A little perspective

Disentangling the cultural from the eternal is always a challenge for the church. Here are a couple of writings that help give some perspective on the North American culture of the commercial. The first is from William Willimon on "resisting the clutches of consumerism":

. . . the “user friendly” approach to church won’t work. There is no way to entice people off the streets with hymns that are based on advertising jingles and end up with the cross-bearing, self-sacrificial, burden-bearing Jesus. Evangelism cannot be based upon our basic selfishness (“Come to Jesus and get everything you want fixed.”) and end up with anything resembling historic Christianity.

One of the reasons why Church is difficult is that the modern media culture (a culture which has no other purpose than giving us what we want, since “getting what we want” is the main purpose of life) has been so successful in forming us into such consumers.

Amen. Douglas Groothuis has also written a scathing little post on "YouWorld."