Consumeranity: A Subtle but Serious Dis-Ease that Infects the Church
Phil Miglioratti @ Reimagine.Network
A “What? SoWhat? NowWhat?” Overview
{Warning Label: Consumeranity is a Dangerous Infiltration of Consumerism With Christianity}
WHAT?
…is Consumeranity?
Consumeranity is an unholy partnership of Christianity and consumerism.
Christianity is the system of disciplines-rituals-practices of persons who identify as Christian.
Christianity is based on and built upon the Gospel of Jesus, but it is not the Gospel. It is more like a frame we use to enclose a precious painting or a briefcase we employ to carry indispensable documents.
The Gospel is Jesus: the appearance, the activity, the announcement, and the amazing grace achievement of Jesus. Incarnation. Good words. Good works. Good news of salvation by grace.
Christianity embodies the systems and structures of the teaching and traditions of the beliefs of those who have faith In Jesus. These doctrines and customs serve as “instructional {and institutional} scaffolding” -
“Instructional … scaffolding provides … support and guidance to students, allowing them to learn new concepts and skills
by gradually releasing responsibility as they become more independent,
essentially acting as a temporary structure to help them access learning that would be difficult without assistance;
this is often achieved by breaking down complex information into smaller chunks and providing targeted support based on their needs.” {AI description}
History is replete with examples of how doctrinal interpretations and practical applications of biblical teachings become so assimilated with cultural norms or ethnic customs or philosophical perceptions that dilute the meaning or deviate message of the Gospel.
- Dilute: “to diminish the strength, flavor, or brilliance”
- Deviate: “to stray especially from a standard, principle, or topic”
And that invariably leads to a spiritual infection in the Body of Christ, compromising individuals, congregations, even denominations. The infiltration of consumerism is one of those illnesses.
The emergence of capitalism in Western society “produces consumerism by inherently incentivizing businesses to constantly create demand for new products\
through marketing and planned obsolescence, thus encouraging people to continuously buy more goods to maintain economic growth,
which is seen as essential for a capitalist system to function effectively;
this creates a culture where people are encouraged to identify with their possessions and seek satisfaction through consumption rather than other means.” {AI description}
Consumeranity (a religious devotion to consumerism) has infiltrated Christianity which infects Christian ministry:
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- Church-shopping/hopping. Mega-star Pastors.
- Church-growth philosophies that are driven by a sociological worldview.
- Seeker-friendly priorities that foster Entertainment-Worship (“lights, camera, jumbotron!”).
- Christmas-and-Easter Christians. Shopping-mall churches.
- Drive-thru prayer (even funerals). Attending church in your PJs in a Lazy-Boy.
The consumer-lifestyle, historically only available to the wealthy class, has trickled down to the less affluent classes, resulting in a vast majority of the population attending church services with a “what’s in it for me” attitude that produces an addiction to “what feels good to me.”
We still give praise, recite doxologies, listen to sermons, attend study classes, donate time and money. But our focus on our Lord and Savior has competition. Our doctrinal statements may not have changed but our passions and pursuits are enculturated by a self-focused societal mindset driven toward self-fulfillment.
"God is not dead in our culture. Only his identity has changed.
The claim of autonomy for human reason has led to its own deification and the rejection of the importance of history,
the development of a spiritualized physics and a return to an ancient gnosticism--in short, a New Religious Synthesis.
The dominant god today is the cosmic spirit embodied in the self; a shift has come about … with important implications for navigating the religious currents of our day."
James W. Sire, author of The Universe Next Door
Consumeranity is not confined to economics and personal possessions. It is a mindset (some would say it is a religion) that has the power to reframe human identity and redirect motivation and objectives.
A reimagined mindset about the vulnerability of Christianity by leaders who serve-shape-steer church teaching and ministry planning is crucial.
