The Church has faithfully done this, at least until recently. But I do know that there is still a large remnant who keeps the main thing the main thing: Jesus Christ at the center. I saw an interesting post on my shared feeds the other day entitled Why Coke beat Pepsi for the last 100+ years. The picture speaks a thousand words:
Duncan Riley from the Inquisitr points out, “If you’ve got the real thing you don’t need to change your branding, as this very clever brand mashup points out.”
How true this is, yet how often we fail to apply it in the Church. Or maybe we fail to believe that we’ve got the real thing: Jesus Christ Himself, who became a man and paid the penalty for our sin, defeating death and the devil on the Cross and proving it by rising from the dead.
It seems more and more churches are trying the Pepsi approach, changing the name on the sign out front, adding new worship music, changing the paint scheme, adding movie clips to the sermons, offering more programs and series, etc. Maybe, like Coke, we simply need to keep offering the real thing, Jesus. This looks a lot more like old-fashioned discipleship (which authentically occurs outside of institutions, programs and agendas), spiritual disciplines (prayer, meditation on God’s Word, fasting, etc.), and genuine fellowship with other believers (not chit-chat over coffee on Sunday morning or 30 second meet and greet sessions) – all focused and led by Christ Himself.
Is your church following the Pepsi model, or are they keeping the real thing the main thing?
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Wow! I liked that! I started typing out an argument against it, but I ended up arguing with myself, and the other side won, so I deleted it. It makes sense, and while it may not attract people looking for new and fresh, it will definitely attract the people looking for the WORD. People who don’t care about the superficial stuff. I’ve been to a church like that, and it was amazing.
Glad you enjoyed it, Josh. I believe there are a lot of people out there looking for genuine Christ-centered discipleship. People come to Christ with lots of emotional and spiritual baggage. The institutional church often helps them clean up on the outside and hide their darkest sins, while genuine discipleship deals with all of it in a raw fashion, even when it gets messy. The “stained glass masquerade” is far easier than authentic discipleship, but it creates far messier people. And then we end up with… well… what we have today.
Great post! This really speaks volumes…and a neat visual of what the church looks like today (Pepsi)…Changing the outside seems to be the best thing (and only thing) that the modern-day church seems to do well (but not really)…