Jump directly to the Content

Dangers of Consumer Church

Can self-centeredness be leveraged for the gospel?
Dangers of Consumer Church

“We are unapologetically attractional. In our search for common ground with unchurched people, we’ve discovered that, like us, they are consumers. So we leverage their consumer instincts.”—Andy Stanley in Deep and Wide

“In order to help people follow Christ more fully, we would have to work against the very methods we were using to attract people to our church…we slowly began to realize that, to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus, consumerism was not a force to be harnessed but rather an anti-biblical value system that had to be prophetically challenged.”—Kent Carlson and Michael Lueken in Renovation of the Church

So which is it?

Are “consumer instincts” morally neutral (or at least morally inevitable) and thus fair game for being leveraged toward spiritual ends, or are they something the gospel intends to crucify?

Can a person’s innate self-orientation be used to introduce him to Jesus and to becoming less self-oriented ...

March
Support Our Work

Subscribe to CT for less than $4.25/month

Homepage Subscription Panel

Read These Next

Related
What Does a Disciple Look Like?
What Does a Disciple Look Like?
Determine and evaluate the characteristics of an assimilated member.
From the Magazine
Empty Streets to the Empty Grave
Empty Streets to the Empty Grave
While reporting in Israel, photographer Michael Winters captures an unusually vacant experience at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Editor's Pick
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
Understanding God and our world needs more than bare reason and experience.
close