The Mega-Store and the Mega-Church
The year was 1996 and I was living in Portland Oregon. Having grown up in Southern California, Portland specifically and the Northwest in general, offered to me an entire new world of things that I had never seen before.
For example, it was there that I first heard of an up-and-coming coffee chainthat was oh so cool and hip. You may have heard of it, Starbucks isthe name. Another new retail experience for me was Fred Myer. Fred Myer was a massive retail store, the likes of which I had never seen before. My mouth dropped as I walked into the store and soon realized that I could get a pair of pants for the day, a gallon of milk, a box of nails and a nice necklace for my girlfriend. None of those things were new to me, of course. But what was new was the fact that I could do it in one shot and in one shop. Of course, I am now very familiar with Wal-Mart (who isn’t?). And while I choose not to shop at Wal-Mart (for a number of reasons), I have been sufficiently acclimated to the mega-store, opting for Target and Costco over Wal-Mart.
At this point you say, “Thanks for the personal history, that’s interesting, but what’s your point?” Here’s my point (or better, my question): Is there a connection between the rise of the mega-store and the rise of the mega-church? And if so what is the connection? I will try to answer those questions in what follows.
“Moreness”
First, the mega-store is driven on the principle of moreness. This is not a word that I invented, though it would have been cool if I did. I came across it in Thomas De Zengotita’s book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. There he demonstrates that we now have access to more of everything—cereal, cars, clothes, books, TV shows, technology, music.Hence, moreness.But what does this have to do with the mega-church?
I contend that the mega-church operates under the same principle. “Come to my church,” we are told, “because we have more.” More small groups, more service times, more fun things, more options, more styles of music; more, more, more. And subtly, or not so subtly, the consumer begins to drive the options. Moreness isn’t inherently wrong in the church, insofar as the options are in accord with Scripture. Butthe problem comes when the church offers moreness to its people so that they can get what they want and not what they need.
“Meness”
Moreness is, in my opinion, directly tied to meness(as far as I know I did invent that word) because the moreness is driven by meness.In other words, we will give lots of options for paper plates because that is what people want and need and will buy (or according to De Zengotita, that’s what they think they want and what they think they need). So the ubiquity of moreness is simply a manifestation of meness. The autonomy of the self and of choice is elevated to the highest level. But here is the problem when it comes to the church. The autonomy of the self and the ubiquity of my choice is not a blessing but is blight. For it diverts the attention away from the main and the plain, the central.
God-Centeredness
So what should we as a church do to accommodate a culture that lives and breathes and has its being in moreness and meness? What we should do, no must do, is divert the attention of people away from themselves (meness), their choices, their autonomy, and direct it to the central, the singular, the important, namely Christ himself. Is it a sin to offer multiple service times? Maybe. Is it wrong to offer many styles of music? Perhaps. Is it wrong to have mountain biking fellowship groups and surf clubs? Possibly? The only way to really answer this is to peel back the layers of the onion and ask why? Why do we have so much? Why are there so many options? Is it so that the people, the choosers, the consumers will be comfy and present? Or is it because that’s what God wants? That’s the question.
So then, let’s champion a theology of otherness, a theology and a life that is lived in the pursuit of glory for the one true, triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perhaps then we will be delivered from ourselves and find the joy that only ordering our lives around the transcendent God and his will can bring.