Yesterday, I posted a review of the book The Divine Commodity (affiliate link), which explores the impact American consumerism has had on the American Christian church.
One of the impacts of consumerism is that many churches do outreach/marketing by trying to appeal to the “felt needs” of those in their community. People are invited to church with messages like…
- Come to our church, the worship music is inspiring!
- Come to our church for practical teaching that will help you in your every day life.
- Bring your kids to our church; it will be the best hour of their week.
- Check out the new series we’re doing at church, it will really help your marriage.
These messages may be conveyed by personal invitation, through mailers, on the website, or even from the pulpit.
At first glance all those things sound good. After all who wants the alternatives? Who wants to be a part of a church with boring music, irrelevant teaching, lame kids programs, right?
But here’s the issue…
Those messages are essentially saying, come to our church because of what’s in it for you.
Contrast that with the words of Jesus.
- If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. – Luke 9:23
- Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. – Luke 9:24
- The last will be first, and the first will be last. – Matthew 20:16
Jesus taught it’s not about you and what you want. You can’t follow Jesus without letting go of the things you want like money, popularity, security, and comfort.
So, my question is this: Are churches essentially bait-and-switching people when they say “come to our church because of what is in it for you” to get people in the door and then turn around and say, “Christianity is not about what’s in it or you but it’s about loving, serving, sacrificing, and giving to others?”
And does that even work? When a church attracts people by appealing to what’s in it for them, should we be surprised when those people are resistant to tithe, only serve when it’s convenient to them, or look for another church when the pastor teaches on a subject that makes them uncomfortable?
*Disclaimer – I assume I am going to take some heat for even asking this question, but just for the record I am not “taking a side” here nor am I talking specifically about my church. My hope is that we can talk about consumerism and the church openly and honestly with input from lots of different perspectives.
Paul – not a subject I admit I’ve ever thought about, but I do understand what you are saying and FWIW I don’t think it works.
As a church (worldwide) we do need to be open and upfront about what we are offering but as you say an offer of “come and serve, give us your money and listen to some bloke have a go” is not likely to get anyone near the doors 🙂
And now to ask – are we / they resistant to tithing? or to giving?
I think we’ve done this not only with strategy, but with theology. Christianity has become all about who gets to go to Heaven when we die, and Heaven has become all about the lack of pain and difficulty we’ll experience, the eternal bliss WE will live in. Someone recently pointed out to me that if you remove God from the picture that most of us have of Heaven, that picture won’t change much, and Heaven is all about God.
It seems incredulous to me that we attribute to God (self-centeredness) what we say God wants to remove from us. The fact is that the gospel is all about us. That’s because we are the one who needs the healing and deliverance. Did not Jesus say in Luke 4, quoting Isaiah 61, that He came to heal our broken hearts and preach deliverance to the captives? Even Jesus’ admonishment to deny ourselves is for our own good. It is not God’s desire to be the center of attention, but to heal His most prized creation. He becomes the center of praise because of the great work He has done in us by the good pleasure of His will (Eph. 1).
Had a similar conversation with different context already once today. We have some issues with promising things we can’t deliver. God can deliver them if he chooses to, that that is different from use telling people that God will do something.
An example. Quite often I hear people evangelizing and saying something like, “If you become a Christian God will take care of all of your problems.” Scripture never claims that. Instead what we should be saying is that, “If you become a Christian and submit to God’s will all the problems that God allows in your life, you will have the strength to work through.” Most people if pressed would agree that the second is the better theology, but still evangelize using the first.
Stuart, thanks for your comment. I think there’s a third alternative to “come to our church because of what’s in it for you” and “come and serve, give us your money and listen to some bloke have a go.” But that’s for tomorrow’s post. 😉
I totally agree. If you look at the Biblical record of the first churches, you see that they GAVE all they had and disbursed the money, food and property to those who needed it. The Bible also gives an outline for a church service and it doesn’t say, “Come together once a week and we’ll sing some songs and one guy will stand up there and do all the talking.” It says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” Everyone is supposed to GIVE something to the service – not get something out of it. But what’s the likelihood anyone would show up to a service if they were told, “Come to our service and give us all you have!”
My mom has gone as far as to say the same for weddings. She told me when I was engaged and joking about eloping, my mom gave me a speech about how the wedding is not just for the couple. It is an invitation for the guests to become part of the couple’s life and support system – kind of like relationship cheerleaders, rooting for the marriage to work out. I’ve taken the role of guest at weddings very seriously ever since. Some weddings (mine included) even include the minister charging the guests with this responsibility to support the couple. These days, however, weddings are too often about the bride (not even about the couple really) and after the reception is over, the guests just go home having served their role as audience. When hard times hit in the relationship, the couple has no one to go to for advice and support.
Chris, I agree that’s a common view of heaven. I’ve seen several people posing the question, “If you could go to heaven where there was no suffering, no illness, no war, no sadness, but also no God, would you want to be there?” It really gets to the heart of which we love more God or our own comfort.
I’ve also seen several people writing about how we need to change our focus from what we’ve been saved from to what we’ve been saved for. Earth for a Christ-follower should be more than heavens waiting room.
Adam & Corinne, great comments! Very insightful!
Keith – may I offer a rebuttal to your statement?
It’s pretty clear that God is all about his glory. I think we react against that thought at first because we don’t like egotists, but the real reason that we don’t like egotists is that we all know that deep down, where it matters, we’re all the same. If a human tries to convince you that they’re better than everyone else, we all know that it’s a lie.
With God, however, it’s true. Here’s some Biblical arguments for that view:
Creation proclaims God’s glory, not ours (Psalm 19)
We were created for His glory (http://ref.ly/is43.7)
God does not share His glory (http://ref.ly/is42.8)
God forgives sins for His sake, not ours (http://ref.ly/is43.25)
He refines us for His sake (He repeats Himself here to drive the point home) (http://ref.ly/is48.10-11)
Jesus was troubled about His death, and desired to be delivered from it, but obeyed His Father’s will not first and foremost because He loved us (Yes, that IS a part of it), but to glorify His Father (http://ref.ly/jn12.27-28)
And again in Philippians – Jesus left His throne, became sin, became obedient to death on a cross, gave us righteousness, and then the Father lifted Him up so that “at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess…that Jesus Christ is Lord…” and the kicker is “…to the glory of God the Father.”
And of course, the Bible ends with Revelation, where God Himself is absolutely the center of attention, and of all History. It’s not wrong for God to put Himself at the center because He is truly worthy of it. It is, in fact, an act of love for Him to allow us to be with Him and to worship Him.
Wow, awesome post Paul! Christianity is often times taught only about what you will recieve when coming to Christ. Then when times get tough people abandon their faith because God didn’t fulfill selfish desires.
“Earth for a Christ-follower should be more than heavens waiting room.”
That’s a great way of putting it. Can I borrow that sometime? 😉
Corrine wrote this radical suggestion based on Scripture:
Everyone is supposed to GIVE something to the service – not get something out of it. But what’s the likelihood anyone would show up to a service if they were told, “Come to our service and give us all you have!”
I’d like to try this radical marketing approach at our center. I’m calling it “show up and give” Will let you know how it works out! Thanks Corrine!
Chris – any time.
Margo…
>>But what’s the likelihood anyone would show up to a service if they were told, “Come to our service and give us all you have!”
That’s exactly the question I address in part 2 of this series which is now live. Thanks for the lead-in. 🙂
http://www.liveintentionally.org/2009/11/19/anti-consumerism-worst-church-outreach-strategy-ever/