the church of golden arches

There has been a lot of print lately about the state of the Western church. The enthusiasm of the 80s and 90s over church renewal and change have given way to new realities. The most disturbing reality is that people are leaving the church in massive numbers.

The UK's "Christianity" magazine explores the reason for the mass exodus. Studies have shown that people have not given up their Christian identity as such, they have just given up on going to church. In England alone, over a million people left the church the 1990s. George Barna and others have written about the same phenomenon here in the States. Increasingly, people are putting less of an emphasis on church attendance- they just don't see it as a necessary component of faith.

Anyone who has heard me teach for more than ten minutes knows about my passion for Christian community. The Bible simply does not envision Christian experience without meaningful relationships that challenge and grow us and keep us accountable. The Bible assumes that if you are a Christian, that you are a part of a local body of believers. Jesus spent His time before and after the resurrection building community.

Anyway... I digress- back to Christianity Magazine and their observation that one of the main issues at work among evangelicals is the "McDonalidization" of the church:

It was the American sociologist George Ritzer who first made the comparison between modern western society and a McDonald’s restaurant. His work, which examines how the McDonald’s traits of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control affect the way society functions, has received widespread recognition. More recently, the label ‘McDonaldized’ has also been applied to the church (see John Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church).

The key principle of ‘McDonaldization’ is the achievement of the optimum means to a given end. The church has an ‘end’ of converting people to Christianity, but in seeking to do so effectively we can all too easily adopt a one-size-fits-all formula. As Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Seminary observes, we give a “one shot, close the deal, presentation”. Esther’s recollection of her conversion experience troubled me: “There was nothing that made me feel awkward,” she said, “and I kind of identified with what the speaker had to say…so I thought ‘why not?’” Is it really surprising that before too long, Esther found herself slipping out through her church’s back door, just as easily as she had walked in the front?

So how is it that pre-packaged, no commitment gospel messages have come to represent the accepted norm in so many of our churches? Part of the reason could be the emphasis given to ‘mass-evangelism’ over the last 50 years.


Billy Graham, for example – the most successful mass-evangelist in history – always stressed the need for each individual to be ‘born again’, as a oneoff event. Not wanting to discredit Dr. Graham’s ministry in any way, the effect has been that most evangelicals now tend to see the ‘Damascus Road experience’ as a benchmark for how conversion always happens. Consequently, Christians who have not had a dramatic experience but have simply started a gradual journey of faith can feel somewhat excluded. “I’ve never had a sudden conversion experience” explained Wayne, “and it’s always bothered me because everyone’s had one and I haven’t”. This sense of not fitting into the accepted mould certainly contributed to Wayne’s initial disillusionment, which eventually led him to ‘jump ship’.


We can so often give the impression that a heart-felt ‘sinner’s prayer’ is all that is required for a life-long commitment to Christ. This message naturally leads to the belief that church-going is not necessary for the Christian; hence ‘a churchless faith’. But like the seeds in Jesus’ parable which fell on the shallow soil, ‘in the time of testing they fall away’ (Luke 8:13).

The overemphasis on an individual, one-off, salvation experience can easily undermine the fact that we are the Church, and that it is through the Church that God will bring about his plans for the world. If the word ‘Christian’ is merely a label, acquired cheaply from an evangelical vending machine, then people will feel free to leave their churches and still call themselves ‘Christians’, in much the same way that after a cookery class one will still continue cooking, at home!

These are interesting observations for us to think about. I have written extensively on this blog about the dangers of consumerism in the church, so I won't go into it again.

But as I see it, the problem is not just that we have given in to pragmatism in the same way that McDonald's seeks out customers, the problem is that we have adopted so much of the cultural text that there is very little distinction between sacred and secular. I fear that in our attempt to be attractive to the unredeemed, we have lost the "peculiarity" that gives us our moral voice to speak into the need for redemption.

We may not yet know the definitive answer as to why so many in our younger generation are bailing on the church, but could it be that by adopting cultural texts instead of sticking to our own, we have lost our uniqueness? Perhaps in our attempt to give people what we think they want, we have distorted the very thing they need the most?

To paraphrase Jesus' admonishment to the Church, perhaps the salt has lost it's "saltiness".

Evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has recently made this observation:

Contemporary culture is actually made up of a vast array of "texts" – that is, humanly produced works that have meaning and significance. The implicit message of cultural texts is "This is what it means or looks like to be human"; "This is what the good life looks like". In other words, culture programs our imaginations to think in certain ways just as it programs us to live in certain ways. Think of culture as the software that runs the social hardware – the various institutions (e.g., schools, government, family) that comprise our life together.

On this model, I think we can safely say that the main programming in contemporary culture is not particularly Christian. The values that drive our culture are not distinctly Christian; indeed, many are inimical to Christian values. For example, George Ritzer speaks in his book The McDonaldization of Society of the way in which fast food values – efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through technology – have taken hold of many other institutions, including, to some extent, the church! Similarly, James Twitchell speaks of the "branding" of America: everything, even Jesus, is fair game for marketing. But should the gospel be "marketed"?


I think that the last forty years have taught us that the answer to that question is a resounding "no". At least, not in the same way that one markets MacDonalds.