- I spoke on the phone with a woman from another state. She lamented the fact that her family could not find a church where they "were fed". As I processed through our conversation later, it occurred to me that she related to church from the same perspective that she would have seen a store. She was looking for a "store" that had the product she wanted. When I encouraged her to take the responsibility to create what she saw lacking, she resisted the encouragement. She wanted to be fed.
- I recently have noticed that most church advertisements play on this consumeristic mindset. They all, in some form or another, present the message of "we have something you want (or need)". Come and get it.
- A recent post on an Internet forum I frequent at times informed people of the availability of an empty church building in the poster's community. The last line of the post read "the only competition would be a Baptist church down the road". It would seem to me the competition would not be another church, unless you saw church as a product to market to consumers.
When I place these mindsets over the template of Jesus' life, the glaring flaws of this kind of thinking becomes apparent. Jesus never invited people simply to be consumers, using slick marketing tools to promote the advantages of following Him. Instead, He expected people to become involved in His work. He demanded a sacrifice that frightened the consumers away.
If the church is to become a transformational force in our communities, we must address the consumeristic tendencies in people instead of taking advantage of them (the consumeristic tendencies) to build something impressive. We must teach people to feed themselves. We must ask them to make an "all or nothing" choice when it comes to following Christ. If we do not address the consumeristic tendencies, we are doomed to becoming irrelevant to the cause of Christ.
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