December 2006 Archives
iMonk on The Christian-Industrial Complex:
Get yourself and your families out of this mess. Look at what's happening and say NO to it. Pastors: Talk to your people about books worth reading. Get your sermons from the Bible, not some marketer. Critique the fads. Most of all, present the savior and the call to follow him. Tell Lifeway to take their next marketing ploy to the shredder. Resist the remaking of the Christian faith into buying stuff, wearing stuff, going to stuff, doing programs and spending money. Remake your Christian experience this year into something that's not just another fad. Get angry if you need to, or just quietly say "I'm not part of this anymore." Get off the train and walk. Wave at the sheep on their way to the next sheep convention to get a sheep shirt and a bag of sheep books.
Get your people reading the Bible, reading good books, talking to each other, doing ministry in your community and grounded in simple Christianity. Reduce your consumeristic discipleship by half, and then look at the half that's left and see what you really think of it. Jesus said that if we find the treasure in the field, we don't buy, we sell. We give away. It's a revolution, not a convention or a market. Jesus went to a religious marketplace once. It didn't turn out well.
Bill Kinnon writes:
...knowing how to effectively market in the ever changing landscape we find ourselves in is critical to the success of any business. But is effective marketing critical to the "success of the church." I'm not so sure.I'm afraid the entire concept of church marketing may have the exact opposite response than that desired when addressing emergents and/or millenials.
John Santic asks four great questions about mega-church ecclesiology, including this one:
How is mission to be understood within your ecclesiology? Is God's mission in this world to entertain the bored? Or is it about learning to act against injustice, feed the poor, care for the brokenhearted, and heal the sick? If church is all about getting people to come, then how does the pattern of being "sent" that we find in the incarnation fit into the picture? If a boring church is a sin, is not an entertaining one a sin also when we consider what the work of Christ was all about? Where does the call of Isaiah 61 fit into the picture?
Solid theological reflection is crucial in the practice of ministry, understood both narrowly as the work of ordained leaders and in the wider sense of being the whole life and mission of the people of God. Actually, today the chief rival to ministering from a theological base is engaging in the practice of "church" by means of a pragmatic outlook, that makes decisions largely if not solely on the basis of a consideration of what "works." In the long run, however, the pragmatic approach is self-defeating, simply because it transforms the community of faith into an institution whose chief end is not the glory of God and the fulfillment of a divinely-given mandate, but survival. The long-term health and viability of the church demands that its leaders and people return again and again to the forming and informing vision of what the community of Christ is called, mandated, and empowered to be by the Lord of the church. Above all, I would add, we are called to be a people who embody in our life together and in our relationships to all humans and even to all creation the great narrative of the biblical God, the one who has come to us in Christ and now empowers us through the Holy Spirit poured out in our hearts and in our fellowship.
