One of the texts I spent the summer meditating and memorizing is the account of Peter saying, “Never Lord” when Jesus informs him about suffering and the cross (Matthew 16:21-26). I understand Peter and his commitment to avoid pain. Don’t we all? So I am spending time with God, with our staff, pondering what it means, truly, to lead our people to Jesus. I am concerned at how I (we) too might be creating a Jesus I think I want or need. The following excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way (Eerdmans, 2008) sums it up well: If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving, whatever…We are the world’s champion consumers, so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches? There is only one thing wrong: this is not the way in which God brings us into conformity with the life of Jesus and sets us on the way of Jesus’ salvation. This is not the way in which we become less and Jesus becomes more. This is not the way in which our sacrificed lives become available to others in justice and service. The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, “deny yourself” congregation. A consumer church is an antichrist church. We can’t gather a God-fearing, God-worshiping congregation by cultivating a consumer-pleasing, commodity-oriented congregation. When we do, the wheels start falling off the wagon. And they are falling off the wagon. We can’t suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth. The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent. Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life… The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice – we bring ourselves to the altar and let God do with us what He will. Might it be true that the notion of a consumer church really is an “antichrist” church, and that we as evangelicals are in deeper than we realize?
5
Sep
