Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Church Services Out, "Experience Times" In
A fairly large new church recently opened down the street from our parish. On Sunday mornings they serve coffee, donuts, and soft drinks before church so that you can take food and drink with you into the auditorium. Instead of having a church service or worship service, their billboard along I-35 invites the reader to come to one of their "experience times." According to an interview with the pastor, the local paper reports that the church targets a 28 year old demographic.
Am I mistaken to look at this marketing of "experience times" as an appeal to a me-centered consumerist mentality, where church becomes just one more experience among many other often disconnected entertainments? At the very least, the advertisement suggests to me that the focus is on the consumer of the experience and not on worshipping the one true God.
Another observation I have made is that this and other churches with similar appeal all have .com domain names instead of .org domain names. I don't know the criteria for getting a .org designation and maybe these churches aren't eligible, but to this outsider the .com seems to fit because from their ads they seem to me like commercial peddlars of some form of the Christian message.
Anything to my observations? Or, can we chalk up my reflections to me being grumpy because most of my kids have left or are leaving for school and I don't get to teach until tomorrow?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2007/08/church-services.html