Book Review - Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church
By Dustin Bagby |
| |
|
| |
As I read Paul Louis Metzger’s work I’m convicted of my own lack of interest in diversity within our church. I tell myself that I want diversity but deep down inside I’m not really sure I do. Diversity isn’t comfortable. And I want to be comfortable. I’m saddened by the way in my city of Portland, the city is segregated and few churches show signs of racial reconciliation.
Metzger, professor of theology at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland feels the same tension. He says in his new book, “Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church: “It is my personal struggle as an American evangelical to cope with consumer religion and its impact on race and class divisions in the American evangelical church” (Pg. 2).
.jpg) He goes on to address the major problem: “Whether we evangelicals mean to or not, we appear mean-spirited and interested only in a privileged few – upwardly mobile, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual males and their families (and, oh yes, perhaps those minority counterparts who make it to our economic and social level) – and in keeping others out "(Pg. 3).
I believe this to be true; while we may not intentionally want to keep those minority groups out and we continue to ask questions of why we lack diversity throughout our churches, at the same time we put statements like this one on our websites:
“We are a missional church community comprising urban professionals, young families, students and emerging artists.”
We put statements like this on our websites as descriptive (as if this just happens to be the group we’ve drawn) but statements like this become prescriptive (these are the people this church is for). How many people is a statement like that leaving out? This church (which is just used by example) is knowingly or unknowingly leaving out well over 50% of their city and inadvertently (I hope) telling the world, “We ONLY want you if you are white, middle/upper class professional, artistic, and plan on having a family.” This may not be what this church intends to communicate, but it is definitely what they are communicating through their apparent demographic targeting.
It is our consumer mindset that adds to this continuing division in race and class. Our church growth “experts” have taught us that the key to growth is to target one particular demographic and “market” your religious goods and services toward that group. Unfortunately as Metzger points out repeatedly this “technique” is in direct opposition to the reconciliation that Jesus brings and is expressed through the Lord’s Supper, where we set aside our differences and reconcile not only with God but with each other. And that dividing wall of hostility that Christ tore down? We’re busy building it back up! How will racial differences be reconciled within the Body of Christ, if due to our consumer mindset and our marketing strategies we cannot even meet in the same building to worship together?
Metzger sets out to uncover the forces at work without our churches and “confront the ways evangelical-consumer or niche-church Christianity fosters racial and economic divisions, and I wish to offer an alternative theological paradigm to the one that is often embraced in the evangelical subculture.” (Pg. 11)
Quoting John Perkins who said, “the most segregated racist institution in America is the evangelical church”, Metzger points out that one of the sustaining causes of this division is our consumer mindset and obsession with upward mobility.
Part of the sustaining problem is the evangelicals’ lack of concern with social justice and the welfare of the poor. What could be a uniting cause to many races and classes is another dividing wall because many evangelicals have bought into the fundamentalist mindset that social justice threatens to distract us from our main objective of evangelism as D.L Moody once said. The attitude is “Get poor people saved, and they will receive the necessary moral lift to pull themselves out of the poverty pit” (pg. 21).
“In a free-market church culture, those who cater most to this consumer force thrive best (this consumer force Metzger describes as, “giving consumers what they want, when they want it, and at the least cost to consumers”). It all appears to be benign; yet it is very divisive. It divides churches along the lines of race and class. A church movement given to pragmatic impulses-targeting predominantly white, suburban, and exurban middle-class groups with conservative social mores in order to grow churches quickly – will hardly be able to withstand such forces” (pg. 40). Unfortunately the evangelical church seems all but blind to the “trade-triangle”: consumerism, upward mobility, and homogeneity in the church and does not even recognize there is a problem. After all, people are showing up on Sunday morning, offering is good, how could that not be right?
Metzger does a convincing job of proving how the churches consumer and marketing orientation fostered by church growth “experts” have been the cause of the continuation of racial and class division in the American evangelical church. He also uncovers a very simple but very important thought for the church today: “just because something works best (and lures the lost people to use it), does not mean that it is the best. The church may grow, but at what long-term cost to confronting race and class divisions?” This seems to be something the American church and church growth gurus have disregarded. The slick marketing, the dozens of mailings, and the bait and switch techniques run abound; especially in the church-planting world I am a part of.
But it is time we take a step back and look at the long term results of such marketing and the damage that continued use of such techniques will have upon the body of Christ which is supposed to be about reconciliation, not growing a successful enterprise. The problem, I suppose is that we have been asking the wrong questions such as, “how can we grow?” instead of “how can we best reconcile a diverse people with God and with each other?” Metzger succinctly states the problem, “But the Good News is also costly news, and Jesus never engaged in bait and switch” (pg. 50).
The problem is clear, the solution is a little tougher to communicate-more less to act upon. The second half of the book deals with solutions in the chapters such as “reordering the Church’s outreach; reordering the Christian life; reordering the cosmic orders, and reordering the church. Part of the solution requires battling the vender-minded, commodity-oriented Christianity that stands as the polar opposite of the New Testament vision of the church (pg. 135). It means seeking reconciliation on the individual and structural level. The separation of race and class runs deep and will take a lot of time, work, and courage to stand up to the “church-growth solution” and label it what it is: part of the problem. Metzger offers plenty of advice on how to get on the path of reconciliation with those we have tended to ignore and to follow that advice would be a good start.
Overall, the critique offered by Paul Metzger is tough to swallow, but not because it is not true, but because it is so true. This book is to be read with deep conviction and repentance for the way we as evangelicals have let the consumer mindset and our comfort with our affinity groups dominate the diverse and unified Body of Christ that was to be for all nations. We have continued to put products up as a barrier to people’s worship and it’s time for Jesus to clear the temple again. Metzger has done a marvelous thing in presenting a Christ-guided vision for unity and reconciliation in the church and I pray more pastors and theologians will pick up where Metzger has left off in rejecting the church growth agenda for building a business and help Jesus build his Kingdom consisting of people of all races and classes, not just white, suburban professionals.
May that Kingdom come.
Dustin Bagby lives in Portland, OR, blogs at www.dustball.blogspot.com, is married to his beautiful wife Kelli, is a huge Chicago Bears and Cubs fan, is an elder at The Evergreen Community, and is currently an MDiv student at Western Seminary. |
| |
|
|
NO COMMENTS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THIS ARTICLE