Catching Up With Friends Could Be Canabalizing Your Church
Around Easter my social media fills with church invitations. Some invites are simple and others are shocking.
There are churches that seems to go way too far under the guise of going “all out” to get new people to visit.
We should go to great lengths to reach the lost, but we’ve gone too far when we make consumer appetites the center of our message.
Have you encountered a church that seems to put people’s appetites and preferences ahead of God?
Sometimes we call this consumerism.
Get a picture of a consumeristic church in your mind’s eye…
Got it?
I can’t read your mind, but I’m sure one of several scenes flashed across your imagination.
A welcome area that looks like someone one baptized a theme park?
A sermon series based on a tv-show or movie release?
A dark room where the only visible humans are the worship team up front?
A fog machine?
A congregation that comes late, leaves fast, and only gets in a conversation with close friends?
Did the last one catch you off guard?
People love to dunk on consumeristic churches for going way too far in appealing to all the wrong desires.
But this criticism rarely seems to the spur self-reflection. It should.
How do we move Jesus off center stage? What “benefits” does our church present to people louder than Christ?
Community is often used to appeal to consumerism.
The silent killer of many local churches is a fixation on “finding your people.” Many Christians are inviting others to find community more loudly than they announce Christ.
The church is a wonderful community, but it is a community fundamentally formed by the Spirit of God through the announcement of the Gospel of Christ.
Christ must be announced before and above community. Belief in the Gospel must be necessary before belonging.
Even Christians who believe in the necessity of conversion to Christ can let this consumerism sneak in.
The church can be primarily about finding and seeing friends rather than the worship of Christ and the obeying His mission.
Don’t chose a church to find friends. Don’t go to church to see your friends!
By God’s grace, you will find an incredible group of people to love in your church. The Scripture calls us into a wonderful new web of deep relationships.
But many people are killing their church relationships by bringing in the deadly virus of consumerism.
Jesus assembled the church for His glory. Jesus gave you and your church the priority of the Great Commission.
The church was assembled by Christ for His purposes, not selected by us for our preferences.
You’re going to have an incredibly hard time finding the Bible talking about what you should get out of a church.
When you look for what you should take part in and contribute to the church you will find lots to read.
Much of the New Testament is invested in helping people change their persepctive from Me-living to We-living.
A life commitment to the eternal best interest of others is how the church grows and shines as Christ’s people.
Love is the way we display that we are Christ’s disciples. Love is also the essential fuel for truly unified relationships.
You are called to love people, not consume them.
Your relationships will not survive if you constantly measure them by how much you like them, you get out of them, or how compatible they are to your goals, interests, or life-stage.
Biblical unity is not the same as sharing preferences.
Common interest unity is code for consumerism.
Maybe this is challenging to read and you’re convinced you want to be part of meaningful biblical unity in church but you don’t know where to start…
Start by asking questions and listening!
Listening to others is the first step to looking out for their best interest.
The impact of your life will be seen in the substance of your relationships.
The quality of your relationships will be fueled by the quality of your conversations.
The quality of your conversations will be fueld by the quality of your questions.1
If you want to change the world, invest in the local church.
If you want to love your church, come with questions for others!
Let’s kill consumerism together rather than letting consumerism kill the church.
My Easter invitation to you–Come to church this Sunday with a desire to learn about someone to love rather than connect with the people you like.
This reflects Keith Webb’s impact on my life and the COACH Model!