The Consumer church might look something this. The absence of authority ---the final authority in the consumer church is the individual attendee. To truly submit to the direction of an elder/pastor and their spiritual leadership is laughable. Biblical headship has faded.

The desire to please the congregation supersedes the desire to please God. With authority gone who's in charge? It is spiritual anarchy with a fancy Christian mask.

The staff are highly specialized hired guns to do the work of the ministry for the church. I had an influential attorney in a large church I worked with tell me, "The day (the Sr. Pastor) stops preaching good sermons, and administrating well...I'm calling for him to be fired." I guess Moses would never have made it as pastor there.

Religious activity and developing a "spiritual menu" of programs takes the place of prayer, silence, community and obedience. Superficiality takes the place of depth. - In a consumer culture we love things to happen fast. If we sit in a drive through for more than 5 minutes it seems like an eternity. If our church services go 5 minutes long we complain. Superficiality is a child of consumerism. If I'm a consumer, I'm really only interested in me which leads to an inability to love others. When I'm a consumer, I'm interested in knowing you primarily for one reason...what you can give me. I become a manipulator and a user. I lose track of what's happening in the real lives of "friends" and fellow believers because I'm not really interested in their pain, fear, loneliness, or joy. I'm only interested in mine. Depth always comes slowly and the church who allows a sinful and worldly perspective to run rampant without correction is simply selling out the gospel of God and his plans, purposes and agenda for his children. The gospel again becomes a product that enhances peoples lives and the church begins to making better citizens of America. The truth of God is exchanged for a lie. 

After superficiality comes image. Image is the consumer's greatest idol. Churches should be prayerful of how they "advertise", if they should "advertise" at all...... Isn't advertising the triumph of image over reality? If we're going to advertise.... be real...Instead of "An exciting, relevant, contemporary, family church with dynamic ministries for God" that really translates into: "we're a bunch of boring people who want to be exciting, we've recently added guitar (or synthesizer) to our services... we don't really know each other very well but we have things for everyone in your family to do while your here." Advertising that would be more truthful of my church.. " a bunch of normal people who are really messed up. we desire to follow Jesus, but we find we've found we're mostly interested in serving ourselves and being busy and we want to stop..... we really love God but we often fall short of worshiping him the way we really want to... pray for us...." but frankly ... that doesn't do it either. The fact is you can't promote or advertise the body of Christ. Much of what we experience in our lives these days is not reality. The church does not need to add to the confusion of noise advertising or eye sore billboards but throwing out lies on behalf of Truth. Being the Body should be enough advertising. (Oh and please take down all messages on your marquee's other than "Church signs are stupid")

This image forming is about hype. This mental pollution starts from when our alarms go off in the morning to wee hours of the late night TV. It's like Kalle Lasn in his book Culture Jam says "Corporate Advertising (or is it the commercial media?) is the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race" I like what Dennis Miller says too. "Hype is the glittering rhinestone on the jumpsuit of mediocrity that catches our eye and makes us think, "Hey maybe the Spice girls don't suck" It's the triumph of substance over style, predicated on the sad truth that most of us, if the gift-wrapping on the outside of the box is fancy enough, we won't notice that inside there's nothing but a big pile of dung"

A consumer church will find that people pick their church because it has great music, the pastor is entertaining. Think about how many times you've heard "mature" believers say.... "I just don't get anything out of ...church.... the bible... worship." As pastors we read the Bible and "look" for something profound for our sermons. This is contrary to historical Christianity and to scripture itself... it all changes with Guttenburg's invention of the printing press and people have God's word in their hands to "look through". But historically Scripture has been heard. The story told.

What if we're called to listen more than look. What if more pastors started listening to what God is doing in the lives of his people... and helping them to listen as well.

That's the way it is in the church. Many many many pastor's love rules instead of Jesus. We love theology more than scriptural truth. We stand on our degree's instead of a love of God. yeah we're prostitutes, yeah we're stuck, yeah we need an altar call instead of a new paradigm. Harsh? I don't think so. How many pastors are busy making their congregations twice the sons of hell they are instead of making disciples.

God break our hearts, let us see the world through your eyes, let your church awaken to your will and your desires for your Bride. May your Bride be faithful and beautiful. May she know Her Lovers voice and draw near to you. It starts with your grace God and the pastor's heart. Your kingdom come. your will be done.

Mark Riddle is a pastor from Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Co-founder of Liquid Thinking, Inc. He is the husband of Pam and the father of "2 kids."