The observations of outsiders should always make us think (at least a little) as to why they are saying that when they show up at church. With that in mind here are 3 incisive lines from this article in The Economist on US megachurches.

Today, although most churches have fewer than 100 members, 70% of people attend the largest 10%. The product that they sell is changing Christianity in America.

It is not unsurprising that a newspaper called The Economist looks at everything in the light of the money but that does not make it wrong. Megachurch pastors learn primarily off each other, meaning they will end up more similar than different. As US Christianity becomes ever more shaped by the biggest 10% of churches we are going to need to understand them better.

This is some of what will be exported: 

About a quarter preach the prosperity gospel, a theology that asserts that God rewards faith with material wealth.

If the 1st claim is true, that US Christianity is increasingly shaped by its largest churches, and 25% are out and out prosperity churches, then a significant chunk of what will be exported will be prosperity teachings. That’s not good. 

That might not be the most concerning aspect though. This next observation is, perhaps, the most telling:

Rather than tie themselves to traditional sects with rigid doctrines they are building brands that are designed to be popular and flexible. The result is a Christianity that looks more like a crash course in self-help than an age-old faith anchored in scripture.

That observation is the one that must be taken absolutely seriously. Faith-sprinkled self-help is hardly Christianity and if the correspondent can spot the unmooring from Scripture then we should be able to spot it too. And if church history tells us anything it is that churches unmoored from Scripture will not last long. As Christians we need to continue to invest in resilient faith. Never a given. 

Probably one of the biggest failures of evangelical theology has been an inability to resist the kingdom of comfort. We might not like the prosperity gospel yet almost every western Christian is prosperous. And this maybe the reason both why evangelicalism is not as resilient nor as different to the surrounding culture as we might like. We’ve bought into an ‘ism:

Here the biggest draw is something easier to follow than any of Jesus’s teachings: the gospel of American capitalism.”