{"id":208,"date":"2013-08-23T19:16:54","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T19:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegospelplant.wordpress.com\/?p=208"},"modified":"2013-08-23T19:16:54","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T19:16:54","slug":"how-an-economic-understanding-of-the-church-has-undermined-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/how-an-economic-understanding-of-the-church-has-undermined-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"How An Economic Understanding of the Church Has Undermined Discipleship"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS BLOG IS WRITTEN BY PASTOR DERWIN L. GRAY, NOT GERALD WHITE<\/h2>\n

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How An Economic Understanding of the Church Has Undermined Discipleship<\/a><\/h2>\n
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I was marinating on \u00a0Darrell L. Gruder\u2019s\u00a0book, \u201cMissional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the American Church,\u201d I came across this fascinating insight that corresponds with one of the reasons why I believe, biblical, Christo-centric, Spirit-empowered missional discipleship is not flourishing in the local church in America.<\/p>\n

Pastor\/church planter, take time to interact and critically think about this blog.<\/p>\n

Parallel with the rise of the \u201cmember as volunteer\u201d and the \u201cchurch as organization\u201d was the impact of economic developments. Recent scholarship in the sociology of religion has brought to light how this aspect shaped the church\u2019s life. In\u00a0The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy,\u00a0Roger Finke and Rodney Stark argue that the choice made early on in the United States not to have an established religion meant that an economic understanding of religious life and practice was inevitable. They contend that \u201cwhere religious affiliation is a matter of choice, religious organizations must compete for members and . . . the \u2018invisible hand\u2019 of the marketplace is as unforgiving of ineffective religious firms as it is of their commercial counterparts . . . Religious economies are like commercial economies in that they consist of a market made up of a set of current and potential customers and a set of firms seeking to serve that market.\u201d Indeed, they suggest that it is appropriate to use \u201ceconomic concepts such as markets, firms, market penetration, and segmented markets to analyze the success and failure of religious bodies.\u201d In their view, then, the clergy are the church\u2019s sales representatives, religious doctrines are its products, and evangelization practices are its marketing techniques.11<\/p>\n

This model has a ring of truth true it. It describes only too well assumptions about membership, program, structure, success, and purposes that give shape to today\u2019s church culture, \u201cthe way we do things around here.\u201d It certainly illumines the current circumstance in which the churches live, a pervasive religious consumerism driven by the quest to meet personally defined religious needs. It also explains the heavy concentration of church efforts to produce and promote programs, concert style worship \u201cexperiences\u201d (I added this) and it corresponds with the emphasis in one stream of literature flowing out of the church growth movement. That stream has accepted the commercial image without question by commending strategies for effectively and successfully \u201cmarketing your church.\u201d12<\/p>\n

But here is the rub. Does this image of church correspond to the cluster of images found for the church in the New Testament? Does it correlate with New Testament speech about the nature and purposes of the church? At the very least, this producer-consumer model separates its notions of church (a religious firm producing and marketing religious products and services) from its members (potential and hopefully committed customers consuming those products and services). Members are ultimately distanced in this model from their own communal calling to be a body of people sent on a mission. The gap between these two notions is great, and it is in the transformation from the one to the other that the present challenge before the churches finds focus.<\/p>\n

Did you some of your circuits get blown? \u00a0How did this blog impact you?<\/p>\n

Marinate on that,<\/p>\n

Pastor Derwin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS BLOG IS WRITTEN BY PASTOR DERWIN L. GRAY, NOT GERALD WHITE How An Economic Understanding of the Church Has Undermined Discipleship \u00a0 I was marinating on \u00a0Darrell L. Gruder\u2019s\u00a0book, \u201cMissional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the American Church,\u201d I came across this fascinating insight that corresponds with one of the reasons why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,16],"tags":[28,72,73,21,7,9,10,14,74,75,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-faith","7":"category-religion","8":"tag-church","9":"tag-church-planting","10":"tag-doctrine","11":"tag-faith","12":"tag-god","13":"tag-gospel","14":"tag-holy-spirit","15":"tag-jesus","16":"tag-missional-church","17":"tag-missional-living","18":"tag-new-testament","19":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/thegospelplant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}