In the past year I have spent a lot of time thinking about the consumer church. Mostly because a professor of mine has been working on a book and feeding his students chapters from it to give him feedback. The book recently released (Consuming Jesus by: Paul Louis Metzger). For those of you who are unfamiliar of the term "consumer church," I would like to propose a definition: A consumer church is a church which provides religious or pseudo-religious services in order to attract people to their location. In essence consumer churches are churches which are very much run like businesses. They look at their potential customers (church members) and target their programing (product) towards reaching those customers.
This post is not a cry to put an end to consumer churches, many people have already done that. I am here announcing that I will no longer consume church. As long as Christians including myself consume church, consumer churches will flourish. The blame of producing consumer churches does not go solely to those who run consumer churches, but also to me who consumes church. If I want to see consumer churches fade into history, I will need to resist the temptation to consume church.
The church I intern at has recently released its pastor and my internship advisor told me that this would be a great learning experience and that I should sit back and observe as much as possible without getting involved. I have realized that this advice is absolute crap. If I sit back and take in the suffering of a part of the body of Christ as "a great learning experience," I am becoming the worst type of consumer. I am consuming a product which is destroying those who are producing it. I cannot sit back and observe as a part of my family is ripped apart. I will not consume the church as it is being consumed.
As Christians we should not be consuming our churches. To put it in a way reminiscent of a great American president, ask not what your church can do for you, but ask what you can do for your church. The role of the Christian in the church is not to be a consumer but to be consumed. Consumed by our love for God, consumed by our love for our neighbor, consumed by the undying love of Christ.
1 comment:
Hi Scott! You tell me something and I'm going to go and find it! That's what I did with your myspace account and then following it to your "blog". All of this is a new language for me. But at 50 years old, I think I can learn this new language!
I can't wait to talk with you in person, or as John said, "face to face", regarding some of your views expressed here. I look forward to a good dialogue about what you've written.
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