Consumption

Consumption and discipleship don't mix. They're like oil and water. You can't get from one to the other. If you attend church to 'get fed', you will get sick. If you spend your time critiquing the 'worship experience' then you've missed the point. You've become a consumer. The tragedy is that the vast majority of the churches I have seen have been set up to point you in this direction. Why? Because they were set up by consumers who were happy to be the ones doing the feeding. That's the position of power after all. It's how I have spent almost all of my Christian life.

Jesus was the ultimate anti-consumer. He NEVER consumed in the way we do. Mark puts it this way.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45)

If he didn't come to be served then why do we? Think of the way your church is physically arranged. I bet all the chairs point to the front where the experts put on the show. You may even be familiar with seeing their faces on the screen. Is this not a tragic symptom of consumerism gone mad? You come, get what you are given and then you leave. This format does not promote engagement with God or with the world. It's no surprise that the institution has grown fat, lazy and irrelevant.

Jesus calls us all to action, to a specific kind of action called service. This is where we recognise that church is not somewhere I go to receive, but the community I give myself away to. It's not a place I get fed but a group where I continually die for others.

Most churches aren't really serious about creating such communities - or at least they don't know how to - and so the quantity of people being discipled is at an all time low in both the UK and the USA. A new form is required, centred around service and a corporate expression of faith. 'More of the same' just won't work, neither will 'the same but better'.

Entrepreneurial spirit is required to re-birth the church and catapult it into the next generation. People need to be sought out and discipled where they are. The church as we know it may not survive for more than one generation, so we had better get finding some solutions, and fast.