Friday, November 21, 2008

American Way vs. The Jesus Way


I started a book last night called The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson. He has come up with what he calls "spiritual theology" and he wrote in his introductory chapter what I have been struggling with lately:

"It didn't take long for some of our Christian brothers and sisters to develop consumer congregations. 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. This is the language we Americans grow up on, the language we understand. We are the world's champion consumers, so why shouldn't we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?"

What do you think about his idea of consumer churches and is there any way to avoid it with our consumer-American lenses on?

2 comments:

Ryan said...

Why do all of Petterson's book covers follow the same theme?

Ray said...

I don't know about all of them, but the Jesus Way is one in a series of books that Peterson has written