Cruciformity v. Whipped Cream
I was talking to a pastor today in the bookstore about Purpose Driven Church. He had asked me my opinion about it and I said quite honestly that I wasn’t a fan of its heavy “marketing” language. That growing a church has more to do with “tapping a market” than cruciformity for Warren (at least in PDC). We talked a bit about the church with Starbucks inside or Joel Olsteen’s Mega-Mega Church in Houston. These churches are competing with popular culture to entertain and “serve” the felt needs of their targeted market group. Dennis, my pastor friend, joked that Olsteen’s sermons were like eating Whipped-Cream for dinner.I’m re-reading Yoder’s Politics of Jesus for a summer class and in it Yoder points out that Jesus moves away from the crowds (or they move away from him) because way of the nature of the Kingdom he preaches (38). I don’t think that cruciformity tastes like Whipped-Cream. And churches who stop trying to compete with pop-culture for people’s attention (because let’s be honest, as big as Olsteen’s church is now, they’re not going to “beat” MTV) and start journeying towards cruciformity may just find themselves “growing” numerically, because they’re inviting others to an alternative culture (not a Christianized pop-culture one), and perhaps not, perhaps churches that do so will soon find themselves closing their doors, but the mission of the church is immitation of Christ's self-giving love, not the "survival" of the church itself. The intentional following the crowd to get its attention is not the tactic we see in Jesus, but even in Jesus' withdrawl from the crowds many found the path of cruciformity to be the life-giving path of following Christ.
Labels: Theology
posted by Charlie at 3:54 PM
6 Comments:
Oh man, I love whipped cream!
Chuck Self is in this class, we had a very good (but short) conversation tonight about ethics and having an over-arching meta-narrative that offers a norm for what is right and how the Church needs to be this. (He referred to a book I wish I could remember but he wished it was on the reading list for Keen's class) Regardless of whether we accomplish the truth with our practice of ethics, we encourage people to look to the Church for this. And when they turn to the Church, maybe whipped cream for dinner isn't exactly what Jesus is serving so I suppose we shouldn't either.
First of all, POJ is an amazing book and I'm glad that many are beginning to read and discuss it. I hope you are enjoying it.
Second, to be totally honest, Purpose Driven Church is a disgusting book. It symbolizes a "movement" within the church to find out what people want and are doing and making the church fit into that. Whatever happened to us leading towards God's kingdom? And scariest thought of all... what does a mega-church junkie say about the times when Jesus would say hard things (like eat my flesh and drink my blood) and thousands would leave? I've yet to hear about a mega-church pastor (or really anyone else for that matter) bold enough to bring out those sorts of teachings. I wonder if their theology would lead them to believe Jesus wasn't doing God's will when the crowds left...
Blessings Chuck! And thanks for the last 2 video clips also!
hey i was going to say your library thing link was dead... but no it is just me that is brain dead.
hey man thanks for stopping by the blog.
Very cool observation you have on this topic. I tend to agree where you are going with this. I am glad i found this blog...As a youthpastor who was not born in the West, but is now ministering in the west, its hard to convince the market driven church and youth about priorities...anyways thanks for the post, feel free to check out my blog.
Thanks for the post Paul. When you say "the West" do you mean hemisphere or the Western US?
Well I was born in USSR, so by west I mean western europe and north america where the mentality is simular and much different then commuunist/socialist mentality that I grew up with. Although its never that black and white in either case.
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