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- com-"with, together with, jointly"
- sume: “to take up”
- consume: “to squander, use-up, devour, destroy, but also…
- to engage fully: “engrossed, captivated”
We need to rethink discipleship from the ground-up, from the inside-out, so that we produce spiritual formation settings and experiences that equip members to distinguish between biblical truths and cultural influences or societal trends. Discipleship must become more than accumulating biblical facts. Learners must be capable of applying the biblical teachings of being-Christian, knowing-Scripture, doing-church into a Jesus-modeled lifestyle that is relevant to but not regulated by our preferences, our peers, our professions, or our politics.
Redesigning methodology must be preceded by rethinking how to present biblical information in ways that help believers to question the text for original intent and seek Spirit-led guidance of how best to incorporate each truth into a God-glorifying lifestyle. “In the world but not of the world” as my childhood pastor would say.
#ItSeemsToMe… we need to shift from “presents,” consuming the personal benefits/gifts of Christianity, to “presence,” living a worship-fueled life of gratitude as we experience the spiritual blessings of authentic Christianity; loving God and loving neighbors.
SO WHAT?
…is treacherous about this trend?
Consumeranity is a dis-ease that infects the Church, as Christ-followers are diverted to “self”motivations that become the take-away of teaching and preaching and even service in ministry.
- Sermons become Bible-verse-and Bible-story based therapy lectures
- Study group and seminar training aims on meeting the immediate needs and solving prevailing problems in relationships (marriage, single-hood, family)
- Supplication in prayer becomes primarily petitioning for relief from personal problems
Our teachings must be relevant to these issues but not at the expense of our primary call of Christianity to be in Christ (Colossians 1:27) so that we become like Christ (1:28).
While responding to our felt needs, Christianity must remind us “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10) and challenge us to hear the Spirit calling us to “offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him” … so that t…we will be “transformed .. .. by the renewing our minds.” (Romans 12:1-2).
Christians should expect guidance with personal and social issues but as a means of becoming better equipped to love our neighbors. Righteousness that pursues justice. Blessing and challenging culture. This is the context for learning how to apply the Scriptures. Self-fulfillment is achieved as we grow in spiritual obedience.
““Consumption is a serious issue. Consumption is a lifestyle, a culture that is bred into us here in the western world. It is about more than simply materialism–it is about how we see life. We as Christians are supposed to live by certain principles of self-sacrifice and sharing. Jesus calls us to ‘love our neighbor as ourself.’ America, and American Christians continue to consume materials and finances in astounding proportions.” Seth Barnes
Consumeranity poisons biblical faith, morphing it into a religion about Christ rather than a relationship with Christ.
- Salvation is limited to a free-pass forgiveness of our sin.
- Discipleship becomes a remedial consumption of information-based education.
- Worship is singing and hearing about God more than signing and talking to God.
- Evangelism is often satisfied with proclamation without demonstration. A call to conversion before conversation. An invitation to a Sunday service rather than a service performed for (and sometimes with) those in need of the Gospel.
- Stewardship is how much we can spare as we collect possessions and assets for a safety-net for a secure future. Generosity is sacrificial.
Much like a physical infection during a pandemic, consumeranity is not present in every person or place at all times. It may not take-over completely but it can compromise the purity of desire and motivation. Unlike many illnesses, no pill or injection exists that can eliminate the symptoms of this dis-ease.
NOW WHAT?
…action must be taken?
We need reimagineers, courageous men and women, who lead us to transition
from being “consumers of” to becoming “consumed by.” {“absorbed, fascinated., crazy-over.”}
Leaders who reimagine disciplemaking as:
- Exalting Worship
- Focus on the glory of God; as much praise (reciting who God is) as petition (requesting what we want)
- From audience to participants: in silence or celebration; stillness or movement
- Music + Poetry + Art + Drama
- Extended time devoted to the Lord’s Supper, guided meditation and prayer
- “Are we, as a church, a presence-based church, or are we more focused on what we need to do or can get from God?” Terry Tekyl
- The Presence Based Church
- Edifying Fellowship
- Focus on the biblical “One-Another’s”
- Equip and empower small groups to function as biblical churches (“Where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”Matthew 18:20) shepherded by mature servant leadership.
