“According to the study, ‘Religious service attendance is correlated to embracing a consumeristic mindset.’”
“Lifeway Research found those who attend church more than once a week are more likely to fall into consumeristic thinking. Those without evangelical beliefs and who attend church less frequently are less likely to be consumeristic.” - Lifeway
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Maybe part of the problem is how “consumeristic” is being understood? Having affections set on things above per Col 3, etc., isn’t the same thing as not liking and enjoying things. The case can be made that we do that better when our affections are on things above, not less, per se.
Still, they have a point. There seems to be a problem here.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
When you think about the habits of megachurches and those who attend them--bigger worship bands, bigger stage shows, fog machines, ever cooler pastors, church hopping, church coffee shops, and the like--it doesn't surprise me that a plurality of evangelicals might be said to be more consumeristic than average.
On the light side, I think I just wrote a comment that Wally or Don could have written. I do hope that they're not too horrified, and Wally, Don, my apologies if you are!
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Your thoughts seem correct to me, but I haven’t read the article yet. I’ll go do that, but your comment was too funny to pass up.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
I think Bert sums up the point of the article quite well. From my outside observation, the emphasis on experience in many (most?) evangelical churches caters to the consumeristic culture so prevalent in our society. A lot of these churches are Charismatic, which is itself heavily oriented to experience.
I’m reading The Trellis and the Vine just now. I think the authors are arguing against this consumeristic mindset with their point that all Christians need to be involved in vine work (building disciples) rather than building buildings (trellis work). It’s a good counter to the consumer mindset.
(Of course, I have to say I object to the theology of the authors [Calvinist] and to their occasional bad exegesis.)
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
The problem with an article like this is that the kind of people who need it would never read, and the kind of people who would read it already agree with it. Consumerism is hard to defeat, it so permeates a culture where church choices are plentiful and evangelical churches are in competition with one another. Echoes of the prosperity gospel make matters even worse. We live in a time when Christians want about anything other than Bible.
"The Midrash Detective"
So I'm continuing to read The Trellis and the Vine, about half-way through now. They are emphasizing training people to grow beyond their current plateau (through one on one and congregational sessions).
They aren't dismissing the importance of sermons, but they advocate thinking about the individuals in the church and thinking how to bring them along to the next step (individually) so that they can then be involved one way or another in discipling other people.
I would say so far that I am giving a qualified support to their thesis. (Because I haven't finished the book!) As mentioned, their theology is somewhat different from mine, but the basic issue is the same whether you agree with them or not on those points.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
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