Not as many people are talking about consumer-driven churches these days. Maybe it’s because there has been a switch in some of the mega-churches from lighter content, to teaching that positions itself in a conservative stream like the big-gospel movement.
Still, I think that the consumer-driven approach is quite common. Maybe it is so common that churches have simply given up resistance to the sales-customer model of church life.
Lost Vitality
David Wells was one of the key voices addressing this problem in the late 20th century. Through his books he documented how a renewal movement like neo-evangelicalism could flourish after WWII, only to be overtaken and hollowed out by the lure of cultural power and a marketing impulse.
This switch occurred in the 1970’s according to Wells, and the result was to bleed evangelicalism of its doctrinal and spiritual vitality. It had worldly success, but the renewal movement was losing its soul.
Jesus’ Warning
Of course, there is always the temptation for movements inside the church to turn parasitical upon it. Jesus warned of this when he said pointedly:
“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Luke 20:46-47
This challenge has existed throughout the history of the church. It is part of the reason for Martin Luther’s protest at the Reformation. In the current climate of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, there is a need to ask serious questions about ministries, churches and what they exist to do.
Why Does the Church Exist?
As in the case of the scribes, the consumer-driven movement subtly shifted the questions of why the church existed. In such a case the church is no longer the gathering of sinners in a compelling community with supernatural, rather than natural bonds. Instead, the church is a vehicle for:
- cultural power, (social gospel/social justice; “Court Evangelicals” a term coined by historian John Fea; liberal Protestantism)
- personal platform (prosperity gospel preachers, other celebrity speakers)
- building a brand (some church planting cultures, some denominations)
There are other variations of these, and some which could include all three (such as the church of Rome). If we can get back to clear thinking about what the church is, and what it’s for, we will resist false analogies that will lead us away from the church’s mission.
A False Analogy
Wells made the observation that when the church views people as consumers, then they have adopted a false analogy from the world of capitalism. In the article, The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church, Wells wrote:
Consumers in the market place are never asked to commit themselves to the product they are purchasing as a sinner is to the Christ in whom belief is being invited. Furthermore, consumers in the marketplace are free to define their needs however they want to and then to hitch up a product to satisfy those needs, but in the Church the consumer, the sinner, is not free to define his or her needs exactly as they wish. It is God who defines our needs and the reason for that is that left to ourselves we would not understand our needs aright because we are rebels against God. We are hostile both to God and to His law and cannot be subject to either, Paul tells us. Now, no person going into the marketplace, going to buy a coffee-pot or going to buy a garden hose, engages with their innermost being in the way that we are inviting sinners to do in the Church. The analogy is simply fallacious.
The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church, David Wells
Unfortunately, Wells’ analysis is being mostly forgotten by those over 40, and those under 40 have not learned the cautionary tale of what happened to a bright and hopeful movement called Neo-evangelicalism. But maybe there are some gains we can make, starting with some small purges.
Purging Parasites
How can we purge the unseen parasites in our practices? Here are three suggestions:
- Stop asking people to ‘serve’ before they are saved. In too many church plants, as well as larger churches, the temptation is to get people ‘involved’ but asking them to plug holes in the ministry machine before they are saved or effectively discipled.
- Accept the cost of being less responsive to non-biblical preferences. People are used to thinking of themselves as consumers. Churches should resist feeding that mentality, but sticking to biblical essentials, and habitually being less responsive to non-biblical preferences. Each church will have preferences based on geography, culture, demographics, etc. But to keep the focus on biblical essentials will lessen the elastic responsiveness which some churches have toward changing fads among the people.
- Audit your ministry for any areas you think are indispensable, and adjust your reliance them. Consider if you had a worship band that was just average. Or your children’s program was reduced. Or your meeting space was changed to a different facility. How indispensable have things become which are unrelated to the indispensable gospel of Jesus Christ? This includes the possible indispensability of the pastor’s personal ministry. As Charles De Gaulle said, ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men’. Maybe it’s time to cultivate elders and pastors in the church who can preach in the event that God takes a pastor home?
Making these kinds of adjustments will be painful, but they will develop greater church health over the long term.
A Different Formula
Churches may use tools that are part of the modern marketing world just to get their message to people (Facebook, MailChimp, etc). But they must also ask themselves if the unwitting pursuit of cultural power, platforms, or brand expansion are subtly eroding the supernatural community which Jesus promised.
We ought to remember, that Jesus said regarding the true church, that even “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mat 16:18). That is a formula for success which no marketer can ever accomplish.