- “So encourage each other and give each other strength.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
- Engaging Discipleship
- Reshape the context for learning biblical content from classroom models to spiritual formation experiences that are worship-bred (birthed in praise), Spirit-led (listening prayer), and Scripture-fed (reading, researching, re-viewing with others)
- Provide micro (individual), mezzo (small group) and macro (congregational; conference) formats
- Describe discipleship as a prayer-care-share lifestyle
- Shift the goal of maturity from ever-increasing knowledge to skilled in application of scripture and in pursuit of one’s ministry calling
- Extravagant Stewardship
- Church activities model generosity locally and beyond by funding members’ vision for neighbors-neighborhoods -nations. The Great Commission is a command to pursue diversity and be unhindered by distance. √ this out
- Leaders model generosity in their personal lives; service and sacrifice not merely salary and security
- Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20
- Dynamis Ministries: Growing Generosity Potential
- Excelling Leadership
- Revise training by the servant leadership Jesus modeled and cast a vision of how every member of the Body of Christ has leadership potential at home-work-school-play.
- Ask often, and at every small group gathering: “What are you hearing from God’s Word (biblical input) and God’s Spirit (prayer) about your ministry goals and objectives for God’s work through you?
- Coach/counsel believers to seek their unique calling-in-Christ and equip them to build a ministry or partner with an existing ministry team
- “Christ chose some of us to be apostles, prophets, missionaries, pastors, and teachers, so his people would learn to serve and his body would grow strong.” Ephesians 4:11-12 CEV
May Jesus, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, challenge us and change us to rethink our identity from customers who consume to satisfy our spiritual appetites to disciples consumed with Christ and the Body of Christ.
“My love for you has my heart on fire!
My passion for your house consumes me!
Nothing will turn me away, even though I endure all the insults of those who insult you.”
Psalms 69:9 TPT
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BONUS ~ HOW DO I KNOW IF I'M A CONSUMER?
1. Do you go to church to be served or do you go to serve? When did you last get involved with the welcome, kid’s work, washing up or hoovering?
2. Do you financially give to your church?
3. Do you turn up to church feeling like you are entitled to be led in the worship songs or hymns you prefer? Or are you grateful for having a place to worship?
4. Did you join your church because it made you feel good about yourself? Or did it make you feel more grateful for Jesus?
5. Do you ask yourself how you can support the church leadership in order to accomplish the churches goal or do you look at them critically thinking you know how it should be really done?
6. Do you focus on your personal preferences or on what are other people’s preferences and needs might be?
7. Do you focus on what you will gain coming to this church rather than counting the cost of following Jesus at this church for others?
8. Do you arrive at the church as the service starts and leave at the end or do you arrive early, help make drinks and hoover up at the end?
9. Do you arrive and wonder why no one welcomed you or do you ask who needs welcoming?
10. Do you go to a church where there are lots of people like you?
CONSUMERISM: THE ENEMY OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP AND COMMUNITY by CRIS ROGERS
https://www.wearemakingdisciples.com/blog.aspx?action=view&id=51
BONUS Content >>>SCROLL for RELATED COMMENTARY by GUEST-POSTERS + FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS
"Tocqueville recognized that democracy’s inherent tendency to foster individualism, materialism, and democratic despotism requires the restraining moral impulses of Christian morality."
Dr Jim Denison
"Capitalism is compatible with democracy only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. But the absence of democracy doesn’t strengthen capitalism. It fuels despotism." Robert Reich
#Reassess CHURCH...
