Dr. Stockstill at Harding had a profound saying about the connection between the way we do ministry and the fruit it produces:

What we win them with
Is what we win them to.

He applied this to youth ministry first and foremost, as that is his field - if youth are attracted to a church because it has cool parties and free pizza, we can expect them to develop a lifelong allegiance to…cool parties and free pizza. If the Gospel itself is not ultimately what we’re offering, we will attract a following that follows the wrong thing.

I see the same thing happening in alt. worship settings, and in what Pete Ward is advocating regarding embracing consumerism.

By competing in the markeplace of diversions and “entertainments,” religion was…transformed into a product….from about the eighteenth century religious institutions have been competing with the leisure industry for people’s time and attention (and money). The result has been that in order to compete, churches have reshaped faith as an attraction or a commodity. If this argument is true, then shopping for a church makes perfect sense, and spiritual consumers are what most churches have set out to produce.

…it is possible to see how market processes and patterns of production and consumption have shaped the Christian church. Far from rejecting such developments as superficial or theologically problematic, I believe that the commodification is essential for evangelism. A good example would be the What Would Jesus Do craze that swept through youth groups and churches a few years ago….

The problem for solid church is that its one-size-fits-all environment is adapted only for one or two kinds of spiritual consumers….What is needed is a more flexible church, one that is able to respond to the changing needs of people. The challenge for the liquid church is how it can do this without losing its theological heart. p62-64

Indeed. How can it do this? I’m glad the chapter ends this way, because it points to the real challenge of what Ward is suggesting. Unlike him, though, I do not see the connection between targeting spiritual consumers more precisely, and greater success in helping people become disciples of Jesus Christ. When he mentioned WWJD?, did you cringe? I think most of us now see that movement as a vacuous and pathetic fad, more in the tradition of crimped hair than a religious revival. People may search for meaning in the objects they shop for, but it is a hollow substitute for what we’re all really searching for, and everyone knows this at some level.

Are we really pleased with the results of WillowCreek-model consumer Christianity? It seems from this chapter of Liquid Church that Ward is advising us to make a monolithic consumer church into a highly personalized consumer church. Perhaps it is a parody, but Steve Collins’ alt worship/art site seems to be little more than a smallscale, pomo, ?ber-individualistic version of the megachurch programs we’re all so tired of hearing about.

A reordering of priorities is needed, as Dallas Willard proposes:

What message would we preach [or, I would add, what alt. worship events could we hold] that would naturally lead to a decision to become an apprentice to Jesus in the Kingdom Among Us? …Almost every problem that we see afflicting, paralyzing, and even killing Christians and groups of Christians today would never even arise in a context where the primacy of apprenticeship to Jesus is accepted and developed through a corresponding course of training. …the intention to make disciples is essential. It will not happen otherwise. We are, of course, not talking about eliminating nondisciple, consumer Christianity. It has its place. But we are talking about making it secondary, as far as our intentions are concerned. We would intend to make disciples and let converts “happen,” rather than intending to make converts and letting disciples “happen.” The Divine Conspiracy, p304

Willard speaks to the uncomfortable parts of our ecclesiology and evangelism, where we do not want to change things, lest it push us too far into unknown waters, or perhaps back into familiar waters that we have recoiled from.

Thoughts? This one’s a mind-bender.