Q: There are many examples of themed worship services in the US designed to attract 'seekers' by virtue of their musical style (hymnal, rock, etc.) Why is this such a bad thing? Surely we all have preferences that attract us to certain denominations or friendship groups?
A: I don’t have a problem with churches offering diverse worship styles. I’m concerned with the critique that Jacques Ellul made concerning technique as a fallen power. Music is cultural language. There is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking the language of the culture you’re trying to reach. There is a problem with applying technique in the place of trusting the Spirit. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre have pointed out that the Church is a socio-linguistic community with a distinct language and ethos, even politic. We can speak the language of the parent culture to a point, but eventually we have to teach people the language of the Church.
On a positive note there is a church in Little Rock, AR, called Mosaic; it was profiled recently in Christianity Today. They have a half dozen different worship teams, including Latino, African American, traditional, and a few others I can’t remember. They encourage everyone to come on the weeks where they don’t like the music style because part of living in community is learning to respect and even like the differences between us. Megas try to segregate based on subculture or taste. Since the kingdom of God is diverse, shouldn’t we be trying to integrate and appreciate the differences?
Q: If partnering with commercial, consumer retail outlets such as Starbucks as has happened in the US attracts new people into a church environment, why is it such a bad thing? Where should the line be drawn in such partnerships?
A: People should be attracted into church because someone in that church has gone to the trouble of developing a friendship with them. However, if the church has an arrangement with Starbucks to put a kiosk in the foyer, the question becomes a matter of financial entanglements. Is the church willing to swear off the profits? If profit becomes a motivator it sort of changes the calculus by which we decide what partnerships are legitimate. Ultimately, an unbeliever knows he can get a latte at Starbucks without having to endure bad music and worse preaching. The Starbucks is there for the believers who want to be pampered. In one egregious example of ecclesial prostitution, a church in Texas recently mailed out $5 Starbucks vouchers to several postal codes. The only catch was the vouchers had to be redeemed at the Starbucks in the church. Is this how we want to bring people to church? Do we have to pay them? A mega in my hometown gives out $10,000 every year to kick off their financial series. I suppose beer (and you know I have no objection to beer) and boobs (nor to boobs) would bring ‘em into church too. Why not?
Q: One of the difficulties facing contemporary churches is how to cut through adequately and effectively be multi-racial and multi-cultural. Is this truly achievable and why is it so important?
A: I think I covered part of this above. I don’t pretend to have an answer for this problem. Race may be a bigger principality in the U.S. than anywhere else on earth. But the Church has been dominated by Whites for centuries. The question, I think, is can we surrender our arrogance and allow ourselves to be taught by believers of other races? Can we put aside the notion that we’ve been doing this for so long that we get to determine the parameters of the conversation and listen to what the experience of God of our brothers and sisters of other races has been? And, can we not be so damned afraid of each other?
Q: American prosperity preachers are generally viewed cynically in the UK. However, there are other ways in which we can manipulate the term 'blessing of God' to mean things which aren't scriptural or logical. Which ways do you perceive and what traps should church leaders be wary of falling into?
A: In the U.S., megas are particularly effective at wedding conservative politics or so-called family values to evangelical Christianity. There is always the danger that I will define my culture and my place in the culture as sanctified. I would hazard a guess that no megachurch in the U.S. has ever critiqued capitalism through the lens of the Hebrew prophets. No mega has asked where the ridiculous trinkets we buy in so-called Christian bookstores come from. No thought is given to global policies that might cast us in a negative light. Oppression of developing nations? Environmental concerns? These aren’t issues in megas because the focus isn’t really on helping God with the redemption of the world; the focus is on a truncated soteriology and then allowing me to believe that I’m okay just the way I am, even if just the way I am relies on oppression, exploitation, or political expediency.
On another track, megas tend to view growth as the blessing of God. They never seem to ask about the worldwide growth of Islam or Mormonism. Is that the blessing of God too? Growth has become an idol of sorts and it is used, under the banner of evangelism, as a litmus test for all that megas do. Everything can be justified under the rubric of “saving souls.”
