Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations

Spoof on Consumer-driven Church

This video called Me Church has been on YouTube since December 2005 but it is still worth sharing because it is not offensive and it is funny. 

It is 1 minute 22 seconds long but you will have an hour's worth of a smile.  It is a commercial for a church called "Me Church" that is all about you.  It is light-hearted and fun.

For those of you who are quick to throw stones at megachurches who try to meet "felt needs," you should know that one of Andy Stanley's Seven Practices of Effective Ministry is "Narrow the Focus: Do fewer things in order to make a greater impact."  As they get large, many of these megachurch leaders see clearly the absurdity of trying adjust their ministry approach to the needs of complainers. 

To some people it seems that Stanley almost disregards the needs of people because of his narrow focus.  No, this need to please people and meet their every need transcends denominations, sizes and styles. 

What needs are legitimate and need to be addressed by the compassionate, justice-seeking church and which are driven by our consumeristic culture?  That ladies and gentlemen is the question. 

For more humor, see my post about Purgatorio.   

The best church humor I've seen is at Marc Heinrich's Purgatorio photo blog

Everyone must visit Purgatario: a panoply of evangelical eccentricities, un-orthodox oddities & christian cultural curiosities for some laughs at silliness in Christianity.  Purgatario is the blog of Marc Heinrich who attends John Piper's church.   He pokes fun at lots of things in evangelicalism and isn't mean-spirited.

Here are some of my favorites:

1. The Emerging Church critique entitled You Might Be Emerging If… is excellently done.  Under his criteria, I am quite emerging.
2. Denominational Hijinx - regarding the Southern Baptist resolution on alcohol. 
3. Divine Vinyl: God is for Real, Man - paraphrase of Scripture from the 60's.
4. My favorite is Now, I’ve Seen it All… I paged back through Purgatario from the present to May 24, 2006.  The cumulative effect is what makes this last one so funny I think.

I was directed to the site by the "Blogs we're watching" at Leadership Journal's Out of Ur blog.

The Wittenburg Door is the classic place to find biting Christian satire.  They also have a number of sites they recommend here.

There are also some cartoons at Christianity Today's Churchlaughs.com

Current political cartoons can be found at MSNBC's Daryl Cagle's site.