Again the Leadership magazine blog Out of UR has a great article. This time it’s Spencer Burke of “the ooze” fame commenting on consumer driven churches, here’s a splice to tease you over to their site.
Is the problem that people in the pews keep upping the ante on their demands, or is it that church leaders don’t comprehend the real source of their discontent? Is it that people want too much, or that they just don’t want what the church is currently selling?
Right now churches are focusing on one product to the exclusion of others. Most often, it’s teaching, a 60- to 90-minute event held at a particular time, at a particular physical address. It’s basically the same product we’ve been selling since the Renaissance. People sit in a room and listen to someone talk.
But here’s the thing: back then, it made sense for people to travel miles to hear someone talk about God. After all, people were mostly illiterate, Bibles were expensive, and Sunday morning was often the only time people could expand their horizons. Teaching was a rare commodity.
That’s no longer true today. Teaching is available everywhere—on television, radio, online. The local church no longer has the corner on the market.
Full article here.
No Guarantees 
I Like the idea – instead of sitting in a building for 90 minutes on a Sunday morning we can get out teaching during the week off the net, from a DVD or something, and use the times on Sundays for fellowshipping, building communities, or getting out and serving people around us and through that sharing the love of Christ.
I find a church service is always much more for the saved than the un-saved. It makes us feel good to ‘go to church’, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, but we have to stop seeing church as the place to get out un-believing mates, and figure out that we have to get out into the world and do the work ourselves.
scott,
sounds as if we have a similar backgrounds… i hope someday we can meet and share stories from our journey. if you are ever in southern california – the first round is on me…
Thanks Spencer, I would love to meet one day, it is a long swim, but I seriously would love to get there for a bit of a look round. Actually I was there a few years ago with otherendup (or udderendup) who comments regularly, but we had a conference and …heck it was a while ago and life, thought, church, family…everything look a lot different then!