A perfect description of the kind of church we should avoid creating

Trevin Wax’s recent post for The Gospel Coalition reflecting on, of all things, Barnes & Noble’s turnaround, is well worth your time. This paragraph especially struck me:

“Surveying the cultural trends, we might be tempted to put our faith in something else, to focus our attention not on the Word and the sacraments but on extraneous things—our coffee, our music, or our programming. Over time, pastors in the fields of labor lose any sense of being a leader in worship and become managers of religious dispensaries, as if they oversee a supermarket of spiritual goods and services.” (emphasis mine)

There seems to be a growing awareness among the saints that the shock and awe days of spectacle, consumerism, and competition must end (and end soon) if the Church is to continue with any effectiveness in the West. The glitz and glammer distracted us for a while, but the last few years should have convinced us again that, as Wax writes,

Come what may, there’s no substitute for love. Loving God. Loving to worship God. Loving to worship God with his people. Loving to hear God’s Word and to feast on his goodness at the table.

Check out the rest of the article here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/lesson-church-barnes-noble-turnaround/