When a Church becomes a Tourist Attraction

I recently read this article on the Huffington Post about churches in NYC becoming stops on bus tours.  I guess you pay $55 to be taken on a bus tour of many old gospel churches.  The tourists attend a service and watches how the church works and then they listen to the music.  The church gets a cut of the money that the tour company takes in or some churches just ask for a suggested donation.

At first you might be appalled at this idea, but here is why I think many churches would be very happy with it.

It increases total church attendance and increases the budget.

For many western evangelical churches those are the only two statistics that are worried about.  The budget is aligned to it, staff are hired around it, and meetings are all about those two things.  That is also what a church starts worrying about when it believes that it is dying or slipping into oblivion.  So they hold on to those two things with everything they got.  They go into maintenance mode and try to batten down the hatches.  No new spending.  No risks.  It's time to be safe.  And....then.....they....close their doors.

A church needs a vision and a mission clearly articulated and overly communicated and it ought to be better than "increase attendance and increase the budget."

Or we might as well just see how we can get on the bus tour.