Guest~Posy by Mike Glenn
When I founded the Engage Church Network, I thought I would be working with pastors and churches to identify areas within Tennessee where church plants were needed. The plan wasn’t complicated. In fact, the process was rather simple. Read the demographics, find those areas where the population provided an opportunity for a new church, and work with nearby congregations to start a new church. In some areas, the changing demographics would require a church to transition from one style of congregation into another. For instance, an Anglo church could become an Hispanic church or an African-American congregation could engage with a nearby Korean community. Other areas would need a church planting team that could identify with the local community and surrounding areas to start a new church.
Our network would then work with these church plants, new congregations and churches in transition to begin to reach their neighborhoods. What could go wrong?
Actually, a lot could go wrong, but I still was surprised by both the type and scope of the problem. The problem was multi-faceted. First, while we have been planting churches for a long time, we’ve been doing it so badly no one wants to do it anymore. Churches have spent thousands of dollars and have nothing to show for it. Families left their home congregations to start new churches and when the new church didn’t happen, they came back to their home church. They’ll never support church planting again. For them, it just doesn’t work.
The most surprising roadblock we ran into was we couldn’t find enough pastors. The more we looked around, the more concerned we became. We went from a deep concern to a full panic. Unless things change in the next few years (think 2-5 years), more and more churches will not be able to find a pastor – or any other staff position for that matter.
There are several reasons for this growing crisis. First, COVID wiped out a lot of pastors. Trying to lead congregations through the political minefield of pandemic precautions caused a lot of pastors to retire early and still others to get out of the ministry altogether. We haven’t had time to replenish our pastoral pipeline.
Speaking of pipelines, we don’t have much of one right now. Seminary enrollments are down and fewer and fewer people are hearing the call to pastor a local congregation. More and more young people want to lead non-profits or go into counseling. Fewer and fewer of our younger leaders see a future in the local church. At the end of the day, we don’t have enough pastors now nor will we have enough in the immediate future.
So goes the conventional wisdom. The popular conclusions are the results of the obvious math. More pastors are retiring and fewer young pastors are graduating seminary, thus we have a shortage of pastors.
But what if we’re counting wrong? Our current church structures are looking for professional pastors – those who have dedicated themselves to a career in the church and trained themselves for it. They are credential through respected agencies and thus, qualified for ministry.
Yet, on the other hand, our churches are filled with people of exceptional talent who are largely bored out of their minds. They are educators and business leaders. They lead banks and corporations, they install the wiring and plumbing in our houses and install smart devices in our homes. They manage people and build exquisite furniture in their houses as a hobby. On and on the list goes – our people are people with amazing talents and gifts, but most churches ask nothing of them.
What if they became the pastors and leaders of our new church plants? Before you shut me down, let me remind you this is the way the church has been working internationally for decades. One of the reasons the church is growing in Africa, Asian and Latin America is the leadership of lay people in congregations. Pastors – people from local communities, not professional clergy – from all walks of life are trained and then sent back to their villages, tribes and communities to lead a local church. Anyone can become a pastor. Show up for training and go back to work. It’s that simple. Now, it may not be easy, but it is that simple.
Peter was a fisherman. John was too. Matthew was a tax collector and Paul made tents. Lydia hosted a worship service on the banks of a river. None of these were professional clergy. All of them were church planters and pastors.
In the early church, there was only one prerequisite. Has the person met Jesus? The woman at the well ran back to her village to tell her neighbors about Jesus. John and Peter weren’t educated or highly trained – but they had been with Jesus. For Paul, his apostolic claim was based on his experience with the Risen Christ on the Damascus Road. Have I not seen the Lord, he asked his enemies.
In Acts 13, the early church sent out Barnabas and Paul in response to the Spirit’s call. Churches in North America are going to have to begin to understand the new measure of kingdom success is how many are sent out, not how many are brought in.
We have all the people required to accomplish the kingdom vision of our Lord Christ. We just need to be sure we’re counting all of them.
GUEST-POST: Consumer Christianity: The Distortion of McDonaldization
A Companion Guide to Distortions
The Fresh Expressions movement is helping me believe in magic again.
