The Terrible Danger of
Drinking Old Wine
From the Structure-It Destroys the
Taste for Jesus’ New Wine
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The Almost Sacrosanct
Assumption About Consumer Sovereignty
“This creates an
entirely different context for
ministry from what prevailed only a
few decades ago. This market today is
competitive. And increasingly what
pastors are up against are
churchgoers’ preferences.
This is a buyer’s market and
what the buyer wants has become as
large a consideration as what the
church wants to give. And what
churches have discovered is that
these preferences are significantly
affected by deep therapeutic
longings, by fallacious assumptions
about human potential, by a sense of
entitlement to wholeness, by an almost
sacrosanct assumption about consumer
sovereignty, by the
entertainment industry, and perhaps
even by a desire to be cocooned from
society as much as possible.
“For the time
will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own
lusts shall they heap to themselves
teachers, having itching ears.”
2 Timothy 4:3.
Disney World a Model
For Some Churches
“This has changed
many things in this new experiment in
how to ‘do church.’ Among
them is the fact that concerted
attention is now given to the way in
which a newcomer ‘feels’
about the church. That is why Disney
World is considered a model that
some churches have tried to
follow…. One of the less welcome
by products of the new consumer
mentality is that brand loyalty is a
thing of the past so people
circulate through churches, trying
one and then another, which the
result that back doors are being used
as much as the front….
Complete Managerial
Control
“…Disney,
the happiest place on earth, is in
fact, utopian. It is a
compelling distillation of how the
middle class wishes life looked in
the United States or how they
(mistakenly) remember it as having
been. And the key to producing such a
happy place is complete managerial
control, considerable imagination,
and technological wizardry. None
of these points has been lost on
emerging seeker churches…
Entertainment
“Disney is also
about entertainment, and some
churches have come to think that
here, too, another page can be taken
from its book… entertainment has
therefore emerged as a very important
factor in the new mix…
Ministers who resemble comedians or
other entertainers are beginning to
show up on church teams…
“These churches
have been to the forefront in
recognizing how the growth of our
cities, the evolution in the ways
people shop, and the ways in which
they have adapted to large,
impersonal structures in society have
all changed what they expect from
church, what they are and are not
willing to tolerate…
“Much of What the
Earlier Generation Valued Has Been
Swept Away
“… When
malls began to be built outside
cities, a ‘culture-changing
concept’ was under way. No
longer would shoppers drive into the
city but they would go to the malls.
At the same time this was happening,
the importance of the neighborhood
was diminishing. Those born before
1935… value a sense of community
which they found in the neighborhood but
those who are part of the younger
generations, those born after 1955, work
off; a non-geographical basis for
creating social networks.’…
Thus it is that we have the
‘emergence of the new regional
megachurch as the successor to the
old neighborhood parish… The
contemporary ethos is now quite
different from what it used to be. As
modernization has taken hold, much
of the earlier generation valued has
been swept away: ‘familiarity,
continuity with the past, kinship
ties, small institutions, simplicity,
predictability, longtime
relationships, informality, and a
slower pace of life. Younger
generations have only known a
culture, which is dominated by large
institutions. They are used to
having many choices, to experiencing
innovation, constant change, numerous
surprises, and convenient parking
lots.” Wells, 269-275.
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