The Amazonification of the Local Church
How Do You Fight Communion At The Cheesecake Factory?
Friday morning was absolutely gorgeous out at Radnor Lake. About 25 folks met me in the parking lot, where we grabbed a donut and then headed off into the woods to celebrate the launch of my new book. It was so fun.
I love seeing people who didn’t know each other walking side-by-side, getting to know one another, as we would spot deer running through the dew on the crisp autumn morning.
What a way to celebrate.
Thank you to everybody who came out to celebrate. I hope you had as much fun as I did.
This weekend was also The Rabbit Room‘s Hutchmoot conference and I ended up spending a lot of time over there. The Rich Mullins tribute evening was beautiful and the Tom Petty session I was a part of was a blast. I tried a big “guitar choir” experiment there that thankfully worked. I’ll write about it in a post soon. If anyone has a good video from that they can send me, would you please??
Some “Q”s I Could Not “A”
Saturday morning I got to speak about consumerism and the church, and read a few chapters from my new book. The room was beyond packed. They brought in extra chairs and people were sitting on the floor. It was wild.
After these poor, kind people listened to me talk, nonstop, for an HOUR, we had some time for a Q&A. The questions were fantastic and all over the place. Music business, liturgy, Sunday morning worship music, daily rhythms, racism in worship music… We could have talked all day.
I was struck by one comment from a pastor in the back. “Over the past six years,” he said, “I’ve successfully grown my church from 55 people to about 20. How am I supposed to compete with the giant church down the road? How can I implement any of this stuff when I have one musician who is wonderful, but can only really do one thing?”
First of all, hats off to that faithful pastor, sticking it out while the megachurch a mile away is slowly siphoning off one church member after another, with their kids ministry and singles ministry and nineteen other really great things that the good, faithful people are doing over there.
Oof. This feels like one of those stories where the villain maybe isn’t who you think they are at first.
What a quandary we’ve found ourselves in, huh?
The Amazonification of church - killing off the mom and pop faith communities just like Jeff Bezos and Walmart and Bed, Bath and Beyond killed off every small town downtown that makes all the Hallmark movies so charming.
What do we as the church body want? We “the consumers”?
We want the Christmas pageant and the old ladies who pray for our kids by name and to be be friends with the pastor. We want tradition and history and also for church to not be boring (not for us, for our kids!) We want them engaged in youth group with other kids their age and we don’t need it, but we sure do like that good sound system and the in-house counseling center and the giant beach retreats and and and…
We want the old fashioned town square and we want it on our doorstep by 6 am.
I’m not a pastor or a church planter or a seminary professor. I’m a guitar player who’s traveled all across America and seen hundreds and hundreds of dead small towns. I’ve also seen hundreds of brand new cookie cutter parking lots surrounded by a Target, a Chick-Fil-A, a Home Depot, a Starbucks, a Chipotle, and a Holiday Inn Express.
Copy and paste. Copy and paste.
Two decades ago those clusters had Toys R Us and Barnes and Nobles, too, but those are gone now.
We’ve killed the toy store that broke all the toy stores and the bookstore that read the last rites to most of the bookstores. Now we just shop and eat and sleep.
This is what corporate America has done to our small towns and businesses. Now it’s happening (has happened?) to our small churches.
I didn’t have any answers for my friend in the back row.
What should he do? Give up and assimilate? Try to adapt somehow? Stay the course?
What do you think?
What do I think? Stay the course, stay the course, stay the course. I grew a church from 50 to 80 and then back to 30. While I was gone last month on a gracious, generous, unlooked for, much needed sabbatical, two families with small kids showed up—and then came back again. And then again when I got back. Now we have a nursery problem. :-)
And I'm sure you know this, but some of those bigger churches are on our side. The bigger church down the street supplied our pulpit for two of the Sundays I was gone. They have blessed our church in numerous ways over the time I've been here. All that to say—God is in the business of doing the unexpected. Stay the course.
Smaller, faithful congregations are the backbone of the church. Staying the course, even when it’s hard, is a testament to the faithfulness of God in a small community. Steadfast, unwavering, always abounding in the work of the Lord.