From Affluenza:
In 1986, America still had more high schools than shopping centers. Less than fifteen years later, we have more than twice as many shopping centers as high schools. In the age of Affluenza, shopping centers have supplanted churches as a symbol of cultural values. In fact, seventy percent of us visit malls each week, more than attend houses of worship. Our equivalent of Gothic cathedrals are the megamalls, which normally replace smaller shopping centers, drawing customers from even greater distances.
Is it any wonder that most mega-churches have a shopping mall look and feel to them? To what degree has the mall influenced congregations who have gone fishing for men and women in the consumer-driven aquarium that is North American culture?
A family gets out of the car in the parking lot and then heads off in different directions, knowing they won’t see each other again until lunch. They could be at a mall or they could be at a church. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
one stop spiritual shopping. I can’t remember when I saw this video it might have been another Chap Clark but it showed a family meeting with the pastor and they were asking about children’s classes, child care, work out area, etc. and comparing it to other places in town.
I remember in 1997 I asked the parents to take their kids with them to small groups on Sunday night instead of their Devo and I thought for sure I was going to be hung. Lucky I was a 40 year old youth minister at the time. But the moment I left (2001) they changed it back.
And what is necessarily wrong with the picture of the family’s church experience that you described?
Sorry, forgot to post my last name (I hate first name only on the net)
Sam–do you think a shopping mall approach to church has an impact on the way we explain and live out the message of the gospel? If so, how?
On the way we explain it, yes. On the way we live it out – it depends on the effectiveness of our explanation.
OK–so what is the shopping mall church’s explanation of the gospel?
The exact same as any other Christ-centered, Chrisitan Church. Don’t confuse style with content.
There’s a million heady questions we could ask here about a convienient gospel, a marketized Christ, and low-cost discipleship being advertised to the masses, but the bottom line is that if we define ourselves by the Great Commission, then some of these “Shopping Mall Churches” are doing more of God’s will on earth than many other churches combined.
As a side note, it feels a lot like the many times we sat in your office with you bouncing that yellow ball….
Easy big fella. . .Don’t assume style and content are unrelated, and don’t assume that what you call the “gospel” is actually that. It could be or it could a small part of a much larger Gospel that we’ve lost or forgotten about somewhere along the way. I can’t tell yet because you haven’t answered my question regarding the actual CONTENT of the gospel in a shopping mall STYLED church.
Didn’t we, from time to time, actually try to hit each other with the ball?
For the sake of full disclosure to those listening in–I’m the lead minister for a church that averages about 700 people in weekly attendance. Our building will seat about 3000. Our facility has in some ways a shopping mall feel to it, without all of the hustle and bustle of a crowd.
Sam–what’s the average weekend attendance of Christ the King, which in my opinion is one of the most dynamic churches I’ve ever been around?
Wade,
Yes, we hit each other with it – what else would we have done?
The content of the gospel in the shopping-mall styled church that I pastor in is this – God, who created the world and everything in it, has not only created the world, but has created a Way for us to actually live in it. This life is shaped by forgiveness for the past, hope for the future, and purpose for the present.
This purpose for the present is a constant juggling of living in two worlds, living in a finite world while holding an unearned, grace-given citizenship in the eternal world of God’s Kingdom. The call of this gospel of for a discipleship-oriented life that focuses on attaining and attitude like that of Christ Jesus while relying on the costly grace that is offered through the Cross.
There’s so much more to say that I’m not saying. I’m the music dude, not the wordsy dude.
And, to answer your question, Christ the King Community Church averages about 3,400 a weekend.
Sam–well said. I agree with everything you’ve written. You’ve done an excellent job of describing the gospel from the perspective of what God provides individuals through the gospel. But I think there’s still more that can be said from a different perspective. I believe God is concerned with more than giving individuals forgiveness, hope, and purpose. He’s also concerned about summing up all the fragments of his broken creation in Jesus Christ. He’s concerned with creating a people for himself who serve as a sign and foretaste of the reign of God, which is breaking into this world. The gospel reconciles us to God. It also brings together different groups and types of people and puts them into one body and calls them the family of God. For Paul, the fact that Jews and Gentiles could be united in Christ is to be taken as a sign to the world that the gospel is true.
The danger with the shopping mall approach to church is that by catering first to the needs of the individual by providing highly specialized experiences for kids, students, adults, moderns, postmoderns, or whatever, we actually could be reinforcing the very consumer-driven mentality that keeps shopping malls in business. If a church starts to resemble the shopping mall too much, then it will be virtually impossible for the average attender/member to think of the gospel as anything other than God’s plan for meeting my individual needs.
The fact that when most families arrive at a church building they almost immediately split up and go their separate ways, just like they do at the mall, is becoming quite a concern for me. It’s what is happening at Garnett and I’m not sure I like the fruit it’s bearing. From what I can tell, its producing a gathering (not necessarily a community) of individual Christians who expect the “church” to live up to their consumer driven expectations, which just happen to be conditioned by-you guessed it-the shopping mall.
In no way am I trying to critique what?s going on CTK. I?ve always been a huge fan of what goes on there. CTK is one of the best “sinner-reaching” churches I know. I also may have misread your explanation of the gospel. You may have been speaking in more communal terms then I perceived, and I may have read more individuality into your post than was actually there.
Without disagreement nothing can be learned.
Wade, I couldn’t agree with you more. Our Church has become a gathering and not a community. Community is what the Church is all about. We commune with one another and God, we learn from one another and we encourage and pray for one another. How much of that is going on? I’m praying for Garnett every day. I know God has an awesome plan for our Chruch.
But we can no longer live as comfortable Christians in a comfortable Church. Jesus is being lost in a religion bearing his name! People are being lost because they cannot reconcile Jesus’ association with Christianity. Christianity has become docile, domesticated, civilized. We have forgotten that there is a kingdom of darkness stealing the hopes and dreams and souls of a humanity without God.
I pray that God would give you the strength and boldness to speak boldly his word and fight for the Heart of your King! Wade God’s going to use you. Get ready.
Your Brother,
Ky