Packaging, Cheese, Grace and Designer Churches…

I was involved in an interesting dialogue regarding packaging, brands etc.. today. It stimulated the beginning of an unconnected muse or two!

As a cheese lover I like my real authentic cheese to be packaged in waxed paper not Clingfilm! It allows the cheese to be at its best. The packaging is not pretty, not eye catching but it performs a function. The product is the focus not the packaging.

The church shows an unhealthy pre-occupation with packaging. Perhaps there’s packaging and then there’s packaging.

I wonder if grace could be the gospel’s packaging. It shouldn’t be eye-catching but it should perform a function - that of demonstrating the Kingdom and reveal Jesus and the true hope and liberation he represents.

As soon as the packaging becomes something to big up the product – we’ve got problems. As soon as the packaging becomes the focus it makes the product insignificant. As soon as the packaging becomes the centre of attention we become victims of spin. Then we wonder why people do not want to engage with God through the church that is seen largely as inauthentic.

Designer churches beware…!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an
Read more