Concerns about the materialism of the modern evangelical church were expressed in the first part of this series, and can be reviewed here. The response of Bud Brown, which you can read here [Editor’s Note: When we transferred our 2006 faith-related posts to the Joshua One blog, we lost the comments made on those posts], although much appreciated, left me more concerned than before. Mr. Brown’s experience might be different than what we have observed, and for his sake, I hope so. I hope his church is evangelism and evangelicalism personified, and I hope nothing said herein would be true about him or his church. Indeed, nothing said herein should be taken as a criticism of him or his opinion. Spirited discussion need not be interepreted as insult, and there is no such intent here.
I’m not opposed to the existence of large churches or even mega-churches. Successful evangelism might lead to both or either. I am opposed to church growth that leads only to the hording of resources to feed a live variety show on stage each Sunday morning. I am opposed to contingency salary arrangements that treat the sacred offerings and tithes of believers no better than cash register receipts. The substitution of expository preaching with Dear Abby sermons and the abandonment of diligent administration of the Word in favor of Ed Sullivan show clones is a crime against the Cross and the promotion of religious hedonism. It is growth for financial gain and not evangelism. It is the essence of anti-evangelicalism, and anti-ecumenicalism, and will inexorably lead to a mission field, here and abroad, with no Christian infantry to occupy it.
The first point that Mr. Brown made was that in the small evangelical church, “few, if any, of the church’s members actually live in the neighborhood†in which the small church is located. He explains this assertion by explaining:
Perhaps when the church was first planted, back in the 40s and 50s the church crowd was mostly locals. But, over the years, as the original membership aged and retired to Florida or died, they were not replaced by others in the neighborhood. If they were replaced at all they were replaced by people who drove in from elsewhere.
Mr. Brown’s premise, that small churches are dying embers that contain only members foreign to the neighborhood, is simply not true. Most of the evangelical churches in the country are both small and not dying. The studies I have been able to find that indicate that in certain locales Mr. Brown’s observations reflect the true environment are statistically limited or even statistically insignificant. There has been no true census. But, for the sake of the discussion, let’s assume Mr. Brown is exactly right.
Isn’t it then true that Mr. Brown has stated the proof that materialism is rampant in evangelical Christianity?
According to Mr. Brown, the hypothetical “original church membership†he describes did not evangelize the local community. Indeed, he seems to describe the white flight phenomenon method of church planting. The obvious implication of that is this: any evangelical church that does not evangelize its own community, and its own neighborhood, is not an evangelical church. It may be a Christian country club. It may be a Christian association. It might be a Christian sports grill or Christian night club. But, it is not an evangelical church. Ecumenical churches similarly afflicted would be no more savory. Evangelicals that are not evangelistic have “lost their savor.†Matthew 5:13.
Mr. Brown described the original members of the non-evangelical small church as dead or gone, and if gone, retired to Florida. [In Oklahoma, small-church members are too poor to retire to Florida.] While Mr. Brown may have been doing so tongue in cheek, if he was serious, he was describing church members that are not only not evangelistic, but wealthy. They used their wealth to escape both the neighborhood, the community and the church. I am not against retirement nor against wealth; but, if these people retired without accomplishing – or at least attempting – the glorification of Christ in the lives residing in the effective operational area of the church property, then can a worse materialism be contemplated?
Why weren’t the retiring and dying members of the small church replaced by members of the community? Mr. Brown suggests:
Few neighborhood churches have adequate resources to actually minister in their neighborhoods! These churches struggle to get the bulletin printed every week, much less have an active program that reaches out and ministers to the community.
I agree these small churches probably do not have the resources to hire a rock star music worship leader or put on a variety stage show like a large church. But, they can do many other things, and they do not need live television broadcasts of their services to do it. They could have picked a block of homes and passed out tracts or even that bulletin they struggled to print. They could have hosted a few neighborhood cook outs. In one small church near and dear to my heart, the highest attendance in that church’s nineteen year history was an August Sunday morning Vacation Bible School Program. Yes, most of the kids were resident in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Mr. Brown suggests that the entire concept of “neighborhood†is obsolete because people do not hang out on their porches, shaded sidewalks are not present or not used, and neighbors often do not know each other. All of these statements are true in some neighborhoods, but not all. Moreover, hopefully, these statements are true only for worldly people and not Christians, and certainly not evangelical Christians. In Oklahoma, neighborhoods are built around children playing together, and being supervised by more than just their parents, cook outs, garage sales, and shared chores. Evangelical church leaders that do not know how to reach out with even minimal hospitality are either not evangelical, or should not have been appointed to leadership. See, 1 Timothy 3:2.
Mr. Brown’s conclusion that the entire concept of neighborhood is an “artifact†is an admission against interest, of a sort. Most of the large churches that Mr. Brown seems to be enamored of do not have any means of caring for their own members. They cannot determine who is present and who is not. They cannot stop their mass marketing programs because their mortgages are enormous and their cash flow needs are vampire like. Mega-churches and large churches are forcing Christianity to be the religio of the wealthy and not the poor, the immigrant, or the fatherless. If Mr. Brown is asserting that was already true, a situation the mega-churches and large churches merely inherited, then we have been long doomed and did not even know it.
Mr. Brown’s assertion, that “home meetings,†single parent support, and “block parties†are only possible using the resources of a mega-church, is frightening. Have we lost so much of ourselves that we can believe that?! Are evangelical Christians so divorced from the Holy Spirit, so remote from Christ-likeness, and so materialistic, that we believe such things? These are the very tools used by the small church to reach out to the nearby community. I hope Mr. Brown is wrong, but if he is right, his conclusions may justify some large churches, but his conclusions certainly make the case prima facie that materialism is rampant in the churches.
Worse, if Mr. Brown is right, then evangelical Christianity is probably dead, and may have been dead for a very long time. There are not enough mega-churches to go around and meet the needs. The inner city, the immigrant dominated neighborhoods, and the small towns will not only be unchurched, they won’t even have access to a church. The Christian plurality will recede further. Very few large or mega-churches have calling programs, train their members in techniques of evangelism or discipleship, or train their members in apologetics, systematic theology or even fundamentals such as the Life of Christ. They do not do church planting even in their own cities.
Most large churches and mega-churches do not make their internal budgets, the salaries of their salaried leadership, and their other commitments “public†to their own members. Ministers in these churches are often paid based on a percentage of the collected giving. Thus, their income can be classified as contingent, just like most commissioned salesmen and trial lawyers. Maybe that is the failing of the small evangelical church, that their ministers are paid like or worse than public school teachers. Most salaried clergy and their families have to endure an involuntarily imposed vow of poverty, that is true, but the answer is not the mega-church.
What if Mr. Brown and I are both right? What if the evangelical churches have given up being evangelical and what if the mega-churches are simply a response, a symptom, and not a surprising one, to the end of the evangelical era, and the end of time? See, Matthew 24:12.
