Theology Blog

About a month ago, I was meeting with another youth worker and we were talking about life, ministry and our own relationship with God. He shared with me a book that he was reading, required as a part of his job. I had not heard of the book, but he showed it to me and I realized that it was one of many books related to ministry that has encouraged and embraced a consumer mindset. The consumer mindset that has overtaken the church (as the world has changed the church) is perhaps one of the most threatening philosophies to the spiritual life and health of the church and its participants. One of the quotes I read in this book (I forget the name of the book) went like this:

“Another reason to pursue a consumer-oriented ministry mindset is that without it, we are doomed to stay as we are, or worse, to fail.”

There are many things I can say about this statement, and I welcome your comments. SImply put this is HERESY! This hideous theology is a reminder that the church must be about Jesus Christ and must minister out of a theological framework instead of being completely shaped by the culture. Context does matter, nobody knew this better than Jesus, however a consumer-oriented mindset is not a healthy direction for the church at all. Jesus is not a commodity, and even if we win people to jesu or the church with this mindset, we have won them in the wrong way, which can dramatically impact the genuineness of their faith. Sure, the church needs to change in order to prevent its death, but death is also a part of the pruning that the church may need. The church of Jesus Christ will never die, but the church as we know it now may die, and that may be a necessary death. Additionally, failure is not a good thing in terms of the great commission, but we must be careful not to compromise the core values in order to succeed in the eyes of the world. Even if this kind of success is not temporary, it is not the image of the Church that Jesus imagined as he hung on the cross.

Thoughts?