"The Latest" in "Seeker Friendly" Churches?

I found an email I sent to our assistant pastor four years ago:

Subject: "The Latest" in "Seeker Friendly" Churches?

Got this from one of the women on our forums:

SKYBOXES, CLUB CARDS WOO 'CHURCH CUSTOMERS'

FRESNO, CA, April 1 - On Sunday morning at the 18,000-member Calvary Church, tithers flash green Costco-like cards at greeters, who let them in early and usher them to special seating areas.

"The seats have more padding, and they recline," says tither Dan Phelps, kicking back before the sermon. "I feel a little guilty, but you can't knock the comfort."

Calvary is believed to be the first church in America to use membership cards to dole out privileges to certain members. First-time visitors are offered the best seats - plush recliners in the orchestra section - while non-tithing attendees carry orange membership cards and are forced to sit in hard, stadium-style seats on the mezzanine.

"We give honor to whom honor is due," says pastor Jerald Dennis. "If you tithe or volunteer in some way, you deserve a special thank you."

Churches like his are drawing wealthier "church consumers" by promoting luxury and social stratification inside the sanctuary. As rich people attend, the theory goes, tithe revenues increase and the church better promotes the gospel.

At Life Family Center in Abilene, Texas, members at all levels earn "reward points" similar to frequent flyer miles for tithing and attending. The points add up to free hotel stays, vacation packages and tickets to NASCAR events.

Ringing the church's cavernous sanctuary are private skyboxes where groups watch the service while enjoying hors d'oeuvres and deep leather chairs. Some pay only occasional attention to what takes place on the platform.

"We compete with professional sporting events, not other churches," says pastor Lovey Pederson. "I would rather people come here than a football stadium, so I offer bigger perks."

This year, at least a dozen more mega-churches will introduce some form of "club card."

"The credit card commercial said it best: 'Membership has its privileges,'" says Pederson.

Of course, this SEEMS to disagree with James 2:1ff, . . . although as I read James 2, it appears the admonition is against discriminating against the poor solely because of their poverty, or discriminating FOR the rich solely on the basis of their wealth and status. . . .

I find this particularly interesting because it reminds me of two books I'm reading right now (VERY slowly, TOO slowly): Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld by James B. Twitchell, and England: Before and After Wesley by J. Wesley Bready (long out of print).

Twitchell describes Willow Creek and similar churches from a marketing perspective. Brilliant. And distressing.

First the obvious: this is not a church in any traditional visual or architectural sense. It resembles a nifty little junior college or a small business concern that manufactures something clean, like drugs or computer parts. . . . On one side of the campus-and that's what it's called in the church literature-is a greensward, on another side is a five-acre reflecting pond, and in between are the black slabs of endless parking. And I mean endless-3,100 spaces. Rule number one of modern retailing: you are only as big as your parking lot. . . . Getting parishioners off the Interstate and into the parking lot costs the church more than $100,000 a year for local police in their official cars. And it's worth every penny. Here is rock concert affiliation. This brand is so popular that the police can barely control the consumers! . . .

Once parked, you can take a shuttle bus to the various doors of the church, just as you do at Disney World. The parking lot has the cute cartoon signs necessary for mall shoppers or airport trippers so that the car can be located. Needless to say, the lot is spotless, as is the rest of the campus. . . .

There is no one portal done up like a passage into another world with a huge arch and fonts. Nothing that says, "Main Entrance: Abandon Hope All Who Do Not Enter Here." Instead, here is the easy entrance to the modern business-lots of doors. . . .

Straight ahead of you is a 4,540-seat auditorium. The seats are just like those down at the Cineplex 16. No drink holders, however. And no prayer pads or slats for kneeling. You pray sitting or standing, not on your knees. . . .

In the carpeted foyer, overhead video screens announce details of the day's activities. This could be a hotel lobby or an airport. On the video monitor is a digital clock counting down the time before the service begins. . . .

Over the weekend there are four exactly interchangeable services. These are the boomer "seeker services," the loss-leader entertainment. The church calls them, with deflective candor, Christianity 101 or Christianity Lite. Then midweek there are two "believer services." That's the grad school, the place for transcendence . . . and tithing.

The weekend seeker services are not worship services, to speak of. They are edutainment. They are aimed at a population that generally is skeptical. Hence the take-it-or-leave-it aspect. It's pure soft sell, like a Super Bowl television commercial. It's Sunday-supplement religion, comforting to believers and informative to the curious.

--Branded Nation, pp. 91-95

Bready describes how thoroughly corrupt the Church of England had become in the 18th century . . . to the point where he writes the following in the first paragraph of Chapter II in his book:

Anthony Collins, author of Priestcraft in Perfection and Discourse on Free-thinking, on being asked why, holding such deistical opinions, he sent his servants to Church, answered: "That they may neither rob nor murder me!" Lord Bolingbroke, a confirmed Deist, considered Christianity "a fable," yet he held that "a statesman ought to profess the Doctrines of the Church of England." Sir Leslie Stephen in his English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, referring to the later Deistic period, says: "Scepticism, widely diffused through the upper classes, was of the indolent variety, implying a perfect willingness that the churches should survive though the Faith should perish."

