Consumerism turned the Church into a service provider: "I want good preaching" "I want amazing worship" "I want great kids' programs" Would we go to Church if it was just a bunch of ragamuffin Jesus-followers gathering around a table, trying to love God and love...
The crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part...
We have completely distorted what church is, by conflating it with Westernized consumerism and capitalism. It’s our fault that our churches don’t grow spiritually and make major impact in our communities. No one else’s.
I am convinced that often the world doesn’t take Christians seriously because we are so much like the world: caught up in the same miserable rat race of self-seeking consumerism and materialism.
Modern-day individualism has diminished and diluted the communal emphasis in Scripture. Piety has become compartmentalized, relegated to a private personal pocket of life. The result is a religious consumerism which describes worship as “attending the church of your...
Worship that is shaped by a consumerist mentality becomes dependent on exit polls to see if its people will continue to want its product. In a “feel-good” culture, people want less emphasis on sin and sacrifice and more on blessing and abundance. Failure to deliver...
Seems to me that many churches today are looking more for the hype and less for the depth…are looking to “beat” their competition and keep their “consumers” satisfied…are much ado about “the show” and their “ratings.” Seems to me, that is a mistake! Jesus on the Cross...
In our zeal for mass conversion and standard strategies, we overlook the fact that evangelism requires far more than effective methods. The gospel is not a consumer product to be marketed by drawing from a strategic tool kit. People come to faith in Christ through a...
I spent the first 2/3 of my life acquiring stuff that doesn’t matter only so that I can spend my last 1/3 getting rid of it. What a stupid game of consumerism we Americans play.
It may sound easy to “allow the Spirit to guide us” while reading the Bible…but in a culture of consumerized Christianity it is also easy to stumble over preconceived notions about the Bible cluttering the path. Chief among such market-driven notions is that the Bible...