March/April 2002

McChurch
Fast-Food Christianity?

by Dan Schaeffer

What do Earl Woods, father of the famous golfer Tiger Woods, musician and actor John Tesh, radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger, former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and former television star and singer, Jim Nabors, all have in common? The answer is that they have all hit the mega-church personality circuit. If you wonder what spiritual connection these personalities have with Christianity, you aren't alone.

While Dr. Laura is wellknown for her strong moral convictions, her presence in a church is interesting, given that she's a practicing Jew. It is equally unlikely that Mikhail Gorbachev has any deep spiritual interest in the things of God or the gospel of Jesus Christ, since most communists (or true socialists) are atheists. Why then are their appearances trumpeted at a large, conservative evangelical church? What do the presence of these personalities have to do with the gospel you might ask? The answer is that they are a great way to get people in the doors of a church.

Over 40 years ago, A.W. Tozer noted that it was increasingly difficult to get Christians to meetings where God was the chief attraction. In many churches today, where a consumer consciousness has been ingrained in the philosophy of ministry, there is competition for the hearts and souls of the unchurched. As a result, many mega churches are paying for the biggest name Christian (and even non-Christian) personalities to appear, while at the same time equipping themselves with the newest state of the art technology, professional musicians and video productions that rival those of MTV. It is difficult to shake the eerie feeling that the church has gone Las Vegas.

Few smaller churches can compete with the presentations that the mega-church can offer. While all churches can sing the same worship songs, how many have full orchestras, with special lighting, professional song leaders, musicians and dancers on stage? While every church can use drama or skits to convey a message, how many can boast of professional actors and scriptwriters on their church staff? At best, the smaller church comes off looking awkwardly amateurish next to the bigger church's production. And how many can afford the hefty appearance fees of the big-name Christian personalities?

When appearances reign supreme, it is tempting to play to the crowd. Like the mega church pastor who was so overcome with joy and thankfulness at reaching the church's fund raising goals that he fell down upon the ground and spontaneously cried -- at all five services.

More and more, larger churches are beginning to attract people by de-emphasizing the harsher elements of the gospel, or even eliminating them altogether. As one secular critic noted "some clergy have simply airbrushed sin out of their language. Having substituted therapy for spiritual discernment, they appeal to the nurturing God who helps his people cope. Heaven by this creed is never having to say no to yourself, and God is never having to say you're sorry."1 Some conservative evangelical churches are opting to forego the traditional Biblical exposition in favor of "felt need" focused sermons and worship. Doctrine is perceived as dry and dull and out of touch with the unchurched, and traditional hymns are tired and boring.

Many mega churches operate on the premise that when non-believers are brought into a worship service they are witnessing "alien activity." Therefore they are viewed primarily as an audience to observe the worshippers (usually a worship team). But is worship primarily a time to watch others sing about God, or to speak to God, and he to us?

Is the purpose of worship to make us feel better about ourselves, or to make us holy? In the gospel we discover the bad news about ourselves and the good news about our God. Should either of these elements be missing from worship, can it still truly be worship?

Voicing concern about the direction and extent to which some churches are going to attract new people, Chuck Colson has called this trend the "McChurch" mentality. The church becomes simply another retail outlet and faith just another commodity. "Spiritual consumers are interested not in what the church stands for but in the fulfillment it can deliver. This consumer mentality pressures churches to respond in kind." Colson states bluntly, "Therapy and the promise of material reward may lure people into our churches, but so might free reefers handed out in the sanctuary -- and it's debatable which would do more harm."2

If the "customer" becomes king within the church, what place in the service does the King of kings occupy? Can any worship service be designed which makes the unchurched really comfortable with the true gospel of Christ? One church in the south uses reruns of the Andy Griffith Show to draw people to a Sunday school class. They watch an old episode and discuss how Andy, Barney, Aunt Bee and Opie handled their problem, attempting to weave biblical principles into the discussion. Hundreds attend each week. Maybe Las Vegas and Mayberry aren't that far away from each other after all!

It's possible to get hundreds, even thousands, to church by promising to give away a new Mercedes Benz, but how interested are those people then going to be in the gospel? If we're not careful, the gospel could begin to be perceived as little more than an annoying distraction to the seeker -- like a business call in the middle of the annual office party. When you advertise one thing, but then deliver another, you can correctly be accused of bait and switch.

The church becoming user friendly to the culture may not be the real problem. Perhaps we really need to ask if the church is becoming user centered and focused. The church is the body of Christ, and true worship must have him as the focus.

Enthusiasm for this method of ministry may actually be beginning to wane. While the baby boomers were attracted to this model, Eddie Gibbs and Ian Coffey, authors of Church Next, point out that only about 25 percent of baby boomers were ever drawn back into the church.

