathers Day car shows, etc…?” 

“Those are not bribes.  Those are avenues.” she replied.

We sanitize our terminology to make us feel better, but aren’t “avenues”, “incentives”, “promotions”, “events”, and yes “bribes” technically all the same thing?  We are incentivizing people to do things we feel they would not normally do.

It is important to know there is a HUGE difference between incentivizing people coming to church vs. incentivizing people coming to Jesus.  There is nothing else Jesus needs to do!!!  He doesn’t need fancy promotions or a marketing plan.  Jesus doesn’t even need us but He lovingly allows us to be part of the process.  We just need to be faithful to allow Him to tell His amazing story through us.

My final thought is we should incentivize anything not does NOT include sin to compel people to come to church.  If we really want to see changes in the lives of people, life change means “engaging with what people really need and getting it to them by any (non-sinful) means necessary.”

Pastors and church leaders, this post demands a response from you.  Your thoughts?

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