Church | The Preference-Driven Church: Consumer or Contributor? - Part 1

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THE PREFERENCE-DRIVEN CHURCH
Consumer or Contributor? – Part 1
Springcreek Church | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart
August 20, 2023
https://www.springcreekchurch.org/#realspringcreekchurch #strapped #generosity #pathway #freedom #thepathwaytofreedom
Few messages in the history of our church have been as important as the ones in this series. As we begin this weekend, I want to lay out the damage consumerism has done to the church, this generation, and the next. At the same time, it’s my prayer that by the help of God, I will be able to show you where God is leading us and what it’s going to take to get us there. Buckle up. It’s gonna be quite the ride.
SERIES: CONSUMER OR CONTRIBUTOR?
When we were kids, many of us were taught a little finger exercise as we recited, “This is a church, here is the steeple, open the doors and there are all the people.” Somewhere along the way, a good idea got lost – that the church is about people. That simple verse underscored an important truth that God’s church is flesh and blood, not bricks and mortar. In this series, we want to ask, “What if we dared to think differently about church? What if we re-imagined our space to better align with Scriptural truth? What if in simply getting back to the Bible, we ended up seeing the church and being the church more like what God meant us to be? What lies ahead for us as a church is exciting, uncharted territory. But all of it is fueled by the dream of being God’s church in our city.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How does consumerism affect your life? Since it is our environment and has been since we were children, in what ways can we become more conscious of our conditioning to be consumers? In what ways can we combat it? In what ways have you seen it affect the way you see the church?

2. Pastor Keith shared three signs that consumerism has taken over the church.

• We’ve become weekend oriented

• We’ve become worship junkies

• We’ve substituted numerical growth for spiritual growth

Discuss your takeaways from one or all of the points above. Can you think of other signs of consumerism’s influence on the church?

3. We are seeing a huge falling away from churches across this country. With Baby boomers, there is virtually no difference between them and outsiders when it comes to ethics. They are even less likely to believe in moral absolutes than the population in general. And 1 in 5 now attend church less often than before the pandemic. But it gets worse in the children of baby boomers. Only 2 out of 10 millennials believe church attendance is “important or worthwhile.” Nearly 40% of millennials consider themselves “Religiously Unaffiliated.” And members of Gen Z (the generation currently leaving high school) are twice as likely to identify as atheists than the general population. All of this reality is a wake-up call to churches. Take some time to talk about why you think this is happening and what needs to be done.

4. The beginnings for Springcreek are tied up in three priorities:

• Centering on the ministry of the people not the ministry of the pastor.

• Focusing on reaching the few in order to reach the many instead of reaching the many but seeing few transformed.

• Raising the bar of expectation instead of lowering it to accommodate more customers.

Take some time as a group not only to share your own insights from these points, but very specifically, pray for your leaders and pray for one another as Springcreek enters a new chapter. We want to be God’s church, learning from one another, growing alongside each other, and moving into the spheres of influence God has for us. God’s work done God’s way will never lack God’s resources to carry it out.