Q: Some would argue that Church's market themselves whether they like to or not; everything from a church's web design down to their order of services to whether they use fair trade coffee or not says something about the people that go there. If that is the case then at what point does church "marketing" go too far?
A: Ludwig Wittgenstein said every utterance has a home. In other words, all concepts, ideas, ideals, ethics, etc., make sense within a proper context. You can’t simply pull vocabulary from one cultural/linguistic/economic system (what Wittgenstein called a language game) and introduce it into a different system and not bring in some of the assumptions that give it coherence in its original home. Marketing has introduced demographics, homogeneous growth models, targeting and branding to the church. In marketing, the criterion for success is a successful marketing campaign. How do you define success when you mix marketing and church? I believe faithfulness is the telos of the church, not growth, not buildings, not offerings, nor any other false telos. Churches can have web sites, take out ads in papers, run television commercials, etc. That is not necessarily to adopt a marketing ethos. It’s simply to put yourself out there so someone who is looking can find you. But who is looking for a church? Unbelievers? Not usually. Marketing has had the unhappy (unless you’re a mega) result of attracting Christians from one church to another that seems to offer a better product. The moment you decide that you’ll accept transfer growth as a sign of the success of your marketing program, you’ve signed on to a different language game. You’re using the vocabulary of Christianity with the grammar of marketing. People should come to church because a friend invited them. We don’t want to do the hard work of developing friendships with people who are different from us, so we rely on techniques, marketing, gimmicks, productions, etc.
Q: Many evangelical churches are turning to business models and drawing upon business practices in a bid to increase their congregations and get people to engage with Church and Christianity again. If this is the language the modern mainstream most used to isn't this reasonable? What specifically is dangerous about this and what are the alternatives?
A: Most of this is answered above. I would like to add that most people don’t talk like business people. They talk like suburbanites or moms or teachers or any of dozens of other possibilities. The church has accepted the business models so the vocabulary of business has become ubiquitous in churches. We have grown used to it for that reason. Better by far to become used to the language of the church. We can’t pretend that the Church is not a cultural-linguistic community. To be full participants in that community means to know how to speak the language. Again, increasing congregations can happen a few different ways. Rare is the megachurch that does so through conversion growth.
Q: If a church sees a surge in growth and goes from being a medium sized congregation of five hundred or so to over a thousand is it not inevitable that the community has to be managed in a way not too dissimilar to megachurches?
A: Carl George has long contended that churches must make a conscious decision to break certain church growth barriers. You don’t become a megachurch by accident. Church planting can alleviate growth strains and multiply the reach of churches in very healthy ways.
who does interviews this intelligently!? I'm impressed by the reporter and your answers.
Posted by: Scott Jones | January 30, 2006 at 10:04 PM
I like this formulation better than in an earlier post where you complained that megas/seeker-sensitive churches had abandoned the vocabulary of faith; it struck me at the time that I grew up in a church that had retained the vocabulary of faith while repudiating the semantics. Treating discourse about faith as a distinct language (albeit with considerable overlap in syntax and morphology with the parent language), or at least a specialized sub-language, seems to be a more complete way of describing this concern.
Posted by: Leighton | January 30, 2006 at 10:04 PM
Leighton,
I do think many churches are attempting to abandon the language of the faith. They're uncomfortable with words that smack of theology or critical studies. They do preserve some of the words, like substitution or atonement or sin, but they try very hard not to speak "Christianese." However, I agree with you that this formulation certainly works better, and probably does describe the situation more accurately.
Scott,
Goz will have to remind us which paper in the UK he did the interview for.
Posted by: greg | January 30, 2006 at 10:12 PM
Greg,
Have really enjoyed the interview posts...it is nice to see your thoughts teased out in a more organized and substantive format.
When you speak of "language of the church" what words or phrases or themes are you referring to? In your view what language has the churched abandoned?
Are you criticizing churches who substitute words like glorification and sanctification, eschatology, for other more culturally understandable terms?
In a related note. In my experience in working for Starbucks (which many I know see as a corporate evil) it is interesting there is a language that we suggest you learn when ordering drinks. Some people get really upset and intimitaded by it, but most people, are excited about learning how to order a drink in proper Starbucks lingo. Seems like a good lesson for the church or at least points to some of the arguments you have been making.
