Going back to the basics of the hip hop scene...

Andy posted a month ago about "me focused" Christians, and over my trip back to good old H-town, I started thinking about this.

Maybe, in a way, it's kind of Protestantism's fault. I mean, before that, there wasn't much competition for Christians between local churches. Maybe in more diverse areas, you could got to St. Paul's for Germans or St. Peter's for Frenchies, but even then, no matter where you went, the service was going to be in Latin. But when the Protestants (or "awesome Christians" as I like to call them) burst onto the scene, all of the sudden people had options (and as David Bazaan rightly sings, "It's good to have options.").

While I might be totally off base, it seems like free market ideas started to become popular around this time as well. Suddenly, you had different denominations competing for people, in a time when competition was getting popular in the business market as well.

Today, we have more churches than ever, and a market-obsessed culture with options for making purchases on every corner (even in our own homes!). All it took was one church to adopt a free market business model; after that, every other church had to just to keep up.

This is depressing, because I have absolutely no idea how to get around this. As Wal-Mart/bargain price consumers, we allow our purchasing instincts to follow us into church as well. Is there really any way to change people's perception of what the Church is for? If a church rejected the business model, I'm not sure it would even get off the ground in today's climate.

Guys, I think we're screwed.

P.S. As for BB, this is Karl Malone's year, this is his time baby, this is his ring! Let all who oppose his mighty presence be scattered by the wind to the four corners of the earth! Let their children be crippled and their widows be....i don't know, somthing even worse!

posted by jonny @ 4:35 PM