I should note that Collins lived 1676-1729; Bolingbroke, 1678-1751. And "the 18th century" is a good general indicator of the Deistic period. Bready notes that John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious, published in 1696, was "the first popular Deistic treatise." And all of the factors that Wikipedia lists as contributing to the demise of Deism occurred in the late 18th and early- to mid-19th centuries.

The Church of England was almost completely and solely a church for the wealthy and the privileged. It had almost nothing to do with people of lower stations in life.

******

Just thought you might find this stuff interesting.

--John

PS. Oh. The original quote from our website: the poster said it was an April Fool's joke.

Maybe. Or maybe it is a harbinger of things to come.

Tonight I found the original article about the "club card" church was first published in February 2005 in LarkNews, a satirical "news"paper published by Joel Kilpatrick.

Tithing: Replaced by Grace?

So I was talking with Jim about what he teaches concerning giving. And we got talking about how he has taught in the past, and how he might teach in the future.

He told me how his dad had pretty much required of him, from when he was very little, to tithe.

"I told my dad one day when I was getting $10 a week in allowance"--I forget exactly what Jim said he told his dad, but it was along the lines of--"One dollar out of ten dollars is really hard! Now, if I wait until I get a hundred dollars, then it will be much easier to give ten dollars!"

Except . . . Except, the world doesn't work like that.

Jesus said, "He who is faithful in a very little will be faithful, also, in much" (Luke 16:10). It doesn't seem to work the other way around. Few, if any of us start with great and big things and learn to be faithful there so that we can turn around and apply our good stewardship practices to little things as well.

No. We begin our training when we are children, with very little. And then, by God's grace, we are able to apply the lessons we learned when we were small to the bigger things in life.

******

I remember talking with my first boss on my first job outside of college. He was a self-professed practicing/devout Christian.

Somehow, it came out that Sarita and I tithed on our income. And not on the net, but on the gross. ("After all, God says he is a great king--the great King. And kings and governments don't take taxes based on what's 'left over.' They take it off the top. They get 'the first-fruits.' . . . " --For more on this particular subject, you may want to look at Malachi 1 where God complains about his people: "'Try offering [your (lousy, pitiful, meager) offerings] to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?' says the LORD Almighty. . . . 'When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?' says the LORD. 'Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and my name is to be feared among the nations'" (Malachi 1:8, 13-14).)

So I was telling my boss these things.

He expressed amazement.

"Why don't you wait to tithe until you've got a little money?!?" he asked. (He knew how poor we were. After all, he was my boss! ;-) )

He told me he had determined to become a millionaire by the time he was 39. "Then I'll be able to give some really decent money. But until then, I figure God will let me save it up so I can give him more. . . . "

"Right," I thought sarcastically.

It is only through the little acts of faithfulness, with the small things, that one is going to be capable of engaging in the major acts of faithfulness required with the big things.

Faithfulness, I believe, is a habit. And habits are formed when we are young. Or, should I say, now. They're formed now and not later. Or, as it has been said: The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today.

If you want to become faithful, now is the time. If you want to be prepared for the right response should you ever be called upon to give your life for the sake of a greater good: you will be prepared for that right response by sacrificing the little things today. . . .

Why should giving $10 out of $100 be easier than giving $1 out of $10? Or $100,000 out of a million? If you haven't established--through practice--the habit of mind, it's not going to happen. Period. But when you establish the habit early and with little things, the habit of giving becomes engrained and, I can confess, it does, indeed, become a whole lot easier.

I mentioned a friend who said she believes tithing is "an Old Testament law that was replaced by grace."

I've heard that perspective before. And I find it interesting.

"Replaced by grace"? What does that mean?

In one sense, I would say, I think she is correct. It has been replaced by grace. It was "replaced by grace" in the Old Testament as well: at least once, that I can remember. Exodus 36:3-7:

[The workmen] received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. So all the skilled craftsmen who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left their work and said to Moses, "The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the LORD commanded to be done."

Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: "No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary." And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.

But otherwise, what does that mean that the tithe has been replaced by grace? That we ought to feel no compunction to give a minimal 10% of our income for God's work--whether more "spiritually" oriented or of a more "secular" nature?

I look around--Lord! May I not become judgmental!--and I see people--fathers, mothers, heads of households--placing a dollar in the offering plate. Or a five dollar bill. Maybe even a twenty. Wow! They are so "generous"! --Sarcastic again. (Lord, have mercy.)

Would they expect to go to a movie for a dollar? For five dollars? For a family?

Would they expect to get into a basketball game? A football game? For $20?

Oh! I guess church isn't entertaining. And why should we pay for anything that doesn't give us pleasure? After all, isn't life about us, us, us ("me, me, me!")?!?