Over the last few days, 500 people from across the country came to Ocala, Florida, for the Fresh Expressions UM National Gathering. Hundreds more joined online. Most had never heard of Ocala. It’s not a conference hub. It’s not easily accessible. There was no celebrity keynote. No viral worship band. No polished lineup promising “six keys to explosive church growth.” No sage on the stage offering three easy steps to build your very own Tower of Babel.
And yet they came. A sea of hopeful faces.
In my opening greeting, I asked a simple question: “Why are you here?”
Why travel from far and wide to a nowhere town for a no-name conference? Why rearrange your schedule, board planes, drive hours for something shrouded in obscurity?
I suspect every person in that room came because, at some level, they love the inherited hives that formed them, the denominations that baptized them, buried their grandparents, and shaped their faith. But they also know something isn’t working. They know that in their local settings, most people are simply not connecting to church as we’ve known it.
They came because they want to be part of something the spreadsheets can’t fully measure. They came because they long to join a movement of the Holy Spirit among people not currently connected to any church. And they came because being together with this many misfits means we might be a little crazy, but we are not alone.
And one night, during the youth panel, I felt the magic. I was shivering with Holy Spirit chill-bumps, or whatever that was, as six young people, ages sixteen to twenty-four, told us what the church needed to know about their generation.
Maybe what we felt wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was koinonia.
Maybe it was the strange warmth that comes when people stop shopping for church conferences and start joining God’s intergenerational, all-inclusive mission. Maybe what broke us was the Spirit breaking the usual script.
And I suspect somewhere deep down, many in this particular community are simply tired of Big Mac and Fries Christianity. Fresh Expressions, I am more convinced than ever, is not just innovation. It is holy resistance.
In fact, the movement is partly a response to this week’s distortion: Consumer Christianity.
McDonaldization of the Church
What happened in Ocala was a counter-cultural social phenomenon. And to understand it, we have to zoom out.
Over the last eighty years, Western society has been increasingly shaped by what sociologist George Ritzer calls the McDonaldization of society. Ritzer observed that the four-fold logic of fast-food chains, efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control, has migrated far beyond drive-thru windows. It now shapes education, healthcare, politics, entertainment, and yes, even the church:
Efficiency – the optimal method for getting from point A to point B.
Calculability – quantity over quality; and the quantification of religiosity.
Predictability – standardized experiences across locations.
Control – minimizing human unpredictability through systems and scripting.
Now apply those to Sunday morning.
Efficiency
Worship is streamlined. Parking flows. Greeters are trained. Music cues are timed. Lights and smoke machines synchronized. Sermons are structured to land within 20–30 minutes. The entire experience is engineered to move people through a one-hour spiritual encounter with minimal friction.
Efficiency is not evil. But when formation is compressed into convenience, depth is sacrificed. Christian discipleship cannot be microwaved.
Calculability
Success becomes quantifiable. Attendance. Giving. Budget. Online views. Campus size.
In calculable systems, numerical growth is assumed to equal spiritual health. “Nickels and noses” quietly become theological indicators.
What cannot be easily measured is spiritual growth, reconciliation, enemy-love, courage, and qualitative encounters on the margins. In consumer Christianity, metrics do not just track performance; they shape the behavior of the social actors in the system. Clergy and laity do the things they think will lead to the prevailing paradigm of success.
Predictability
You can attend a service in California, Florida, or Illinois and encounter nearly identical staging, language, transitions, and emotional arcs. The cross and flame are like the golden arches. You can expect the same Happy Meal at every location.
Clergy are like the middle managers of a franchise. Following the scripts of our extensive ordination processes. If your location flourishes, you move up the ladder to the bigger, better location. If you’re really good, you find yourself managing the stores for an entire region.
Predictability comforts insiders. It reduces anxiety. It ensures brand coherence. But predictability also trains congregants to expect spiritual experiences on demand. Worship becomes scripted reassurance rather than risky encounter. We attempt to domesticate the Holy Spirit, confined within the scheduled programming.
