The first of this duo, This Little
Church Went to Market, is an easy read but extremely challenging
and thought provoking, especially as it addresses some of the
forces and ideologies that are changing the church today. Things
such as: marketing, entertainment, and therapy (psychology).
Gilley makes the point that is both interesting and telling that
the three forces mentioned above are influencing the church in
definite and intentional ways and none of the three are found in
Scripture, at least as they relate to the church.
In the book by An Essential Guide
to Public Speaking in this review section, Schutlze talked about
being a servant speaker and focusing on the neighbor audience
with sensitivity to where they are and are coming from. Schultze
is right for there are numerous scriptural references to show
how people like Paul did just that, and while there are
legitimate things that we can learn from the three forces, we
cannot respond in a way that undermines the work and worship of
the church. In a lecture by Ken Meyers of Mars Hill ministry, he
said that the church hasn’t found a trend that it could use or
incorporate in its ministry.
We do and must continue to live
in a tension between how we do ministry in our churches. While
we cannot play to audience, as though it is the centerpiece, we
cannot simply assign the audience to some peripheral area
either. We cannot hope to be successful in our mission if we
simply do ministry as we have always done it for people living
in a different time today than say fifty years ago, much less
hundreds of years ago. While we cannot alter the truth, we must
carefully, with much thought and prayer, research, study, and
learn how to communicate the good news of the gospel to today’s
world. Sadly, many who are attempting to do that, and while most
are well meaning in their efforts, are actually changing the
message, mostly by what they do or do not say, or how they
communicate it. Though Marshall McLuhan was not writing in a
Christian context, he was on target thirty years ago when he
said that the medium can become the message. That’s what I call
common grace truth. Maybe that’s why the church is actually
loosing its effectiveness--because it has become so
market-driven that its techniques and skills mimic those of the
marketers in today’s world.
Gilley says, “if the church is
the pillar and support of the truth and the children of God grow
as the truth of God’s Word penetrates their hearts, what happens
when the church no longer knows the truth? What happens if it
has confused the infallible truth of God with philosophies and
fads of the moment?” Those are legitimate questions that
churches and church leaders must ask today. We are living in a
biblically illiterate culture, and that includes both inside and
outside the church. That’s the conclusion poll after poll, from
Robert Wurthnow, to George Barna, to Christian Smith, to George
Gallup, Jr.
I believe Gilley is correct when
he writes that the church today has sold out to being
market-driven, user-friendly, with a new paradigm. Then he
asked, if that is true, then why have so many not recognized the
transition? When people today talk about being into spirituality
but not religion, most seem to say, good! The average
churchgoer, much less the non-churchgoer, is not equipped to
recognize the eastern influence on our western religious
orientation. Putting the emphasis on “spirituality” or
“religious experience” at the expense of knowing the truth and
basing our experience on truth will take us in the wrong
direction, and in fact, already is in many cases.
In and easy-to-read style, Gilley
effectively communicates this concern. He demonstrates how the
church may be building on the wrong foundation--a new paradigm
that shifts the focus. When we take the marketing/consumer
approach to church growth, we then have to be willing to change
as the consumer changes and that produces serious consequences.
How do we make our product appeal to the general populace? Some
are saying we do it by not focusing on sin, hell, death,
redemption, or even the atonement of Christ. They are not the
essentials of the faith, so focus on the positives. But do we
have that choice? Of course we do not make any one part of the
whole counsel of God “the truth in isolation from the other
parts,” but we can’t adopt the philosophy of one of America’s
leading TV personalities who said that just because it’s in the
Bible doesn’t mean that we have to preach and teach it.
Gilley understands what is
happening and challenges us to think more seriously and
biblically about the church. He challenges us not to be a church
with the wrong message, building on the wrong foundation,
focusing on the wrong needs, while misunderstanding worship. You
will find some helpful evaluations of people such as Rick Warren
and his Purpose Driven approach. This is an important, easy-read
book.
The second title, This Little
Church Stayed Home, is equally challenging and thought
provoking. Here he gives an overview of the postmodern culture
and its philosophy today and what it is doing to the church,
outwardly and inwardly. He writes, “Yet despite all the claims
of spiritual interest, despite the runaway numerical growth at
the celebrated megachurches, despite frequent ‘sightings’ of
revival and despite the rapid succession of fads (from Promise
Keepers to the ‘Prayer of Jabez’ to ‘Forty Day of Purpose’ to
‘The Passion of Christ’) each promising to reform the church,
the fact is that the church’s light is flickering.”
He quotes George Barna, whose
book Revolution is evaluated by Gilley, stating that unchurched
people are not just lazy or uniformed. They are wholly
disinterested in the church. Therefore, many are saying, and
Gilley deals insightfully and effectively with some of them in
part four of this book on the emerging church, that we need a
new church, not a reform of today’s church.
Barna is right in saying that the
church cannot compete with the world’s system but it has been
trying to do that for the past 50 or 60 years at least and moved
into overdrive during the past 25 years. True says Gilley, we
are living in changing times and postmodern philosophy has
become that of today’s world, and the church is buying into more
and more. The concern is not with absolute truth today, it is
what’s good for me or us and what feels good for me. That’s what
my spirituality is all about, me! The one place where people
should expect to find the truth, after all the Bible calls it
the ground and pillar of truth, the church, is not living up to
its nature and purpose.
Gilley gives helpful analysis of
the influence of what he calls postmodernity, or I would call
postmodernism, on the church. This includes how more and more
are buying into the postmodern philosophy as it’s related to
truth and authority.
As I read this second book, I
remember reading Os Guiness’s comments about our being so
committed to making the church relevant that we are actually
making it irrelevant because we are not emphasizing the things
that make it relevant. I thought speaking the language of the
age, which we must do to effectively communicate, can actually
trivialize the truth we are trying to communicate if we are not
careful in the process. There is that part of the Christian
community today, a preferred term by the emerging church people
over church, is that we are a movement in search of an
experience but not the truth.
I challenge you pastors, church
leaders and teachers, parents, and general membership of the
church to read this book. Both are important but if you must
choose between the two, read this book.
We are in a predicament today
that we must recognize and respond to—that is, if we are in
search of an experience or meaning to life and that experience
is not based on our theology and if our theology is not based on
Scripture and Scripture tells us about God, then how can we have
a meaningful experience or find real meaning to life in a
vacuum? That’s the kind of questions we need to deal with and
Gilley will help us along in that process.
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