Is Gross Consumerism the Key to Having a Successful Church?

WKRP's Illustration of the Absurdity of Gross Commercialism & Materialism

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When I was a kid one of the most popular television shows on TV was WKRP in Cincinnati, and the most beloved episode was one that lampooned the gross commercialism of the holidays by secular institutions  such as radio stations for publicity reasons.  In the episode they dropped  a hundred live turkeys out of helicopter to the people below. 

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!" -- Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati

The TV "Drop"

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a serious miscalculation. The poor birds plunged to earth, never even having a chance. Their tragic "last flight" was relayed to WKRP listeners by reporter Les Nessman:

"It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!"

The idea was to create an over the top scenario, that was so ridiculous that people would react to the critique with laughter and think WOW, how society has gone over the top in it's crazy attention grabbing materialism and consumerism.

A Cringe Worthy Article 

This week, somewhere in America, there was an article written about new church plants and their attempt to establish Easter traditions.  This is an excerpt from the article, all names have been removed to protect the not-so-innocent.  

The church threw a huge Easter festival with a helicopter egg drop... 

The pastor,,,said he doesn't want to set any traditions, because he thinks he'll always want to out-do whatever he did the year before. While this year's Easter festival had 50,000 eggs dropped from the sky, next year he hopes to have 200,000 eggs and fireworks. 

"We're always going to go bigger,"..."Our tradition is to break tradition."...  

Today's services will open with a light show and a rock band playing the song "Roar" by pop star Katy Perry. It will be followed by a video and a performance by a spoken-word artist.

Maybe I'm just getting old and out of touch; that is definitely a possibility, but as I read this article there were a few things that  struck me, first, this could have been me 15 years ago.  For a critique to work we have to see ourselves in it.  This young (I'm assuming because I don't know him) leader is doing this because it draws a crowd.  It is what people want and if you want to be thought of as successful as a pastor there are a few things you need.  You need numbers, you need big buildings, and you need money, but what you want most of all, is you want numbers.  You want a lot of people listening to you as you speak.  

Drawing a crowd is no mystery.  I've done it and many I know have done it.  The best way to draw a crowd is to entertain them and their kids.  If you pour gasoline on yourself and light yourself on fire people will come to watch you burn. 

But here is my question, how in the world does appealing to people's basest consumeristic dreams form the character of Christ in them?  I know that when I did things like this I rationalized it by saying, we'll draw the crowd and then we'll teach them the exact opposite - that it's not about them, that they need to live by the upside down values of the Kingdom, we'll call them to live sacrificial, self-giving lives.  The problem is that approach does not work.  

What you get when you attract people this way is the herd of the superficial that migrate to whatever the newest thing in town is.  They come hoping that this consumeristic longing that they have for fulfillment can be met in the newest and flashiest, and when it fails to produce the result that it could never deliver. they are on to the next thing.

This is really the saddest part about all of this.  This consumerism that has saturated every layer of the church from the leadership to the smallest rugrat leaves everyone miserable.  Pastors hate being Jojo the Circus Clown.  After several years of this most of them drop out of ministry, many with nothing left of their faith in God or in people.  They do this because they realize what they were knocking out their brains to create was little more than a show.  For the average person this way of approaching church life keeps them shallow and when the inevitable hard times of life come they are totally spiritually bankrupt and have no resources to draw upon to help them move forward with God and life.

What Kind of Spirituality Do We Need?

You see the deep sustaining faith that we need doesn't come from light machines, helicopters, or Disney style entertainment.  It doesn't come through slick marketing, free coffee, or our favorite pop music that serves as an illustration to a spiritually centered entertainment.  Real sustaining spirituality takes (all my hyper-reformed brothers close your eyes for this sentence) work.  It requires effort on our part. The first place you are going to need to expend some effort is in developing a biblically centered worldview.  This will not come from the sermons on Sunday morning.  It means that you need to get in a good class that will take you through both the Old and New Testaments.  It will require that you actually read and reflect on the text and will involve discussing the themes with other people at various stages of their walk with Christ.  It will require making this type of study and reflection part of your life for the rest of your life. You have to go beyond the surface to the nitty-gritty faith sustaining meat.

It will require that you learn to pray, really pray and dialogue with God through all types of prayer. Meditation, reflection, intercession. worship and celebration, confession, spiritual inventory, thanksgiving all need to be part of the line of communication that opens up between you and the Holy Spirit.  If when I say,  "You need to learn to hear God's voice" makes you think I'm psycho or that is not possible you need to learn a lot more about prayer.  

Community, and I don't mean getting involved in a small group.  That can certainly help, but I mean choosing to do life with people.  Choosing to walk through conflict and not walk away, learning to really communicate and be a team, a fellowship, learning to extend and receive grace.  Being in a place where you are known and known by others.  Relationships based on mutual interdependence and the bond of Christ.  If you are always seeking for yourself and hop from place to place to place, you will never experience this and never really grow.  You will be like a leaky cup that no matter how much water is poured into you, you will never be full.

So What is the Way Forward?

