Welcome to my new limited Podcast series, available to my Patreon supporters and Substack subscribers.

The Yellowstone Ranch is a perfect analogy of the American church. In the show, the fictional Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is mentioned as being “larger than Rhode Island”, which means it covers approximately 800,000 acres, and would be valued at roughly $8 Billion. Owning a ranch the size of a small state gives its owner, John Dutton, an enormous amount of power, including the ear of the governor and his own small police force. The ranch is a perfect analogy for modern American megachurches, where the resources of thousands of people are often used to promote the agenda of a single man or small handful of individuals.

Although the ranch is fictional, many of the underlying values that drive the main characters in the show are all-too-common in the American church, including highly capitalistic ones. Just like in churches, John Dutton is presented as a conservative landowner, interested in protecting the land from development. In reality he is protecting his own power. The same way powerful church leaders are viewed as promoting the Kingdom of God, when in reality they too are merely protecting their own powerful platforms. Although most pastors are considered to be self-sacrificial simply by the nature of their chosen profession, the truth is, they generally use their platforms to generate wealth and promote their own ends far more than they use them to advance the Kingdom.

The truth is, we do not own the church any more than John Dutton actually owns the land his ranch sits on. While a fictional TV character could be forgiven for his hubris, pastors that consider themselves to be the owners of church buildings, property and even congregations should not be. In episode 28 of the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast, Reverend Kevin Coronado shared how he, his father and his father’s Hispanic congregation were often treated like interlopers in the predominantly white Baptist churches they met in. In spite of taking up their own offerings, which were more than enough to cover their own expenses and buy their own resources, they regularly had to fight with church leadership for the funding they raised.

That this would happen in a church is despicable. The Church does not belong to anyone. We do not own any part of it any more than we own any part of the earth. We are simply called to be stewards of all that God has entrusted to us, yet petty disputes and treating church resources as if they are property has reduced the American church to a money grubbing enterprise. The fight for territory and power have come to far more characterize the American church than love for one’s neighbor or caring for one’s community. In today’s podcast, I talk about the cost of that battle and how God saw it coming thousands of years ago.