Church 2.0: Identity after the crash

In the deep towns of Florida there is a small church whose hearts are thrown in the mud and then hung up for the rest of the Christian world to have a good laugh. Before, in years past, this family-centered and loving church was tripling their legal fire-code limit. Every Sunday they had potlucks, and monthly they had baptisms down by the lake. These days of great community continued until the 1990’s began to roll around with the anthems of monstrous churches whose revenues would make Bill Gates a believer.
It was in this decade that the church growth movement and the Christian subculture grew to its peak influence. Large churches like Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback, with numbers close to populations of some bordering towns, began to clone and package themselves for the use of other smaller churches. Today, these packaged churches with their Purpose Driven emblem pasted on their front door can be found in nearly every city in the U.S. Their hundred worship services are all professionally designed and the only cheese found is on the platter outside for visitors. If Billy Graham was the most influential evangelist when my parents were growing up, then Willow Creek and the Christian subculture were the most influential evangelists in the past decades that I have grown up in.
All of these churches, I believe, have sincere and authentic dreams for spreading the faith. Willow Creek coined the buzzword seeker-sensitive and were one of the pioneers in focusing the Church’s efforts on people not within the faith. The only little problem that I have found which has become a major devastation is when they cloned themselves many churches began to drown and could hardly stay afloat. These smaller churches did not have the same personality and vision as those other mammoth ones, but since everyone else was jumping off the cliff and landing into a bed of roses, they might as well also.
What these smaller churches and many others fail to realize is Willow Creek and Saddleback were extremely successful because they had a personal and community vision that they wanted to achieve. Churches are like individuals in that everyone is different and have all their own God-given talents, mission, and abilities. A man that does not have much artistic talent should not become a professional artist for the reason that his best friend became successful. Instead of trying to fit the package mold, churches need to pray and reflect about their relationship with God, each other, and society. After realizing all of the good elements they can bring to the conversations of these relations, God’s mission for them and how he wants them to accomplish it will be much more visible.