I think for a season our churches will have to become much smaller.  I think we will have to realize that in many cases our growth has been false growth.  I think we will have to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of disciple making that does not happen in a factory, one size fits all setting.  We will have to stop whoring ourselves out to the culture using gimmicks and the grossly secular to inspire growth.  It might mean that many pastors have to go back to being tent-makers or live simpler life-styles.  We will have to produce out of our churches leaders with the character of Christ that reach two to three people that they are discipling every couple of years and teaching to do the same.  This is not church growth, quick fix, kind of stuff, but the longer I've been in ministry the more I believe it's the real deal and the only way forward.

I'm praying that God will allow us at The Vineyard Chattanooga to structure our church in such a way that it can become a living embodiment of these values and serve as a model for the way forward.    

How to Get the Most Out of Church

Having been on staff at different churches since 1989 (that’s 24 years for those of you who are counting), I think I’ve learned a thing or two about how the church works and how people can get the most out of their experience while attending a church.  So here are some insider tips that I think will help you get the most out of your experience with church.

The first thing is a given for me.  You need to be a part of a church that is serious about following Jesus.  This can be a church that has high liturgy or is as contemporary as they come, the church can be large, it can be small, it can be medium sized, all of that is just personal preference.  But the heart of the church needs to be focused on following Jesus wherever he leads.  Can I tell you a secret?  Most churches are led by very sincere people who are doing their best to be faithful to Jesus and biblical truth.  These people aren’t perfect, they will make plenty of mistakes, but they love God and are doing the best they know how.  Guess what?  You aren’t perfect either.  Keep that in mind as your dealing with an imperfect system. 

Now here it is; the golden nugget.  Most folks don’t understand how the church affects change in our lives and the lives of our friends.  Being someone who loves to cook I’m going to use a cooking analogy.  Most of us think the church is a microwave.  We think we jump in, and in a very short period of time things should be significantly different for us.  This is not the way God works and it’s not the way he has designed his church to work.  Our spiritual lives are a journey, and the character of Christ is worked out in us over a lifetime. 

Also, Spiritual development is not something that happens in isolation.  You can’t just go to church and sit in a church service or attend a class and expect the character of Christ to form in your life.  First worship isn’t for us, worship is something we give to God.  Second, information is helpful for forming a base of knowledge but it’s useless unless it’s applied.  So that leads us back to the question how does church work?  If it’s not a quick fix.  If it’s not a 2 minute nuke in a microwave how does it work?

The church is designed to work like a smoker.  If you’re smoking a piece of meat you cook it low and slow.  For the meat to be smoky and fall apart tender you have to cook it between 175 and 200 for at least 12 hours.  If you put a brisket in a microwave for 2 minutes it’s going to be disgusting but if you put in a smoker for 12 to 14 hours it’s heaven on earth.  The church is the community of Christ on earth.  We are the people who live by the rule and reign of Christ.  Now to fully embrace the upside down values of the kingdom of heaven (the first shall be last, it’s in giving that we receive, love your enemies, bless those who persecute you, take up your cross) takes a community of people walking shoulder to shoulder over the long haul.

I didn’t really understand this fully until my oldest son graduated from High School and went off to college.  You see when Zachary was seven we planted (started) a church in Chattanooga Tennessee.  Over the course of the first few years there were a group of us who committed to doing life together as a church, we proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus to our city, prayed with one another, served one another, served our community and those who God brought into our church.  Now there were many families that bounced in and out of that group; families that became angry with me because of some decision or another that I made, or even angry with one of those core families.  But a core group of us have stuck it out over the long haul and have done life together.  There were plenty of times we got aggravated with one another or hurt each others feelings but we choose to love, to forgive, and to continue to do life together as Christians and as friends. 

Now over the course of years (a decade or longer) something beautiful happened.  These families standing back to back formed a safety net for our kids that produced young men and women who love God and are seeking to serve him as young adults.  We have changed each other and because of our commitment to Christ and one another worked out over the period of years and we have become better people.  When I saw the young man Zach had become and realized that it was a partnership between these families that had chosen to do life together through our church, something clicked.  I realized the power of the church is found in Christ-centered community.  That it is over the long haul not the short sprint that profound change comes and the life that truly is good is found.

You see that kind of power is not worked out in our lives because the pastor preaches a little better than the guy down the road or the band in the church down the street is cooler than the choir, or they have huge church building with a food court, or their youth group went to Disney World.  Honestly, none of those types of things matter.  They are not the difference makers.  The difference maker is authentic Christian community centered around the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ worked out over the long haul by those who choose to do life together.  If you don’t believe me read the last couple of chapters of each of Paul’s letters.  I’ll paraphrase most every letter Paul wrote.  In light of the redeeming love of Christ, that has moved us from death to life, live lives worthy of that redemption together (in unity and community).  For the followers of Jesus who get that and do that come blessings untold.

To sum up, you want to see the character of Jesus formed deep in your life?  Don’t church hop.  Invest deeply in your church by serving and building friendships where you do life together.  This is not going to be easy.  It will require work.  It will require grace.  It will require humility.  It will require love…funny aren’t those exactly the qualities God wants to form in our lives?  Go figure.