new to you friday–McChurch

I estimate that last year I spent 100 days on the road. (In case you’re wondering, I’ve made some changes so I won’t be able to say the same about 2010.) In just the last few weeks I’ve been in Cincinnati and the far reaches of Kansas and I’m typing this from a moldy Hyatt in Baton Rouge. All this travel just reinforces my thoughts in this post—the franchising of America is not limited to its restaurants and clothing stores. A lot of our churches are starting to look a lot alike. Do you think it’s a problem?

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Yesterday was fun—my dad and I drove from Monterey, CA through Big Sur along the Pacific Coast Highway. We saw beautiful ocean views, walked through a forest of redwoods, and ate locally-grown artichokes and fresh shrimp.

After several hours enjoying this beauty, we turned off the PCH to take the 101 south to Los Angeles. Almost immediately a landscape of Home Depots, AMC movie theaters, and fast food restaurants replaced the views of rocky cliffs, beaches, and privately-owned B&Bs.

What struck me was not just the abrupt transition back to the land of a million Targets, but how similar the next 180 miles looked. Every exit ramp had some combo of the same national retail outlets and chain stores. Except for the palm trees, we could just as easily have been in Indianapolis, Kansas City or any other American suburb.

To find stories for Christian Standard, I spend a lot of time surfing around church websites, leafing through church papers, and even visiting different churches. And it strikes me that our congregations—and many other evangelical churches—resemble those exit ramps. Every church has many of the same programs and services—Celebrate Recovery, a youth group with a name like “Surge,” a kids-and-parents service modeled on North Point’s, a Christian preschool, a variety of men’s and women’s small groups (men studying Wild at Heart, women studying either Captivating or something by Beth Moore), a wanna-be Starbucks coffee area named “Hallowed Grounds.” Many even preach the same sermons, often based on popular TV shows like “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives,” in an attempt to reach that ambiguous goal of “cultural relevance.”

These are all okay, but as we adopt more and more of the same strategies our churches all start to resemble one another. Of course it doesn’t make sense for all of us to start from scratch on everything—we do well to learn from each other and adopt what works. But I find it concerning (and, frankly, boring) to see so many of our bigger and newer churches become so much alike.

I can go into any McDonald’s in the country and eat the same meal, prepared the same way and guaranteed to provide the same (minimal) nourishment. I’m not sure I want the same experience when it comes to spiritual food.