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November 16, 2006
My Father's House
A column at the Knowledge at Wharton website discusses the interesting step that some megachurches are taking in essentially allowing themselves to participate in secular product marketing campaigns:
Now some advertisers are taking the next step [beyond marketing products with a religious tie in churches, such as the Purpose Driven Life]: marketing products -- like an SUV -- with no intrinsic religious value through church networks. "If we are going to target the African-American consumer, we have to go where they go, rather than ask them to come to us, and the church is a major institution for that community," says James Kenyon, Chrysler Group brand marketing senior manager.
The article discusses the potential benefits to churches that allow such marketing campaigns. One church received a new van that the church uses to help elderly parishioners get around in exchange for church members buying a sufficient amount of product.
The benefit to the product companies is obvious:
But there is no doubt that megachurches -- defined as churches with weekly attendances of over 2,000 people -- offer advertisers some huge enticements. They reach more than seven million people every Sunday morning, an aggregation of potential consumers that secular advertisers have ignored until recently, according to Scott Thumma, an expert on megachurches at the Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn."Megachurches represent the concentration of larger numbers of Christians in fewer congregations," says Thumma, whose latest research will appear in a co-authored book next year. "If nearly 50% of people who attend church go to 10% of the churches, then marketers have not given that phenomenon nearly enough attention."
The article notes, though, that not everybody greets this development with unbridled enthusiasm:
. . . Jesus spoke frequently about the dangers of wealth, warning that "you cannot serve both God and mammon." More dramatically, he overturned the tables of businessmen inside the Jewish temple and drove them out with a whip, saying "Make not my Father's house a house of merchandise."To some Christian critics, the analogy could not be more direct. Isn't having Chrysler or Chevrolet vehicles parked in the foyer of a church "a little too much like putting the tables back inside the temple?" asks Skye Jethani, associate editor of Leadership, a journal for church pastors published by ChristianityToday.
The dangers of commerce intruding -- or being invited -- into churches are "infinite" from a religious point of view, says Jethani, who is one of two pastors at an "accessibly-sized" congregation of 400 in Wheaton, Ill. "Christianity comes to be viewed, not as submission to Christ and love of your neighbor, but an identity like any other, defined by what you buy, who you vote for, what entertainment you consume. Becoming so cozy with the methodology of business completely warps the message of the New Testament."
I am sympathetic to a church's desire to augment its resources through other means. Also, I generally support pastors using their influence to encourage businesses to invest resources in needed places in the local community for development. However, I think, on balance, that the critics have it right here. This trend (if it can be called that) seems to perpetuate two problems that I think plague the Evangelical Christian church today.
First, this phenomenon is a by-product of the "growth over all" perspective that seems to have a hold on the church. Growth, whether explicitly or implicitly, appears to be the standard by which Evangelical churches are measured. The growth standard appears to trump other potential indicators of success, such as the ability of a church to create lifelong disciples of Christ. I believe the obsessive focus on growth ultimately detracts from the cause of Christ, because it is not the explicit cause of Christ.
Indeed, the article quotes a leading business writer on the dangers of a focus on growth the detriment of core mission:
Even business guru Jim Collins, best-selling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, has an opinion on the topic. Growth for the sake of growth is potentially destructive, warns Collins, who spoke this summer to a megachurch leadership conference about his new publication applying Good to Great concepts to "social sector" organizations like churches. The key question for churches, he says, is, "Do they have the discipline to say 'no' to any resources that will drive them away from their fundamental mission?"
Second, this trend represents a very explicit capitulation by the churches involved to American consumerism and materialism. As the article mentions, our Lord spent a goodly amount of time warning that an obsessive focus on the material necessarily leads a lack of focus on God, and is sin. These pastors, far from questioning the effects of American consumerism on their parishioners (much less questioning the effects of consumerism on the lost), have instead brought their Churches right into the arena of commerce. Whether or not Jesus believes that is a proper use for His church remains to be seen.
Posted by Mark at November 16, 2006 05:38 AM