Sunday, May 1, 2011

Eugene Peterson on the Commercialization of the Church

"Worship is also continuously at risk, but with worship the danger is commodification, being debased into a commodity for consumers who are shopping for the best buy in God or the latest in spiritual fashions. But the moment that God or the things of God are packaged and then advertised as programs or principles or satisfaction, we are depersonalized, diminishing our capacity to love. There is not much chance of growing to the measure of the stature of Christ in a place of worship that markets goods and services stamped with a God logo. The very place and time given us to cultivate conditions congenial for acquiring an understanding of and companionship in the practice of love is no longer available.
"The extensive commodification of worship in America has marginalized far too many churches as orienting centers for how to live a more effective life for God. What the secular culture has done to love by romanticizing it into fornication and the practice of adultery, the ecclesial culture has done by promoting ways of worship calculated to appeal to consumer tastes in which love is redefined as 'Oh, I like that,' or 'I have to have that,' or negatively as 'I don't get anything out of that.'"
-Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, pg 219-20

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