Consumer Reports

This guy visits a different South Florida church every Sunday and reviews the services on his blog.

Some thoughts:

1) The most important message element for him is "the Gospel" and he is rather blunt about not finding it presented in the majority of the churches he visits.

2) I'm not clear on whether "the Gospel" to him is an articulation or incorporation of sin/grace or an actual altar call or Romans Road-type thing. If it's the former, I think his sharing of the findings is indeed distressing (but not surprising). If the latter . . . well . . .

3) The more reviews I read, the less comfortable I was. I think there can be something valuable in getting an outsider perspective like this, a sense of seeing what a visitor sees, particularly when their sights are set on worthy things like theological content, biblical fidelity, the level of theo-centrism in worship, etc. But when the critiques start to hammer on who is or isn't greeting them, the quality of those greetings, the quality of the music, how long or short it was, what the lights were like, what was in the visitor goodie bag, etc., a "helpful service" starts sounding more and more like a consumer report. Which leads me to . . .

4) At some point, a concerted focus on what is wrong with particular churches can actually feed the Christian consumerist mindset.

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