A couple months back, Six Rules for Dining ran in Atlantic Monthly. The article was written by economist Tyler Cowen and had some tips on how to choose where to eat. The article was insightful, but what I found more interesting...
were potential correlations between Cowen's advice about restaurants and what Christians should be wary of in the modern Church...
Here's a taste:
When I’m out looking for food, and I come across a restaurant where the patrons are laughing and smiling and appear very sociable, I become wary. Don’t get me wrong. Having fun is a fine ambition, but it’s not the same thing as eating good food. Many restaurants, especially in downtown urban areas, fill seats—and charge high prices—by creating social scenes for drinking, dating, and carousing. They’re not using the food to draw in their customers. The food in most of these places is “not bad,” because the restaurant needs to maintain a trendy image...
I also start to worry if many women in a restaurant are beautiful in a trendy or stylish way. The point is not that beautiful women have bad taste in food. Instead, the problem is that they will attract a lot of men to the restaurant, whether or not the place serves excellent food. And that allows the restaurant to cut back on the quality of the food.
In the same way, having fun in church is a fine ambition but it's not the same thing as worshiping a holy righteous God who sent His Son to pour out His blood for our sins.
Sadly, more and more churches copy the business model of restaurants hoping to bring in crowds by their atmosphere, style and outward aesthetic. Get the pretty faces up on the platform, turn the lights down low, and offer all the free Mountain Dew and popcorn a soul can consume; but leave those souls empty spiritually.
These tactics used for corralling the masses are introduced at the expense of what the Church was made for: worship of God, preaching the Word, confession of our sin, and spiritual growth.
May God allow us to repent of exchanging the "pure spiritual milk of the Word" for lights and pretty faces. May we not strive for a casual atmosphere, but a confession-of-sin atmosphere. May we go from milk to meat, and not scene to scene.
