Part Five: Deserting its Missiological Call: When Mass-Marketing Method Drives Mega-Church Message

Deserting its Missiological Call: When Mass-Marketing Method Drives Mega-Church Message

Part Five: World-Centered Entertainment vs. Word-Centered Truth

For parts one through four, see the posts directly following.

In addition to fighting the temptation to employ business principles instead of biblical principles and focus on quantity instead of quality, the market-driven church must relinquish its fascination with world-centered entertainment by proclaiming the Word-centered truth. The method of using entertainment in the context of church services began with a genuine desire to attract the unchurched to the church. Robert Schuller, Senior Pastor of Crystal Cathedral in California, is credited as the first pastor to successfully incorporate marketing techniques into the life of the church. He comments, “The secret of winning unchurched people into the church is really quite simple. Find out what would impress the nonchurched in your community [then give it to them].”[1] Growing churches understand that the unchurched are attracted to lively services that mimic the style of music to which they enjoy listening on their iPods and messages that address their day-to-day concerns. The unchurched feel comfortable when churched individuals relate to them without using Christian jargon or look down upon them for their differing viewpoints.[2] Churches that offer comfortable, entertaining services find success.

In 1975, a young man named Bill Hybels and a small group of his acquaintances envisioned how a church sensitive to the seeker might operate. Understanding that many of the unchurched were at one time disillusioned by the church-as-institution, Hybels and his friends wanted to introduce seekers to authentic believers who cared for their needs at every level. Their goal was to provide a safe place for the unbeliever to ask questions without being judged, where they in turn could point the seeker to Jesus Christ. On October 12, 1975, Hybels’ vision came to fruition as Willow Creek Community Church held its first service[3]. The church now reaches an estimated 20,000 individuals each week.

Market-driven churches such as Willow Creek have rightly invested in people and committed themselves to studying the needs of those they intend to reach. Conducting door-to-door surveys, listening intently to the hurts and misconceptions of the unchurched, and warmly inviting them to attend a “different” style of church, they express the love of Christ to those around them. They understand the vernacular of the unchurched, thereby enabling them to communicate effectively with seekers. In speaking their language, many of the pastors of market-driven churches are master storytellers.[4] Reflecting Jesus’ extraordinary ability to use parables, metaphors, and symbolism that was understood by His audience, market-driven church pastors make their message relevant by using the symbols of the contemporary world, including modern art, the latest technology, and references to popular culture. Bill Hybels admitted that he struggled with the resources that are required to keep up with the latest technology and present polished productions each week to his audience, but in counting the costs, he considered it worthwhile. Whenever he doubts his decision, he remembers the reason why he continues with these productions:

Because some lost man or woman, who matters more to God than we can possibly understand, might come on the arm of one of our believers and get a first glimpse of what Christianity is like. And that glimpse might set the dominoes falling, so that someday that person will come to understand who Christ is, then build a relationship with Him, and eventually sit in a small circle of believers in which he or she can experience the church.[5]

Thus market-driven churches package the product that they are selling more attractively, and in so doing, they draw the interest of the unchurched. They reverse the stereotype of the church as a conventional, dull, lifeless establishment. If the church changes its methods, meets the needs of the consumer, and reverses its negative stereotype, the consumer will ultimately buy the message of Christ. But what message is the consumer buying? The market-driven church is unintentionally teaching that God exists to meet the felt needs of the unbeliever. This message, supremely attractive to the unchurched, is quickly becoming a best-seller. The problem is that this is not the message of downward mobility that ends at the foot of the cross. The apostle Paul asserts that “no one understands; no one seeks for God” and that “the cross is folly to those who are perishing.”[6] The message of the cross is abrasive because it mortifies man’s desire to see his deepest needs fulfilled in favor of seeing the beauty and supremacy of Jesus Christ manifested in all things.

The problem with the market-driven approach is not in conducting ethnographic studies to explore the needs of the surrounding culture, nor is the problem the church’s desire to address people’s needs. The problem lies in the answers that the church provides. Does the church suggest that the latest Christian self-help book can answer all of life’s problems, or does it point to Jesus Christ as the only Savior of the world? Does the church blame all of life’s problems on psychological dysfunction and moral imperfections, or does it identify that the root of life’s problems is sin? Educational theorists and market-driven ministry practitioners are informed by Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human beings must have their fundamental needs met before they can reach the highest level of self-actualization. Even at the pinnacle of his pyramid diagram, the summit is centered on self.[7] The church that focuses on felt needs fails to detonate the bomb that destroys the pyramid of self and enables one to reach above and beyond humanistic thinking to the deification of God and the detestation of self.

