The Church as Vendor & Circus

Well, it's been several months since the last post, but hopefully I've found renewed vigor and interest in this method of dialog, blogging.

This post is essentially a part 2 of my previous one.

I was surfing through the Praxis Center for Church Development website just now and ran across their manifesto.

A section that really intrigued me was about the Church in the West now being a more like a Vendor and a Circus than the Church of Jesus.

Here's what was said:

Hollywood is no longer the “entertainment capital of the world” – it is now your local church megaplex. The church in the West, bent on attracting people to a location has become a consumer-driven vendor of spiritual goods and services. In short, it has become a circus where the performers are polished and the various acts of the performance timed to the minute. Very often churches which follow this path often end up competing for the same market share – Christians in other churches. (It is still the case that 95% of church growth in the USA is transfer growth.) Whoever has the best product and environment is then the one who wins the loyal support of its constituency. The pressure on the church is then
to satisfy its customer base and continue to be a vendor of spiritual goods and services.

But is this really what the church is supposed to do? Nothing wrong, mind you, with the idea of trying to meet people where they are. We are just questioning the whole concept of “doing church.” The New Testament seems to lay a foundation that tells us the Church is a community of disciples who live out the message of the Cross. What we don’t find in the New Testament is the early Christians trying
to “do church.” Rather, what we find is a community of disciples who are the church.

It seems that we spend so much of our time and energy trying to do church that we forget to actually be the Church. Maybe that has a lot to do with why the church seems so impotent in its ability to reach our world. We market our message well to those who are already in the faith, but not to those who are outside the fold. Scripture makes it plain that Jesus came “to seek and save what was lost.” (NIV, Luke 19:10)

The Church is called to be a community of disciples who not only embrace each other well, but also reach out to the world in a language and style they understand, so that we might live out for them the greatest message on the planet. It’s not as important how we “do church” as it is that we are the church. This generation is crying out for something real and tangible that can explain the greater mysteries of our existence. People know there is something more; they just don’t know where to find it.

I absolutely agree with their diagnosis. Can you think of actual examples where the churches in your neighborhood are functioning more like a vendor and circus than an actual church? I can.

So now to the reaffirmation of resisting the trend and onto the ongoing quest of understanding and living out what it in fact means to be the Church in our community . . .