Or is it?

Or why do we give?

Or why should we give?

"Grace," indeed, that a person would have no idea why s/he should give, why s/he should have any concern about anything besides him- or herself!

We have so much "grace," apparently, that we have no idea what it means to give.

Is it grace, on God's part, to permit us to be miserly? Is that what "replaced by grace" means: "Graced to be miserly"? "Graced to be self-centered"?

I wonder, instead, if the grace we are to experience begins with the minimal discipline, when we are children, when we are being tutored toward maturity (I think of God's people in the Old Testament, Galatians 3:24): I wonder if the grace we are to experience sets the tithe as the minimum we should think of giving . . . because we have been graciously afforded the opportunity and ability to do and give so much more.

The Privilege of Giving

I have found the practice of the tithe to be a great freedom. It is, almost, a sacrament: a reminder, through something I do, of a spiritual truth: that I am not dependent on myself to "make ends meet." I must rely on God. ("You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today" (Deuteronomy 8:17-18).)

Similarly with the Sabbath rest: it is a kind of sacrament: a reminder, through something I do (or, in that case, perhaps, something I don't do--work on one day out of seven), that it is not through my labors that I can be sure to "have enough"; rather, it is by God's gracious provision that I can provide for my family. --This has been the confession of God's people through the ages (I Samuel 2:7; I Chronicles 29:12; etc.). This is what Jesus taught:

"[W]hy do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:28-34).

Anyway. I originally titled this post as "How Much Should We Give?" . . . But I keep finding myself "sidetracked" a bit here and there. I seem to find I need to give little personal/philosophical background pieces so you understand where I'm coming from.

I began with the idea of talking about how much we should give. But then I got onto the subject I just talked about. And I wound up, just now, realizing I don't even like the phrase, How much should we give? Far more, I just realized, I think I prefer, How much can we give?. . . . Because I think I am actually coming to the latter way of thinking. It really is not about how much I should give. More and more, I am finding myself thinking about how much I can give . . . how much I get to give . . . how much I have the privilege of giving.

How many other people in all the world could give as much as I? Not many! I am privileged to have wealth and to live in a wealthy land. I am privileged to be made aware of needs around the world. How many people in all the world are so privileged?

Not many!

So let me make the most of the privileges God has given me.

Tithing and Sabbath as Freedoms?!?

A few weeks ago I was listening to a marketing seminar presented in 1998. The speaker asked his audience how many of them had studied trigonometry or Latin in high school. Almost everyone raised his or her hand. "Since graduating from high school, how many of you have used that knowledge?" No one raised a hand.

"I find that interesting," he said. "Here our educational system focuses on all kinds of subjects that no one will ever use, but it fails to teach subjects that would come in handy every day. Like: How to communicate effectively with your spouse [the speaker is divorced], or . . . "

Now. I'm not about to go down the other path (a rant) where the man was going. He thinks it’s absolutely stupid that educators teach any subjects besides those that have immediate practical application. . . . I can see that all manner of subjects that have no immediate practical application can be extremely helpful to make one’s mind pliable, flexible, able to think beyond the here-and-now, discover new solutions to problems that no one would think of otherwise.

But I was impressed by the man's comments about subjects not covered in the standard curriculum . . . and the subjects often never discussed by parents with their children.

I mentioned the man’s comments to Sarita. She said: "Let's think about this and offer our customers a list of subjects that might be useful to students that aren't normally covered by regular academic programs and, maybe, the best sources we've found that deal with the subjects. . . ."

We came up with a short list of beginning ideas and shared them with friends. Among the subjects, we included reference to tithing/giving and taking a Sabbath rest, two practices I've followed since reading a short book called The Ten Great Freedoms by Ernst Lange back when I was in high school. (The "Ten Great Freedoms" Lange was referring to were, in fact, the end results of what most of us know as the Ten Commandments. Lange characterized the Sabbath, for instance, as "Vacation" . . . and I jumped on that idea with both feet: "I get 52 days a year of vacation! By order of God!" –Quite the freedom, indeed! . . . It takes faith, but it is quite the freedom.)

I forget: Others don't view things in quite this way. So when they saw our list, those two particular practices--of tithing and Sabbath rest--instead of being exciting or inspirational, seemed, apparently, rather negative. Rather than encouraging us to suggest parents ought evn to discuss such matters with their children, some of the people with whom we shared our list picked those items, in particular, as uncomfortable and potentially offensive:

Is the tithe really something Sonlight wants to promote? . . . [P]ersonally, I think this is more a denominational thing--an Old Testament law that I believe was replaced by grace. . . . Taking a Sabbath rest. Is this Biblical? Didn't Jesus work on the Sabbath and say he had fulfilled the law and the prophets? Another denominational thing. . . . This kind of stuff makes me cringe because it is so personal and there is so much room for abuse and misinterpretation.

I'm not sure where further to go with this particular subject in this post.

It came up because of something I want to write about in a moment.