Church marketing techniques may be successful in attracting newcomers, but they fail at presenting the Gospel message with the clarity and conviction that changes one’s character. The market-driven church attracts those who are seeking entertainment, free childcare, an emotional experience, a weekly concert, motivational messages, a feeling of fulfillment within a loving community, and intellectual discourse with other likeminded individuals. These elements of the market-driven church are not inherently evil, but they miss the mark when they become the end rather than the means to an end. The ultimate purpose of the church is not the fulfillment of perceived needs; it is the worship of a holy God. As David Wells writes, “Neither Christ nor his truth can be marketed by appealing to consumer interest, because the premise of all marketing is that the consumer’s need is sovereign, that the customer is always right, and this is precisely what the Gospel insists cannot be the case.”[8] In one of the many beautiful paradoxes recorded in Scripture, Jesus declares that the one who “loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”[9] In forfeiting comfort, ease, worldly pleasure and earthly gain, the follower of Jesus Christ gains life. And this is the path leading towards the hope and fulfillment to which the church must point at all times.

Author James Twitchell, who describes himself as a “humanist, universalist, atheist,” expresses his disgust at the effort of the market-driven church to “sell God.” Even as one of the “seekers” that the market-driven church is attempting to reach, Twitchell clearly perceives the drastic measures the church is willing to take in order to draw him into the building, and the way the message is compromised in the process. He writes, “The sermons (and they are not called that; they are called messages) are invariably encouraging and easy to swallow, sugarcoated with optimism and affirmation. No one is called a sinner; they’re just someone with a broken part.”[10] Market-driven churches insist that the language of sin is outdated, harsh, and condescending. Rather than hitting a nerve that makes congregants squirm in their seats, better marketing techniques suggest that the church offers people a message that leaves them feeling comfortable. The accusatory term “sin” is replaced with the less condemning phrases “poor choice” or “error in judgment.” But the issue is not simply one of semantics. Employing these terms changes the connotations of the words and the result is a diluted theology. A world that is blinded to the truth needs to hear the Gospel proclaimed with clarity and sincerity. Dr. John MacArthur writes, “…the truth of God does not tickle our ears; it boxes them. It burns them. If first reproves, rebukes convicts—then exhorts and encourages.”[11]

The twenty-first century church walks a fine line, trying to balance cultural relevancy with doctrinal integrity. Cross the line and the church becomes driven by marketing strategies and slick methods rather than a call to unapologetically proclaim truth in a spiritually relativistic culture hungry to embrace something that is above and beyond earthly existence—that which is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. If the church fails to do this, it becomes “just a Christian Oprah Winfrey Show, mirroring the culture but not bringing scriptural truths to bear on it.”[12] The church must be message-driven rather than market-driven. Comfort is not character-forming and convenience does not challenge. In surrendering to Christ and remaining faithful to the teaching of His Word, the church allows God to miraculously and supernaturally provide for its needs in order that His glory might be on display as preeminent and supreme. Surrender necessitates sacrifice. To gain Christ, the market-driven church must renounce its craving to rise above its “competitors” and become the most powerful, most populous, most polished, most potent, most prosperous church on the corner.

Footnotes:

[1] G.A. Pritchard, Willow Creek Seeker Services, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 51.
[2] Michael Fewson, Will the Real Church Stand Up: How the Gospel of Jesus Christ Contradicts the Contemporary Church (Longwood: Xulon Press, 2006), 78.
[3] Hybels, Rediscovering Church, 59.
[4] Twitchell, Shopping for God, 283.
[5] Hybels, Rediscovering Church, 16.
[6] Rom. 3:11, 1 Cor. 1:18
[7] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 24.
[8] Wells, God in the Wasteland, 82.
[9] John 12:25
[10] Twitchell, Shopping for God, 243.
[11] MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 37.
[12] Hybels, Rediscovering Church, 187.