“Hey! We’re the new church around the corner! Just an ordinary diverse group of people (insert picture of people with mixed ethnicity on the front) seeking God in a really cool new building! We have an awesome kids playground, x-box for the teens and hip music (insert picture of playground and kids playing x-box, making sure to reinforce they are doing this at church)! And they can learn about God (We made sure to put God in the last spot in hopes you don’t read that far down). We also have a new sermon series called “Insert play on words from hip TV show or movie”. And for the adults, we have relevant teaching, cool music, and a comfortable atmosphere! And here are our “experience times” just for your convenience! Come experience God like you never have before!”
I don’t doubt for one second that the people starting these churches felt called by God to do so, spent hours in prayer, talked to other church planters and planned strategically for months for the church’s launch. I have no problem with any of this. In fact, it is all necessary. The problem I do have is that many new church plants neglect one critical question. “Is this the only and most effective way to plant a church? How churches are being planted right now are directly in line with culture standards. In fact, the goal of many church’s Sunday morning “experience” is to make people feel as if they aren’t in church at all! Make them feel comfortable, and then slip some God talk in with their coffee. Start with a secular song, have a comedian do a short set, have a really energetic guy do announcements (make sure he’s funny) and make the sermon title as culturally relevant as possible. These aspects accomplish one thing-they make you feel good. The reality is, I have gone to church my whole life, have attended many of these community churches, and I still feel as uneasy as I imagine many outsiders do. Not only are many of these new community churches getting their cues directly from culture, they also come from books on church planting which are all based on the models of mega-churches. The statement of the mega-church model is this: “If you want your church to look like that one (a numerically successful church), then you better have the same elements.”
It’s kind of sickening to me that marketing and the church are synonymous at all. Here’s my experience with marketing. Great ads (TV, radio, Internet, etc...) are catchy. I’ve researched few products based on a catchy ads. However, that’s all they are-cool, culturally relevant and catchy. Something that solves a problem or seeks to fill a void in your life that you don’t really need anyway. Pair this cultural norm with the church and you wreak havoc on the true message of the gospel. Through the means of marketing, Christianity becomes some watered down, catchy ad. “If we say just the right thing, or hit just the right nerve with some graphically appealing, thought out mailer, we can get them in the door.” The church has bought in to the cultural lie of consumerism. In Sky Jethani’s great book, The Divine Commodity, he says this.
Manufacturing experiences and meticulously controlling staged environments become the means for advancing Christ’s mission. And the role of the pastor, once imagined as a shepherd tending a flock, now conjures images of a circus ringmaster shouting, “Come one, come all, to the greatest show on earth!” In Consumer Christianity, the shepherd becomes a showman.”
This is what the church is marketing. Some great experience you will have once you get in the doors where, apparently, God finally shows up. We’ve watered down the real power of the transformative, personal gospel. Where the irony is the greatest to me however, is in the fact that many pastors and Christians would agree with much of what I believe. They say, “Yes it is a personal gospel, one of which everyone is a minister.” The problem however, lies in how the church continues to be perceived by outsiders-A social club that wants you to drink their Kool-aid.
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