Consumerism

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

From an interview with Dan Kimball:

For those who have grown up in the church, we really have taught them to view church like they would if they were on the panel of "American Idol". The expectation of performance, the mindset of "what does this church have to offer me?" the way they judge church by how good is the preacher, how good is the music etc. I think we would admit that this is the mentality of most Christians in evangelical churches if we were honest. I don't blame them, because since they were children we taught them to view church as the place to have "fun" with hyper-kids games and videos, and for youth to view church as the place to get emotionally charged and hyped from songs and energetic rallies and camps which teach Jesus etc. We have brought them to the Christian concerts, fed them into the consumerism of Christian commercialism of T-Shirts, CD's etc. and in many ways have based their Christian experience primarily around these things, with an occasional missions trip to Mexico thrown in. I hyper-exaggerate here, but I have a sinking suspicion if we really think about this, we leaders may be the very ones who had a lot to do with what we are now fighting in our churches in regards to consumerism.