A Powerful and Revealing Interview

I have been reading a helpful book called Gospel-Driven Church by Jared Wilson that addresses one of the prevailing movements concerning how to pursue growth in the church.  That movement encourages churches to be an attractional church.  Being an attractional church refers to “a way of doing church ministry whose primary purpose is to make church appealing.” Therefore, “this typically leads to the dominant ethos of pragmatism throughout the church.” Nothing demonstrates this better than the production of an “experience” during the service.  If you can create an experience that moves people, if you can sway them by the perfect combination of sight, sound and word, then you have got them.  Since we are dealing with a church setting, obviously we are talking about a “God experience.”  But at the core, this is what all types of businesses do.  They want to captivate people, and they will use every available tool to do it.  

In this book, Wilson cites an interview that cuts to the heart of this issue.  It is both powerful and revealing, and worth reading a couple times slowly.  I have cited it below in hopes that it will help us pursue together the true power of God which is unleashed by the Spirit, through the gospel, from the Word, as we humble ourselves as children, and not stimulate ourselves as consumers.  

Many churches describe their gatherings as “experiences.” I want to gently suggest that this is an incorrect way of thinking about what happens on Sunday mornings. Many people may experience God there, but you cannot create an experience of God. The worship gathering ought to seek to orchestrate an encounter with God, not an experience of him. Is it really so wrong to try to “create an experience”? What’s wrong with that? Disney does it. Chain restaurants do it. Shopping malls do it. Why not churches? Economist James Gilmore, author of The Experience Economy, is an expert on “creating experiences.” He cautions against replicating such experiences in worship services. As recorded in Skye Jethani’s book The Divine Commodity, Gilmore’s conversation with Leadership Journal staffers Marshall Shelley (MS), Eric Reed (ER), and Kevin Miller (KM) explains why. This is such an important exchange, that I quoted it in my previous book The Prodigal Church as well: 

MS: So how does all this “experience providing” apply to the church? 

Gilmore: It doesn’t. When the church gets into the business of staging experiences, that quickly becomes idolatry. 

MS: I’m stunned. So, you don’t encourage churches to use your elements of marketable experiences to create attractive experiences for their attenders? 

Gilmore: No. The organized church should never try to stage a God experience. 

KM: When people come to church, don’t they expect an experience of some kind? Consumers approach the worship service with the same mindset as they do a purchase. 

Gilmore: Increasingly, you find people talking about the worship experience rather than the worship service. That reflects what’s happening in the outside world. I’m dismayed to see churches abandon the means of grace that God ordains simply to conform to the patterns of the world.

KM: So, what happens in church? Are people getting a service, because they’re helped to do something they couldn’t do on their own, that is, get closer to God? Or are they getting an experience, the encounter with God through worship? 

Gilmore: The word “getting” is, I think, the problem with contemporary Christianity. God is the audience of worship. What you get is, quite frankly, irrelevant as a starting point. 

ER: But people, especially unchurched people, don’t perceive it that way. They’re expecting some return. 

Gilmore: They come that way at first: “Give me, feed me, make me feel good.” But they should be led to say, “Hey, this is not about me, God. Worship is to glorify you.” 

KM: But if my mission is to reach a consumerist culture— if I’m going to get a hearing for my message— then I’m going to have to provide something that the consumer considers of value. 

Gilmore: That is the argument. But the only thing of value the church has to offer is the gospel. I believe that one result of the emerging Experience Economy will be a longing for authenticity. To the extent that the church stages worldly experiences, it will lose its effectiveness.