Church vs. Corporate

I am a bi-vocational pastor, constantly shifting gears between working for the Lord in the local church, and working for the Lord via working for the Man. So I’m constantly in the position of observing the similarities and differences between the two. In no particular order:

1. The church and the company have similar-yet-different goals. A good company wants to be profitable, grow, and make the world a better place. Similarly, a good church wants to grow and make the world a better place, but profitability (money for money’s sake) is not in the equation. No church staff member should be getting bonuses because of church growth or budget surplus. In this category, the church is more akin to a non-profit: unable to realize a surplus in the corporate sense. Rather—for the church—growth is profit, where growth means saving souls, maturing believers, increasing membership, and sending folks out to do more of the same.
2. On sending out. Companies and churches get rid of employees differently. You either quit or get fired from a company. And you can experience both of these in the church, but thirdly (best-ly), you can be sent. This means the church funds your next venture with a gradually diminishing accountability to itself. The closest corporate parallel I’ve seen is a job placement / career-finder service hosted by the company you’re leaving. (Awkward.) Maybe instead, the closest thing to sending is investing, which, come to think of it, is a wholly appropriate word for both the religious and secular: a gambling man wants his dollars back and then some, but the church does not want its money back—it wants a crop of new believers. This is the difference between currency interest and currency exchange. The Bible is a fan of this.
3. New business start; new churches spawn. The local church is itself the breeding ground for most new churches, but I’ve never heard of a Subway restaurant planting another Subway. Yes, the Subway headquarters in Milford, CT are responsible for doing that (and have they ever), but the church has no headquarters (OK, denominations for some, but individual churches are far and away the single largest planters of new churches). The vast majority of new businesses are not franchises, but entrepreneurial, organic, self-funded efforts. So are new churches, except the funding and launch teams are usually seeded through a parent church.
4. The church hires differently. Joining a church is less like joining a company, and more like getting married. You can go to work at most companies and keep your home life in a black box. But due to the intense personal nature of vocational ministry, and the moral requirements of its offices, you bring your whole self to the church. I’m starting to see a push for this in some companies, but I’m doubtful it will become the norm.
5. The church fires differently (or should). The world might pink slip anyone at any given time for any reason or not, but the church is a family, and family members need to be taken care of, even if they do need to be out of here. This has more in view than a severance package; this is about a hand-held transition into the next chapter (I have in mind here a “moving on” after a faithful tenure rather than any sort of a disqualification). This is about the extra mile. Many churches have kept staff members on salary while helping in their search and placement within a new church. I heard once of a church paying the pastors widow all, or a portion of, his full salary for the rest of her life. Regardless of the particulars, churches should help leaving leaders transition well into their next season and location of ministry, especially those who have served them faithfully for many years.
6. Salaries are different. I don’t mean amounts; I mean their nature. Workplace paychecks are called compensation (you know, to compensate) for time and effort; it’s an exchange, a trade, a quid pro quo. The church does not aim to compensate its pastors, it aims to relieve them of worrying about money, to free them up to have more emotional bandwidth to worry about the church. If we could, we pastors would do it for free, but on the other hand, if purely for financial gain, you couldn’t pay us enough. Soldiers don’t go to war for the awesome paycheck. Therefore, pastors should be paid, and should be paid well, but not exorbitantly.
7. God builds all things, but especially the church. God makes big things and small things; God shuffles the economies around so that money changes hands and the chips fall where He directs, but no one can lay claim to a special blessing and promise business except for the church. Now I did not say your church, because churches fold and unfold, but the church at large will continue to grow, which leads me to…
8. The church will last forever. It has been around for ~2,000 years (longer than Kongō Gumi, the world’s oldest company) and not only shows no signs of slowing, but if us religious nut jobs are right, the church will outlast the Earth itself.

What did I miss? What other differences do you see?