The Church as an Industrial Complex

 

Take a look at Josh Brown’s series on The Consumptive Church.

 

He’s clearly disaffected with the modern mega-church model, as are many. 

He’s also like many of his ilk brilliant and a live wire.  And he’s still thinking and writing.  God can use him. 

He takes a sort of Marxist-Leninist approach to his critique, but he’s not alone in many of his unfortunate observations. 

He’s also not the first commentator on this subject.  Warren Smith last year made some less passionate observations on the Christian-Industrial Complex.

From my own experience, I left a large church on good terms.  I even had a pre-departure discussion with a small-groups/singles pastor and an “exit interview” of sorts with the executive pastor after making the decision to leave.  But Karl Marx never entered my mind in the equation. 

At the new smaller church I found ministry opportunities compatible to my gifts and calling, good community and a deeper walk and level of discipleship and accountability.  It’s not an “emergent church” but more “missional” in approach and practice.  But ironically my church is growing rather unintentionally, mostly as I see from those leaving larger churches for reasons similar to mine.

From all this, some thoughts:

1)     We should be grieved by shallowness, carnality and a Christian culture that seems virtually indistinguishable from the culture-at-large. 

2)     We might also cringe at communities (and buildings, for that matter) that lack distinction, depth, character and composition.

3)     But we shouldn’t confuse life substance with life style – the issue is less over whether you own the big SUV than whether the big SUV owns you.  (Just don’t ding the lone Toyota Prius in the church parking lot!)

4)     Josh’s guest blogger Derek Mooney is right when he summarizes the problem as one of fundamental discontentedness.

5)     Pastors should not be criticized but held accountable for the spiritual growth of their congregation, and listen to their congregation instead of defensively maintaining that their leadership should never be questioned or that church activity equals spiritual growth. 

6)     Pastors should also not be shocked that if they run their churches like corporations the annual meeting might have a few dissident shareholders.

7)     God is glorified when the Church grows, but we need to let our lights shine and bear fruit.  But there is nothing per se wrong with large churches. 

8)  There’s another economics rabbit trail here as it relates to what the world thinks and perceives of the Church, that of externalities and other negative consequences.  My dad used to say no one gets out of a nightclub without paying the bill, and externalities must always be internalized, that is, paid for by someone at sometime. 

9)     You haven’t read the last of this discussion, and this implicates issues of anxiety in the Church, spiritual angst, excessive consumerism, merchandising the Gospel, environmental irresponsibility and other ills that I will be sure to opine on.  All in love of course.

~ by David on December 14, 2007.