The success of the seeker sensitive worship approach has been limited to a certain segment of the boomer generation, and has made little true impact on the never churched. But there does appear to be another blip on the radar screen. Some baby boomers are leaving conservative evangelical churches to attend liturgical churches. Wearying of celebrity based religion built around the personality and communication gifts of one pastor; they have gone in search of reverence, to find a place where God is the center of attention.

If some boomers are beginning to tire of the seeker sensitive approach, many in Generation X were never attracted to it in the first place. Unlike their boomer parents, GenXers are not interested in listening to people who presume to have all the answers. Rather, they want to meet people who have a transforming relationship with God. What is important to Generation X is a genuine experience with God.

As Gibbs and Coffey say, "Seeker sensitive worship held in an auditorium devoid of religious symbols and led by polished professional performers who are removed from the tattered and tawdry world of daily experience holds little appeal for many GenXers. They know that life is not tidy or filled with predictable, happy endings. Their spiritual awareness is triggered by rituals both ancient and relevant. If the Christian church fails to rediscover its own rich heritage, created in pre-literate societies, it will find it increasingly difficult to hold a generation shaped by a post-literate culture."3

Suspicious of bigness, advertising and egos, GenXers want something specific: churches that are down to earth and unpretentious. Polished and impeccable images turn them off. On Sunday morning, about 275 worshippers gather weekly for worship at National Community Church in Washington, D.C. They are predominantly single and GenX, who have been part of the MTV-groomed generation that responds to the notion of absolute truth with a postmodern "Whatever."

Says one member; "We're moving out of the whole stage of "If you can prove it's true, I'll believe it. The GenX people want an experience. And if it's an experience they like, then they'll believe, and they'll ultimately try to figure out the truth."4

Boomers want propositional truth, Xer's want experiential truth. Which is right? Certainly there is truth in both points of view.

Responding to Christ involves both responding to propositional truth and an experience with the living God. Which comes first? Does it matter? Some are led to Christ by a certain gospel truth that pierced their hearts, others by a certain experience they had in relationship with the church and other Christians. Some people's experience simply preceded their doctrinal affirmation. At what point a person truly responded to the gospel of Christ is not nearly as important as the fact that they did. Sally Morgenthaler, author of Worship

Evangelism: Inviting

Unbelievers Into the Presence of God, believes that a main problem of many modern mega-churches and their followers is that many church leaders see the purpose of the church as only evangelism and growth. Yet, she says, the evangelistic motivation cannot be sustained indefinitely without the heartbeat of worship. In fact it is very difficult for a church to witness convincingly about a God we do not know and love in our inmost being. It is too easy to slip from adoration to demand.

Morgenthaler writes, "The hour we spend at services like these (mega-churches) will most likely be glutted with polished performances and pedestal personalities. Our emotions will be tapped by well-planned musical sequences and segues, culturally correct humor, pithy anecdotes and

well-rehearsed humility. We shall have our brains stuffed with information about how to make life work and how to work harder at life. Most likely, we shall leave feeling very good about ourselves. But one thing we shall not have done: we shall not have met with God."

"A true encounter with God leaves us with a lot more than good feelings. It leaves us with changed hearts and calls us to changed lives. Very simply, to experience God's presence is to be transformed from the inside out. Where is this transformation today? More and more of us

are leaving our worship centers and sanctuaries without even so much as a smudge on our glossy finish. We are going out the same way we came in. We may have had an entertainment fix, a self-esteem fix, a self-righteousness fix or a self-help fix, but we have not been changed."5

Calling it "the liturgical fidget," C.S. Lewis noted that some pastors and churches, "believe people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications and complications of the service. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value." He lamented that "novelty may fix our attention not even on the service, but on the celebrant."6

When churches become user-centered and focused, Christ and his Kingdom eventually bears little resemblance to the true gospel. Glitzy worship, famous people, even sentimental TV re-runs will never make the gospel more palatable to those who have no real interest in the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus spoke about picking up our cross, denying ourselves and following him, the crowd's interest in "the miraculous Galilean" waned dramatically. Our experiences are unlikely to be very different. Getting warm bodies into pews isn't the same as getting souls into the Kingdom.

Any method for attracting people to churches is legitimate as long as it never misrepresents the true gospel. And, just for the record, the narrow road Jesus spoke of doesn't lead to Mayberry. 

1 Kenneth Woodward in Newsweek, quoted in "Welcome to McChurch," by Chuck Colson with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, (Christianity Today, November 23, 1992).

2 Chuck Colson with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, in "Welcome to McChurch," (Christianity Today, November 23, 1992).

3 Eddie Gibbs & Ian Coffey, Church Next, (InterVarsity Press, England, 2001, pg. 124).

4 Caryle Murphy, The Washington Post, "The Spirit Moves Generation X in a Different Way," (L.A. Times, 8/28/01).

5 Sally Morgenthaler, Worship Evangelism: Inviting Unbelievers into the Presence of God, (Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 1995, pg. 52).

6 C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven, (Inspirational Press, 1987, New York, pg. 424-425).

Dan Schaeffer and his family live in Northern California.

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