McChurch, McPastor, McChristianity

The world of religion generates a huge market for meeting all the needs that didn’t get met in the shopping mall. Pastors are conspicuous in this religious marketplace and are expected to come up with the products that give customer satisfaction.
-Eugene Peterson, Living the Message, HarperCollins, 1996, p. 261

Consumerism is the drug that is lulling the church in North America into a deep and dangerous sleep. We encounter it in our own patterns of “church shopping” for a congregation that is a “better fit.” We see it on billboards, slick brochures and Facebook ads. We begin to be troubled by it when we see portrayals of a Jesus dressed up to look, talk and act, well, just like us.

Or maybe we don’t notice it at all. Perhaps we’re so used to Consumer Christianity, so steeped in it, that we barely notice it at all. Slowly and seductively congregations become “audiences” and worship leaders “performers” and the next thing you know the church has to “sell something” to “attract” new members.

Consumer Christianity is a false Christianity and it is literally killing the church.

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So what shall we as followers of Jesus and members of His Body the Church do? Eugene Peterson concludes his reflections: But then who is there who will say the name of God in such a way that the community can see him for who he is, our towering Lord and Savior, and not the packaged and priced version that meets our consumer needs?

How do we begin to seek God—and God’s will for his church—and not something packaged as “church the way I like it” and “a god who makes me comfortable”?

First, we pray. And we do so with deep and critical questions: Is this of You, Lord, or is this of the evil one? We reclaim Holy-Spirit-soaked prayer as our first language of faith.

Second, we repent. Literally naming our sins is a crucial step in the journey of repentance, which is our whole life’s journey. The confession of those in AA guides us: “Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m a consumer-holic.” We examine our lives deeply and critically. How does my own participation in the consumer culture shape my views of God and Church?

Third, we seek God not according to our own whims and desires, but in the places that God has promised to reveal himself to us: in the Word (preached, studied, read, prayed) and in the Sacraments (taken regularly, seriously, joyfully).

Fourth, in our actions and words, we speak the truth that our true identity is not as consumers, but as Baptized children of God. We are not demographic groups or income cohorts or even “free” shoppers, but are instead priests by Baptism and servants of Jesus.

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May the Lord our God, who cannot be bought or sold, refresh us with the gift of life, that we might be his faithful people and true witnesses in the world.