THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

August 31, 2002

We live in an age where packaging is everything. I first noticed this fact years ago when my dad was in the food business. We would wander the grocery store and look at what was on the shelves. I noticed that in some things, particularly personal grooming things like shampoo, the production costs for the packaging had to be higher than the contents thereof, even though the contents was the "product."

Movies today live and die by the opening weekend take, because a good promotional campaign (just another form of packaging) can make a whole lot of people go to even a bad movie before the word gets around that it is bad. I can name several of those from this summer alone.

It seems that in our modern society, packaging can sell a product more readily than the product itself. For many products that statement is a big ho-hum. Consider shampoo as an example. There is very little to differentiate one shampoo from another. If like me, you know the chemistry of these things, you will soon come to learn that from a functional standpoint there is no difference at all. They all do the same thing in the same way, with essentially the same chemicals. But there are huge differences in how they are sold and distributed, how they stink, what color they are, and what kind of package they are in. That's right folks, the stuff you pay premium dollars for at the salon is better packaged, better sold, and better smelling than the discount stuff at the grocer but it is the same soap.

This mania for packaging seems to have crept in an around the church as well. Has anyone besides me noticed an ever-increasing tide of "Christian" businesses? There are "Christian" Yellow Pages, listed business owned and operated by "Christians."

I think I first started to really notice this when I was commuting to Dallas Texas a few years ago. There are three or four for-profit "Christian" radio stations in Dallas. Contemporary Christian music is the fastest growing music genre out there.

Despite the bad rap Christianity has from the intelligentsia, there are a huge number of people out there that wear the label proudly and are willing to seek out businesses that wear it too. Christianity is now not just a religion; it is a marketing trend.

With the model working so well for so many products, it is only natural that the church might get into the marketing/packaging business as well. In the best sense, that is all the contemporary worship movement is about -- repackaging Christianity. "After all," some have been heard to say, "it is the same Lord and Savior, just in a new package."

Churches often do more than just repackage worship now, in some places they package whole lifestyles. Did you know that many of the so-called mega-churches now include McDonald's and gyms and condos on campus?

So on the one hand, we have the church trying to repackage itself. On the other we have a number of businesses trying to adopt a "Christian" package. Pretty confusing isn't it? With Christianity being used to differentiate so many products and Christianity struggling to differentiate itself internally, the product flat out gets lost in the mix.

This is truly a troubling development. In the first place this all assumes that there is some finite market for Christianity out there and all the churches are just competing for "market share." This congregation wants to differentiate from that one so they can attract more of the demographic from this neighborhood or that neighborhood. I have personally sat in meetings on church growth that start with a complete breakdown of the demographics of the area. This stuff sets me teeth on edge, the market for Christianity is the whole world, and the product is bigger than any demographics, but more on that later.

Another big issue is that there is no quality control system for businesses that attempt to package themselves as "Christian." I have no doubt that most are very sincere, but we are all sinners, and they will undoubtedly screw up. Such a business can make no guarantees that its employees are as faithful as they are. I think churches need to actively discourage this practice, it runs too much of a risk of confusing the product. Christianity is not auto service or bookkeeping. People are Christians, not businesses.

Christianity is about transformation. It is not about whom you vote for, or where you live, or what you eat; it is about letting God rebuild you into His man or woman. This transformation is something much deeper and more complete than putting yourself into some package -- even if it is such a complete package on living on church campus and eating church supplied food. I have always had a problem with Christian packages. Long before the huge life-engulfing packages one finds now, I had trouble with packaged curriculums and sermons with "10 Steps to Spiritual Maturity."

There is a real danger in all of this of confusing the product with the package. In shampoo that's fine, it is actually the point, but in Christianity it is a grave danger. Long before modern marketing techniques took hold in the church people were confusing the package with the product in the church. I believe there was something in the 16^th century called "the Reformation" that attempted to sort that out. But here we are again. Jesus is not the song we sing nor the liturgy we recite. Jesus is not even the brand name on the sign out front. Jesus can attend a service in a high school gym, or in a 200-year-old sanctuary. When idolatry is such a temptation anyway, do we really need to be creating more false idols in our packaging?

But the real reason I hate and am troubled by all of this is that the church has the ultimate product. We have the one product that does not need packaging to sell. And if you do not believe that, then I am going to question whether you personally have bought a package instead of THE PRODUCT.

Jesus is God; God is perfect; perfect includes beautiful. How can we possibly package something that is perfect and beautiful and make it more appealing? If anything we should be stripping away the packaging to reveal the product. The packaging only obscures the view. I have been asked time and again how to do that. I can only find one way.

The church has to stop being about stuff and start being about people. The message is not words, but the people that believe the Word. As I have said so many times. After Jesus left, the Sermon on the Mount did not change the world, 12 guys that hung around with him did. So what should we do?

Simple. Get twelve guys and hang with them for a while. Then they all go out and get twelve guys and do it again. Sorry pastors, no big audience, no big budget to pay your hefty salary, just people, one by one, being touched with the love of Jesus, and in turn passing it on.

Churches can continue to exist. There is a need for worship and gathering. But there needs to be a shift in focus. Churches don't need to grow exponentially to survive; they need to grow one soul at a time.

Let's worry less about the package and more about the product. In fact screw the package altogether.

With Love,