“More and more people spend their time just shopping around,
looking
for diversion while avoiding commitment.”
Eddie Gibbs
Alan
Hirsch, one of the brightest thinkers today on building authentic Christian
churches, argues that many churches today use a seeker approach to evangelism
and entertainment to attract people to Christ. The devastating result is that
ministry becomes another cultural form of consumerism that successfully
attracts crowds but fails to transform lives. Rather, the crowds continue to
play the soundtrack of the culture – “give me more and more and if the quality
isn’t up to my expectations I will shop somewhere else.” The fact that such an
approach to ministry builds more religious consumers shouldn’t surprise us.
Hirsch suggest
that authentic faith communities must demand that members become “self-feeders”
who take responsibility for developing significant personal relationships with
other Christians and develop practices that counteract culture and changes us
into the image of Christ. This, of course, runs counter to a consumer mentality
that is heard by some: “This or that church simply wasn’t feeding me.” As
parents we expect our children – at some point – to begin feeding themselves. Why should church leaders expect less from persons committed to following
Christ? To advance an argument that one church or another “isn’t feeding me” is
simply an indicator of personal laziness.
The Apostle
Paul speaks of the Christian journey as a race that must be run well. Training,
argues Paul, will be required just as athletes train for competition. Of
course, this means more personal effort than popping in a video about Jesus and
grabbing a bowl of popcorn. Locating ourselves in small group for
accountability, intentional engagement with the scriptures, scheduled and
purposeful quiet time with God and developing conversational skills to share
our relationship with Jesus with others will be required. I do not promise that
any of this is easy. But didn’t your parents teach you that anything great in
life is rarely obtained easily?
Consumerism
is the dominant worldview of North America . As
such, it is competing with the kingdom
of God
Joy,
No comments:
Post a Comment