Control
Control is the hidden foundation beneath the other three. Systems are built to reduce volatility:
Carefully selected volunteers
A guaranteed appointment if you stay on paradigm
Pre-approved curriculum
Strategic programming calendars
Highly managed environments
If our locations are declining, new, uniform branding and vision statements will save the day
The logic of franchising is to replicate what works. But the spiritual life cannot be franchised. And Big Macs and fries aren’t actually good for you. Tasty now, but you pay later.
And mediocre denominational franchises collapse when they are treated like supply chains. Clergy hand in their aprons when they realize being a spiritual butler, flipping religious burgers, and salting sacred fries was not the call.
Marketing is not the Mission
What we are experiencing in much of denominational Christianity is a crisis of consumerism. We have confused mission with marketing and evangelism with recruitment. In doing so, we have reduced the gospel to a product and the church to a vendor. When evangelism becomes a technique for growing attendance or securing conversions, it drifts from its biblical center. The result is a form of transactional Christianity, religion packaged for personal benefit, curated for comfort, and measured by institutional expansion rather than participation in the reign of God.
Historically, the church has oscillated between reducing mission to either soul-saving or social activism. One side treats the world as a sinking ship from which we rescue individuals. The other treats the gospel as little more than moral reform or political action. Both miss the deeper vision. Mission is not our idea, it is God’s. God is already at work in the world, reconciling, healing, liberating, and renewing. “The world” is not a problem to escape… it is the primary place of God’s action. Mission names our participation in that action. Evangelism, then, is not salesmanship, it is witness. It is the joyful announcement that God has acted in Christ and an invitation to join that new reality.
Consumer Christianity collapses mission into self-interest. It asks, “What does this do for me?” rather than, “How am I being formed and sent?” It reframes salvation as personal fulfillment rather than allegiance to the crucified and risen Lord. In contrast, biblical evangelism calls people not simply to believe something, but to enter into new creation, to be reconciled to God and neighbor, and to participate in God’s redemptive work. Evangelism is the heart of mission, but it only makes sense inside the larger story of God’s kingdom.
When we recover this vision, the church stops trying to sell religious experiences and starts embodying good news in real neighborhoods. We move from extraction to incarnation, from persuasion to presence, from pressure to invitation. Evangelism becomes less about closing a deal and more about opening a table. And mission becomes the prayerful participation of God’s people in God’s ongoing action in the world.
The Structural Crisis
Mainline Protestant denominations were largely structured during the managerial era of the twentieth century. Organizationally, they resemble corporations: centralized governance, standardized credentialing, performance metrics, brand coherence.
That model worked in Christendom, when the church held home-field advantage. But we are no longer in a stable religious market. We face what entrepreneurship scholars call “institutional voids,” environments where inherited structures no longer connect institutions to emerging realities.
Congregations often attempt internal optimization: better preaching. Better music. Better programs. Better follow-up systems. But the deeper issue is not internal efficiency. It is external misalignment. You cannot franchise your way into spiritual growth.
When the four principles of McDonaldization converge, something subtle happens. Participants are no longer primarily contributors and co-creators. They are merely consumers. And when they feel like “I’m not being fed” they hop and shop at the next franchise down the road.
Share
Why Fresh Expressions
Now return to Ocala. What made the gathering feel “magical” was not spectacle. It was the suspension of consumer logic. The conference was free. People came without knowing the lineup. They were not promised personal benefit. They were not comparing product features. They were not rating the experience with a standardized survey.
They were participating in discernment. Fresh Expressions disrupts McDonaldization because it operates from a different social architecture:
Relational over programmatic.
Contextual over standardized.
Slow over efficient.
Small and faithful over big and overly produced.
Adaptive over franchised.
Participatory over consumptive.
