How do we approach the question of what the church has to offer those who are part of it. One temptation is to fall into the consumerist’ trap. While it is nice to offer services that attract new customers, as many service oriented businesses can attest, the modern consumer is a very fickle customer. While a customer can be attracted to what you offer today, tomorrow there is something new that appeals to the eye. The commitment is to the service and not to the community. The foundation of faith can be very thin.
In an attempt to be attractive to the consumer of religion, we have focused on the instrumentality of the church. The result is that the church has absorbed many of the activities that other groups also offer from aerobics progrms to addiction support groups. All of these products or services can be good and even can be strengthened by the addition of the spiritual side to the product, but they are not the essence of the Body of Christ. They make the church an instrument of our needs which can also be met in other wys. The church needs to remind itslef of what is uniquely offered by the church which is not offered by other agencies. The instrumentality of the church continues to focus on what individuals think they want or need at any given moment. That quickly leads to our needs being the object of our worship.
