The eCrozier

I don’t know if you have followed the roll out of the new Apple iPad. I haven’t followed it all that closely. While I appreciate technology for what it can do, I am really not all that interested in the details. I guess it is akin to the old saying about not really wanting to know how laws and sausages are made. Anyway, I do find Apple’s roll out of the iPad interesting for what it might tell us about our work of evangelism. Let me explain.

For years now, the experts in evangelism have told us that we need to be more like successful businesses. We’ve been told that we need to be consumer-oriented. We need to listen to the needs of consumers and then respond to those needs, just like successful businesses do. This is what many of the mega churches have done. They do market studies, find out what potential parishioners want in the way of church (e.g., comfortable seats, good lattes, small groups for their particular life situations, etc.) and then they have crafted their programs and “worship experiences” based on those needs. And they have grown (although there is some evidence now that it is not at all sustainable).

Anyway, that is the model that was transferred from business to the church and we have bought into hook, line, and sinker. Even though we might not do any of those things in our parishes, we have come to accept the conventional wisdom that if one wants to “grow a church,” then that is the way to do it.

With the iPad Apple has not provided an answer to what people have told them in market studies. Apple has made a proposal about what people might want and what people could love, if they had it. We will have to wait and see how people will respond. Will they want it? Will they love it?

I hope our Church will be more like Apple and less like traditional, though successful businesses. Let’s get out there and make a proposal to people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s share it with them in a way that is compelling and true to our tradition. I convinced a lot of people could love Jesus the way you and I do if we worried less about the wrappings of the package or the market method of delivery and rather focused more on providing them with the basic answer to the question: “Does God love me?”

+Scott