The Consuming Consumer Christianity

The more I am a part of the church, the more I feel like its consumer-driven qualities are clouding the central message of the faith. And it hurts.

Take my job for instance. I have 4 years of college education, and three years of graduate school education focused toward ministry. Yet, what did I do tonight? I basically arranged a play date for middle school girls. (Ok there were a few guys and a few high schoolers, but you all get the point). What do I do tomorrow? Lead a fundraiser for our mission trip, come up with games and a lesson for youth group, go to a "welcome" class where I sell the church to perspective members. I spent years learning the intimate details of vocabulary words like eschatology and soteriology. Yet, what am I doing? Volunteer recruitment and development, recreational leadership, raising and managing budgets, developing a new, less formal worship service to reach out to our younger members and people outside of our church. None of these things are bad things. Yet, I feel like more of a middle manager than a minister of the gospel.

Furthermore, much of what we do in the church is about developing and maintaining constituences. In our church here, people who have the greatest voice and places of leadership are constituencies that are either well-monied or have made other "collateral" investments.

The local church is not the only place where Christianity and marketing are yoked. Everytime I turn on the TV James Dobson is pushing the values vote, lobbying for support and influence in the media. Of course, part of his visibility is to market the Colorado Springs religious right behemoth known as FOCUS ON THE FAMILY. An intentional decision to keep the ministry financially healthy was to make Dobson more visible on the national scene on shows like "Larry King Live". Thanks to THE PASSION, Christian media has become more marketable. So, there are going to be all these "faith-friendly" TV shows. TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL TIMES 10. God help us. (I mean that literally). It has become fashionable to have a copy of the PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE on the bookshelf right between the Bible, and all the Harlequin romance novels.

The fact is, after the election of 2004, it has become fashionable to be a Christian in many circles. Yet, this is the opposite of what the movement of Christ was all about. Churches spend millions on state of the art sanctuaries designed to compete with other churches to bring in middle class families with financial resources. Jesus walked on the earth as a homeless man, depending on the handouts of women. Jesus said the greatest will be the least, while the church has stiven to take on worldly power and lord it over people at every possible occasion. The early church grew through suffering, while today we try to grow the church through making people as comfortable as possible. The church is about being a worldly success, while Jesus suffered the scandal of the cross. And when people walk through the doors of many of our churches, they sense that something is not right. They love Jesus, but shake their heads at the church, because intuitively many people know it just does not make sense.

Don't get me wrong. I am PRO-CHURCH. Especially when it at least in part embodies the movement of Jesus. And, truth be told, I am a registered Republican, who voted for many of the same people as the religious right wanted in office. I am not after a perfect church full of perfect people, because I would not even come close to being welcome there.

What I long for is the church as a counter-cultural movement of Christ. A church that is less interested in what celebrity converted to evangelicalism and more interested in the single mom with a toddler in tow in their neighborhood. A church less interested in being powerful and more interested in being faithful. A church that listens to God before it makes decisions instead of sticking its finger in the winds and playing the polls of the popular opinion. A church that loves homosexuals, but does not necessarily feel they have to adopt a "gay-rights" or "family first" political agenda to do so. In short, I long for a church with strong convictions, and humble grace. A church not driven or led by market schemes, even if they are marketing schemes of a large Christian organizations or political parties.

OK, glad I got that off my chest.