It is less a product and more a community of holy mischief makers. This is why Consumer Christianity is distortion, not abandonment. It retains: Christian language. Christian rituals. Christian infrastructure. But it absorbs market rationality as its operating system. It becomes religiously active yet socially domesticated. The tragedy is that churches are often declining while still unaware that we are operating in the same logic that produced the decline.
Consumer Christianity is not primarily a theological error. It is a structural adaptation to market modernity. And until the structure shifts, the outcomes will not.
Fresh Expressions is not a stylistic innovation. It is a structural experiment.
It asks: What if church were organized around presence rather than programming? What if belonging preceded believing? What if we measured love instead of attendance? What if we stopped asking how to attract consumers and started asking how to form disciples? What if clergy “performance” were evaluated not by how much and how many, but by faithfulness to Jesus in whatever peculiar way each context required? What if fruitfulness mattered more than platform? What if promotions up the franchise ladder were not shaped by politicking, brown-nosing, or ring-kissing, but by the integrity of a person willing to stand in their unique calling and cultivate life in a local community? What if success looked less like climbing and more like rooting in a particular place with a particular people?
Conclusion: “Where Are the Youth?”
Coming back to the magic of chill-bumps. On Friday night, after days of conversation about making space for emerging generations to lead, a panel of youth and young adults were given space to actually lead. They were asked a simple question:
“What does the church need to know about your generation?”
Each response was profound. But I found myself shedding liquid prayers when 22-year-old Sydney said: “A question in my church in my very conservative town is: Where are the youth? Well, I’ll tell you where they are. They’re at a place called the doughnut dungeon in Lexington. The Doughnut Dungeon is the basement of Frank’s Donuts in central Kentucky.”
It’s where the alternative scene gathers. Garage bands. DIY shows. Black jackets with stitched patches. Safety pins. Combat boots. It is not polished. It is not programmed. But it is community.
It is a place where young people are known. Where they are accepted. Where they can express themselves freely without being corrected, categorized, or quietly judged.
And here is the question Sydney posed, not with anger, but with aching clarity: “What are we doing wrong that the doughnut basement is doing right? Why do the youth in Kentucky, or in your town, gravitate to basements, garages, and DIY venues rather than sanctuaries?”
Because in those spaces, they find support from their peers to be who they are. She said, “If you’re looking at me right now and you think this is scary… it gets worse.”
And then she gave us the simplest, most practical theology of evangelism I’ve heard in a long time: “If you see somebody who looks like me, meet them where they’re at. Ask them how they sewed their crust jacket. Tell them what you like to do … Meet us where we are. Accept our interests. Give us a place to speak. Become the doughnut basement guys.”
That’s incarnation. The Doughnut Dungeon isn’t winning young people because it has better production value than the church. It’s winning them because it offers belonging before belief. Presence before pressure. Community before conformity.
And that is precisely what Consumer Christianity struggles to produce. Consumer Christianity builds stages. The Doughnut Dungeon builds space. Consumer Christianity curates experiences. The Doughnut Dungeon cultivates relationships.
Every church does not need to become a garage show. But it may need to remember how to become a basement again. The youth are not absent in our communities. They are present, just not in systems designed for consumption.
T
A MORE RECENT QUOTE - - Michael Adam Bec
Altogether Christianity: The Recovery of Formation
A Companion Guide to Distortions
If the church offers occasional inspiration, while the surrounding culture offers constant, immersive formation, then the outcome is almost inevitable. The system with the greatest consistency, emotional engagement, and relational reinforcement will carry the most influence.
This helps us see more clearly what lies beneath the distortions we have named. Consumer Christianity is not merely a set of misguided beliefs; it is the product of a consumer formation system that trains individuals to approach everything, including faith, as a product to be evaluated and consumed. Christian nationalism is not simply a theological error; it emerges from a powerful blend of political, cultural, and media formation that fuses identity, belonging, and belief. Jesus-less progressivism is not only a matter of weak Christology; it reflects broader cultural narratives that prioritize certain ethical commitments while subtly displacing the centrality of Christ.