I was in the Ham (that's Birmingham, for all you out-of-staters) today at a BellSouth conference for major customers. The keynote speaker was former FCC chairman Michael Powell (the son of the former SecState/CJCS/General Colin Powell). He gave an engaging and interesting speech, and I even got to ask a question afterwards, although I won't bore you with the details of that. However, there were some things he said that got me thinking.
Powell told a story about his 12-year-old son. He said he told his son that he needed to stop downloading pirated music and start using an online store like iTunes, because it was wrong to "steal" the music. His son responded, "That sucks! Music should be free!" like he was Che Guevera, fighting the Man, and he stormed off. Sometime later Powell got the cell phone bill, which included $35 worth of charges for ring tones that his son had downloaded. Powell asked his son "Che" why it was okay to pay $2.99 for 10 seconds of ringtone music, but not 99 cents for an actual full song. His son's comment was something along the lines of, "You just don't understand." However, Powell thought about it after a while and concluded that the reason that his son, and by extension others of the digital generation, didn't have a problem with this was that music is music, but ringtones are personal. They make a person's cell phone identifiably his, and not someone else's, and he doesn't have a problem spending money for them.
Powell went on to say that the children of the Information Age live in a world where entertainment content, catered to their personal desires, is available virtually on demand. Entertainment media like newspapers and television, that are designed based on a one-size-fits-all model, are failing because they cannot compete with immediately available, personally-tailored content.
This got me to thinking about the seeker-sensitive church movement. Pastors like Rick Warren preach a gospel that is about personal fulfillment and purpose, and their churches are designed to appeal to people who are curious about Christianity but don't want the "churchy" stuff. This is perfectly understandable. But is it right?
I have gone about as far as you possibly can over the last five years or so on this question. About five years ago, LJ and I were members of a relatively large "First Baptist"-type church. The church had six or seven full-time and part-time paid staff members, lots of wonderful people, a fantastic choir, and a well-developed and established children's program. The problem was, the church was effectively as dead as a doornail. Many people were attenders by habit or for appearance's sake. There were few people who were interested in studying the Word or sharing the gospel. When we participated in a sixteen-week visitation program to share the gospel with people who visited the church, we never visited one person who claimed to be unsaved. They were ALL members of other churches. That's not to say that all of them were Christians, but that obviously only people who claimed to be Christians were coming to this church.
That really started to bother me. I had realized that I was not concerned for those who were lost, and I had prayed that God would break my heart and give me a desire to see people come to Christ. When he answered my prayer, I started to become really dissatisfied with the church. At the same time, a couple who had been members there for many years had felt called to plant a church that would be focused on reaching the lost. They asked LJ and me to join them, and after some prayer and thought, we agreed.
The church plant, despite the best intentions, was probably doomed from the start. None of us had any experience planting a church, and almost everyone involved had small children, which meant that nearly all of our efforts had to be focused on ministering to our own kids rather than to those outside the church. What we also realized was that contemporary music and topical preaching, while refreshing for a time, was not very spiritually satisfying. Although we grew close in relationship to each other, we didn't reach very many new people before our plans and dreams fell apart.
Soon afterward, we joined an existing church that was contemporary, and seemed to be really growing. There were lots of young parents and small kids. The preaching was interesting and exciting. The pastor used visual aids and videos, and the music leader looked and sang like Justin Timberlake. It seemed to be a happening place. But after a while, we realized that many of the members there had come there specifically because of the pastor, who had worked at at least six other churches in town. The members were not all that interested in meeting the church's ministry needs, and LJ and I found ourselves running programs there with almost no willing helpers. After just 18 months, we decided to move on.
So now, we have been searching for a church home for more than a year. We have visited 20 different churches, and while we haven't made a decision yet, the place we have been attending lately is a very traditional church, about as far from the church plant we tried to start as is possible. Over the last few years, what LJ and I have been searching for in a church has changed dramatically, and we have come full circle (or at least I have - I'm not sure LJ was ever sold on it) on the seeker-sensitive mentality.
I wholeheartedly agree with Powell that our culture is teaching us that our desires can be met at the push of a button. We can receive voice and data communication 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at almost any place on the globe. We can meet our spouses and order our dinner online. We can shop for anything, anywhere, right from our home computer, and the only limit is how much credit you can convince some company to extend to you. In our consumer culture, is it any wonder that churches are conforming to the a la carte, on-demand model as well?
The problem is that CHURCHES ARE NOT BUSINESSES, and CHRISTIANITY IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT. In the business world, a company's success is based on bottom-line profitability. Many pastors and Christian leaders attempt to base the church's success on bottom-line member numbers. The best way to make those membership rolls grow is to cater to as many desires as possible, right? Meet people's "felt needs?" This is the worst possible solution. In Matthew 23:25, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for their greed and self-indulgence. Is it possible that he has changed his mind? "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23 ESV) Is it possible that God's desire for us is not to gratify ourselves, but to glorify Him? How is it that we have gotten things so backwards?
1 comment:
Well said!
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