The biggest threat to Christianity

What’s the biggest threat to Christianity? Not atheism, not cults, not Communism or secular humanism. Not statism, or sexual polymorphous libertinism. Not liberalism or fundamentalism.

So what is it? I think it’s consumerism, and the threat isn’t from outside the church – it comes from church leaders who have a well-intentioned but misdirected strategic focus. The way church worked back in the middle of the twentieth century was the Field of Dreams modality: If you build it, they will come. culture was churched, and all you had to do on Sunday morning to have a congregation was to open the doors.

In the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, churches found that the same old same old was no longer effective. We saw the rise of the Church Growth movement, and it had a positive impact on church leadership in many respects, teaching church leaders that theology alone was insufficient to lead a church, that leadership principles were biblical as well as pragmatic. But the result of that movement was the modern megachurch, the Christian shopping mall which has the best religious programs and services for Christian consumers to come and enjoy. These kinds of churches are very attractive to Christian consumers, and their leaders develop high profiles.

The strategic focus of megachurches and of megachurch wannabes is attractional: Have the smoothest organization, the fanciest facility and the hottest programs, follow up with aggressive marketing and people will come. This is what some have called “outreach and in-drag.”

But it is deadly to authentic Christian mission, and here’s why. The attractional model is predicated on the idea that Christians are consumers, and the model wants to keep them that way. The attractional model says, come to this church and be fed, get entertained, have your needs met.

Here’s what a friend of mine and fellow church planter, wrote on his blog recently: “I was having an interesting conversation with my wife the other day and the question came up in my own head of what retail space has a feel similar to [our church]… Let me give you an example of what I mean. I know someone who pastors a church that is alot like WalMart. He even says he doesn’t have members, he has consumers. And he does this based on the fact that getting them in the door is his big focus. For him, his price point is ease of access.”

On the one hand I don’t want to denigrate in any way the need for effective leadership and administration, for making a church attractive and pleasant, and to strive for excellence in every aspect of a church. But as someone who worked for a retail company for a number of years, I know that the number one reality for retail stores is that of competition. I worked for the largest retailer of Auto Parts, and reality for us was that number two and number three were aggressively penetrating the areas where our stores were in an effort to gain market share.

Where am I going with this? Consider the consequences of this mentality. If churchgoers are shoppers, and the goal of church leadership is to attract more shoppers, then your competition is other churches, and it is from your direct competitors that you will be drawing “customers”. Church growth statistics over the last thirty years bear this out. After all is said and done, the evidence points to megachurches having grown primarily through transfers of people already churched. So if you want to look at churchgoers as a commodity and view success through the lens of your own numbers without looking at the big picture, then the retail model applies.

But that sort of thinking that exploits the consumerism of churchgoers actually makes church leaders consumers as well, and the commodity they are consuming is churchgoers! The retail mentality is small thinking with blinders on, focusing on the local congregation rather than kingdom thinking. Kingdom thinking takes the blinders off, and looks at the kingdom of God as represented by the Church (all of the Christian churches) in a city or region, and at the larger context of the Church in the world.

Kingdom thinking is militant, not consumeristic. Christians are not shoppers or tourists to be attracted to a relaxing and entertaining venue, but more like soldiers recruited and called into the service of the King. The task they are called to is much bigger than any person, local congregation or organization. It’s the mission of the kingdom, a mission that is so big, so great that you pledge your life to it, and you can’t imagine not doing so. It’s a consuming passion to be part of God’s redemptive program of redeeming and transforming the world that you’re willing to live and die for.

The Christian consumer wants church to be nice and pleasant, like a ride at Universal studios: You show up, buy a ticket, and in air-conditioned comfort you have the illusion of an experience, maybe even a thrill or two. Real Christianity, the Naked Church, is a very different matter. Sunday morning is not a pleasant diversion: It’s the mission brief where you get ready for deployment. The rest of the week is time for training and preparation — Sunday isn’t nearly enough to equip you for the mission that’s before you. It takes more time with the mission team you’re part of to bond with them, care for them as you care for your own life, and work together with them to storm the gates of Hell.

Our weapons are not guns and knives, but love, service and the Spirit’s power, and the goal isn’t conquest of territory, but making contact with the enemy and loving them enough that the Spirit turns them into defectors. People who were enemies of Christ (as I was!) become his family members and are enlisted in his mission. There’s a lot more to be said about being incarnational and missional over against attractional, but I hope the distinction is clear here.

Consumerism is a greater threat than any of those other isms and movements precisely because it occupies our time and effort with things that don’t advance the kingdom – if we get preoccupied as individuals advancing our own idols: comfort, security, approval, status, then we have turned aside from the mission of the kingdom God calls us to. If as church leaders we get proccupied with the pragmatics of our own little congregation: attendance, offerings, facilities, prestige, status, then we will never even see, much less approach, the full kingdom potential God is calling us to.

Does this mean we denigrate growth? Not at all. Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” But real growth is kingdom growth, not just the ever-increasing return on investment of a retail establishment.

So if you’re shopping for a church that has all the programs and perks you want on a Sunday morning, where you can enjoy exotic coffee, a kicking band, and the company of nice, successful people you can do some business networking on the side with, I have several churches I can recommend to you where I think you will find what you’re looking for.

Some of us are looking for something that’s harder and grittier, more real.

Do you know what it’s like to train for a rock climb, and then on the climb you are in the Zone. You get to the top and you have accomplished something real. Have you ever trained for a marathon run or a triathlon or a long-distance cycling event? Months of training, of sweat and pain, and the event comes. You may not win, but you finished it: you did something real. The mission of the kingdom is like that. When you find what it is that God has created you for, gifted you to do, and called you to accomplish for Him, it’s like being in the Zone on a climb or a run or a ride or a swim, only moreso. What you are doing, what you are part of is real, and the consequences are eternal. Training for an athletic event costs in terms of opportunities: You don’t see as many movies or football games as other people do because you’re training. But you get rewards that other people don’t get to experience and can’t even understand, and the things you gave up to train really seem paltry and insignificant. Kingdom work is a lot like that — it’s hard, it hurts, it costs, it’s inconvenient. But the rewards are something that you can’t even begin to understand until you’ve actually done it.

What does it feel like to complete a marathon, a triathlon, a 150-mile bike ride? Only those who have actually done it know. What does it feel like to do something for the kingdom of God, to see lives transformed, people brought from defeat or mediocrity into real meaningful living? You may never find out in a consumer church. But if you find a church that’s really missional, you just might.