08/09/2026
A great read from Pastor James Bell.
The longer I Pastor the more I am convinced that one of the great mistakes of modern Christianity is that we keep arguing about traditional church versus contemporary church.
That is not the deepest divide.
The deeper divide is discipleship versus consumerism.
You can build a consumer church with a worship band, stage lights, coffee, and skinny jeans.
You can also build one with hymnals, pews, choirs, suits, and a King James Bible.
Consumerism is not an aesthetic.
It is a posture of the heart.
Consumerism asks:
Do I like the music?
Do I like the preaching?
Are there programs for my children?
Do people dress the way I think they should?
Does this church share my politics?
Does this church make me comfortable?
And when the answer becomes no, we start looking somewhere else.
Discipleship asks an entirely different set of questions.
Where can I serve?
Who can I love?
Where do I need to grow?
What preferences do I need to surrender?
How can I help carry the burdens of this community?
Where is Jesus asking me to die to myself?
The problem was never primarily organs versus guitars.
The problem is that we have spent decades teaching Christians to evaluate churches as consumers rather than belong to them as disciples.