Posted by: Dino | January 30, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Dino,
The language of the church is the vocabulary we have always used to discuss things that the church cares about. One of the concerns I have about seeker-sensitive church, Blue Like Jazz, and well-meaning but linguistically challenged "spirituality" fans is they act as if you can talk about something with a whole new set of words without reference to the old words. It's the old words that allow us to talk about things that we hold in common. Why go to the trouble of developing or co-opting a whole new vocabulary when I can simply teach new Christians the language of atonement, resurrection, Christology, eschatology, etc.? In seeking to avoid talking Christianly, we abadon the very words that help us make Christianity explicable. We don't expect professors of theology or philosophy or medicine or English to speak in the language of their students in order to teach them the field. No. We expect the students to learn the language. Christianity (any faith) functions the same way.
By not talking about theology or critical studies, we allow people to believe that Christianity is simply a matter of Jesus dying for my sins or some other truncated construction. We don't trust people to care enough about the subject to learn about it in depth, yet that is the very idea of disciple. Instead, we import words that are easier for them to understand, but those words and concepts carry their own grammar and come from a different language game, and importing them into the church changes the way we do church.
I think any church word can be understood once the concept is explained. You analogy of Starbucks is excellent. I'm an iced decaf double tall soy no-whip mocha guy. That phrase allows me better, faster service in any Starbucks in the country. Learning the language of faith facilitates conversations between Christians of any and every background.
Posted by: greg | January 30, 2006 at 10:29 PM
I liked the interview. It's amazing how much the Christian culture has oversimplyfied the Gospel. I feel at times work would be so much easier if I went to that model. Yet I think I would be sinning.
Posted by: Joe | February 01, 2006 at 09:54 AM
I loved your comments about viewing Capitalism through the lens of the Hebrew prophets. I looked at a Christian bookstore's catalog before Christmas and was amazed at the various Bibles offered. There was the Bible for teen boys, the Bible for teen girls - formatted like Cosmopolitan magazine. There was the man's study Bible, the housewive's study Bible, the Coast Guardman's Bible, the Teacher's Bible... I could go on, but I'm about to throw up!
You're right in saying that we should be more critical of our prosperity that has in fact been generated by subjugating peoples and their economies.
Posted by: Chris | February 01, 2006 at 01:12 PM
Thaks for putting this out to a wider audience Greg. The interview was for The Christian Herald - an ecumenical UK national paper that has sadly just ceased publishing.
I'm sure your answers here have been a big help to many people grappling with these issues.
goz
Posted by: goz | February 01, 2006 at 02:01 PM
Question Greg: If churches, especially megas, are resorting to offering special deals, creating a mall-like atmosphere, then how do we change it?
Posted by: Joe | February 03, 2006 at 10:01 AM
Question:
If churches, especially megas, are resorting to offering special deals, creating a mall-like atmosphere, in order to get folks to attend; then how do we change it? I know you said someone should go because they were invited but what if they won't go if we don't have something attractive for them, like a rollercoaster.
Posted by: Joe | February 03, 2006 at 10:04 AM
How about the revolutionary idea of the Gospel message itself as something to "attract" people? What is concerning about the need for rollercoasters, coffee bars, rock bands, PowerPoint screens, etc., etc., is the implicit statement that without these things people won't find value in church/worship. This is a corporate (as in business) approach--i.e., tickle the buyer's fancy and then sell them the whole product on the sly. The Corporate (as in the body of Christ) approach of _living_ the Gospel and trusting the Holy Spirit to work _through_ us, rather than relying on sales techniques, reminds me of something St. Francis of Assisi said. "Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."
Posted by: Anglican | February 03, 2006 at 01:33 PM
Under Greg's model, those friends don't go. That isn't a big deal for churches that position themselves to critique the culture of power and focus mostly on crafting disciplined adherents, but it does pose problems for groups who believe their duty is to make the world Christian.
Posted by: Leighton | February 03, 2006 at 06:43 PM