I’ve become quite a fan of Google Reader because it lets me stay on top of a lot of blogs without spending a ton of time going to each individual one. I’ve noticed that it’s started to make recommendations to me of blogs I might be interested in based upon the kind of blogs I’ve subscribed to. Like amazon.com making recommendations off of books I’ve purchased, sometimes google’s recommendations are worthwhile, sometimes not. Today I came across one blog that I found ‘not recommendable’ or at least, ‘not helpful.’

It was a blog of some hip “lead pastor” of a mega-church in “Chicagoland” and self-proclaimed “spiritual entrepreneur” (what does that phrase even mean?!). What struck me most about one of his blog posts was the language he used to talk about his church, which he refers to as “COMMUNITY.” Maybe I’ve been out of the States for too long, but do people really talk like this?

“Over the next few days as God brings people to mind, invite them to our WITH series. WITH
is a series about how to make relationships work and the importance of
who you do life WITH.  I promise it will make a difference in your life
and your friends’ lives. One of the easiest ways to invite a friend,
neighbor or co-worker is send an e-invite.  You can send an e-invite just by clicking HERE. We also have thousands of high quality invitations you can pick up at your COMMUNITY campus.  And, just for fun, join in the WITH Hunt by posting photos of you WITH your friends.  You might even win an IPOD! Who are you inviting to WITH this weekend?”

I really don’t mean to be overly critical for the sake of being harsh, but I think if I received an “e-invite” to go to “COMMUNITY campus” to “join in the WITH Hunt” I might be tempted to think I would be entering into, at best, a group of people that talk really strange, or at worst, a cult. I may just be disconnected from how to really reach people in urban settings, but this to me seemed like a sham, or at least a large theological problem. Have urban church planters really run out of ideas and have to resort to prepositions to entitle their schnazzy new programs? Or maybe it’s the case that urban church planters have to target ipod-less people to attract them to their services. I can see the equation now, ipod + preposition for title of program + e-invite = likelyhood of more souls coming through our doors.

Now, I’m no “spiritual entrepreneur” nor God’s gift to the Church by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn’t help but think this was a joke when I first stumbled on to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these people are super nice. But I don’t know if they can really call themselves COMMUNITY and have it mean what they think it means. I’m reminded of a warning from Rowan Williams, who advocates emerging expressions of faith,

“The Church, however, addresses itself to all human violence, in all human beings. If it is to be itself, it has no option but to live in penitence, in critical self-awareness and acknowledgment of failure. It must recognize constantly its failing as a community to be a community of gift and mutuality, and warn itself of the possibility of failure.”

I minister in a place where people don’t know what “protestant” means and when they hear the word “pastor” they look behind me for my sheep. I guess it bothers me that the religious buffet in America has the luxury to come up with titles to describe their work that are easily transferable into a business model. Maybe it’s not a luxury, but a disease that church leaders can no longer distiguish between the parasitic market orientation of the business world and being traditioned in Christian discipleship. I guess, I’m holding out for the ‘twitter-church’ or the ‘facebookCOMMUNITY’ where we don’t even have to go beyond our blackberries to belong to a church. I wonder how COMMUNion would work?