Over the last couple of weeks I was struck by a few news reports and some of the implications for the church going forward. Here are those stories and some thoughts about each…

Churches big purchasers of music performance gear

From Which Way LA? on KCRW

This brought to my attention something that makes sense but I had not thought about – churches are now the largest market for live music. This story was driven by the recent convention of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) in Anaheim.

The lead quote in the piece:

“In any city today that you go to, there’s now more bands playing live
music on Saturday night and Sunday morning in churches than there are in
any clubs,” said Christian Musician
magazine publisher Bruce Adolph.  “The DJ’s have hit the sector and
taken away some live music.  Karaoke’s hurt live music.  But a lot of
the guys are actually returning to church and playing music.”

The next quote, from Holland Davis – pastor of Worship Life Calvary Church – emphasizes this fact:

“There’s over 300,000 churches in America alone. And so
just the sheer volume of churches and they all use audio equipment,
microphones, instruments, lighting.  And we’re in a time where the
number of churches that are being started from scratch is phenomenal.”

And the piece points out that the need for musicians and music equipment has increased at a faster pace than the need for pastors, particularly considering multi-site churches that have bands at every location but one preacher on video. (They do overlook the fact that each remote site usually has a worship leader, but that is sometimes a band member too.)

It is also interesting if that comment “the
number of churches that are being started from scratch is phenomenal” because if that is true it doesn’t seem to include the mainline.

OK, so all of you probably knew that. But it was interesting to hear in the rest of the report how NAMM has recognized that churches are the growing market and is catering to them. We now have a secular organization, that admittedly does include Christians, that is helping to drive what Christian worship looks like.

While this is clearly welcomed by some, like the person in the piece that talked about using rock and contemporary music in worship like preaching in the language of the audience, it is not universally accepted. For another perspective check out Jeff Gissing blog post “Why Contemporary Worship Is Not The Answer.” For an even more critical and extensive analysis there is always T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns.

Model versus Brand

On Monday morning I heard a short radio report on shopping for televisions, brand loyalty and shopping for the model. In his Money 101 segment Bob McCormick talked about how consumers have lost brand loyalty, in part because the brand name is now who sells it not who makes it. Instead consumers look for the model that has the features that they want.

Well, the application to the church, and worship in particular, should be pretty obvious. And it is not just that brand loyalty to denominations has all but disappeared but that church shoppers – yes that is a phrase in our lexicon now – mostly care only about the individual church and mostly its form of worship.

This came up recently in a discussion with a teaching elder who had recently received a call. He had potential connections to ECO and the discussion got around to his interest in the PC(USA). Well, as he talked about it his response struck me as being more about the church that had extended the call and not as much about the PC(USA) itself.

But let’s take this one step further to the idea that the name on the front is not necessarily who made it. You could walk into different Presbyterian churches on a Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) and except for the name on the building not distinguish them as being uniquely Presbyterian. You could probably find a Baptist, Methodist and maybe an Episcopal worship service and not distinguish them from the Presbyterian service. To use one example, do we have “Presbyterian” on the label and “made by North Point” in the fine print. While there is not necessarily anything wrong with this we must realize that this would be a factor in the decline of mainline denominations.

But let me also refer to one other aspect of the modern culture and the lack of brand loyalty. In a 2011 Ernst and Young Survey one of the five important points they found was:

From mass broadcasts to self-selection: consumer communication gets personal

As part of a clear preference toward personalized communication and
service, the survey shows trust has moved from traditional mass channels to
closer “community” vehicles, such as social media and other digital channels.
This move is taking the power of the owned and paid-for channel out of
the hands of brands — and the reach of traditional marketing — and making
bloggers society’s new spokespeople. This trend offers huge opportunities
for organizations that can harness digital consumers to their advantage:
nothing less than a massive new marketing department, that’s not even on
the payroll.

This has a number of implications for the church including the idea that there is nothing that gets people to church better than a personal invitation from someone they trust. There are a number of interesting points to this survey but one of the other applicable ones involves, well, involvement:

These new empowered customers, the survey shows, want to have a greater say in how they experience service. They want products and services to be designed, sold, delivered, serviced and purchased in a way that suits them. They want to be active co-creators, not passive consumers.

The implications for worship and our community life are left as an exercise for the reader.

Interview with Rosaria Butterfield

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto a YouTube video of a one-hour interview with Rosaria Butterfield at Patrick Henry College conducted by Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine.  Mrs. Butterfield was an English professor at Syracuse University who, through extended contact with the members and pastor of a local Reformed Presbyterian Church, moved from a homosexual lifestyle to a heterosexual lifestyle. She has written about this journey in her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and the interview covers much of this ground. (And there are Presbyterians throughout her story.)

Whatever you may think of her journey you can consider the interview a case study in a church drawing someone into the Body of Christ through unconditional love and acceptance of who they are. I found her description of the interaction of her and the church very interesting. For instance, at one point (at 0:33:07 in the video) she talks about her expeience saying:

But I had some really burning questions for people so I would go up to my, you know, homeschool mom friends and I would say “Look, I had to give up the girlfriend what did you have to give up to be here? And I want to hear it. And don’t tell me it was your math curriculum, OK…. I’ll pour my coffee on you – I am really not wanting to hear that.” And I heard some amazing things. And it made me realize that I did not have any more to give up than anybody else.

(Please note that these are my transcriptions of the video so I
apologize for any errors and they are excerpts from much longer answers
to interview questions.)

A minute later in the video she finishes up her comment with this:

I learned that there are other people in my church who struggled with sexual sin. I learned that there are other people in my church who struggled with lust, who struggled with faithlessness. Who, um… and they told me that. They took a risk of no longer looking all cleaned up to me to tell me that. And that was very helpful and so I think a good thing to think about as a Christian is to think about “What did you have to give up to be here?” How would you answer that honestly to someone?

Just before this (0:29:44) she talks about the members of the church and how they had been praying for her:

At first it was hard for them to pray for me because – of course these are now my friends – and then they shared with me that… that it’s easier to simply be disgusted by a person like me than pray for me. Right, because I came to church but then I also brought friends to church. I brought Jay [ a transsexual woman and former Presbyterian minister] to church. And we are an acapella Psalm singing church and Jay has probably one of the best bass voices there.

So, that’s an issue. Right, I mean come on, its OK, it is, it’s an issue. I had a deacon in the church tell me if he had known how, how difficult all this would be he might not have been praying so faithfully.

I could quote numerous other parts of this interview that have interesting points regarding reaching out to the broken and different in the name of Christ. But I recommend it as a good insight from someone who found the Gospel as to what people did to help her on that journey and what the process required of her and the people in the church. (And note that there may be a connection to Jeff Gissing’s piece I mentioned in the first section.)

So, there are a few thoughts on some news reports, mainstream and secular, that caught my attention and had me connecting the dots that last couple of weeks. As always, your mileage may vary.