This past Sunday we kicked off the first message in our new series, “You’ve Got Mail.” I’m sorry that we weren’t able to get it recorded, we may have had a bad CD.

In outlining Jesus’ letter to the church in Ephesus, I pointed out that He praised them for their diligence, doctrine and discipline. As I was unpacking the first of those three points, I noted that the Ephesians were a hard-working, persevering group of believers (Rev. 2:2). They had rolled up their sleeves and were actively involved in ministry in spite of all the ups and downs that are a part of the Christian life (vs. 3).

Biblically, that’s called discipleship. A disciple is someone who follows Christ.

But I went on to make the point that in many places today, the church seems to have gotten this turned around. In an effort to leverage popular culture to attract more people, I worry that we’ve turned the gospel into a commodity that needs to be marketed (I blogged about that here).

Sadly, that’s spawned a generation of church ‘shoppers and hoppers’ that blow in and out of churches as consumers wanting to know, “What’s in it for me? What’s this church got to offer me?” And just like the businesses up the street, many churches are now looking for ways to advertise and package their ‘product’ in a way that will both get and keep more ‘customers.’

Well as a follow-up to that, I wanted to pass along a blog post that touches on this subject from a slightly different perspective. Jason Helopoulos has written about some the reasons why people leave churches. His post has created a flurry of comments, some agreeing wholeheartedly, others disagreeing quite strongly, particularly about what he considers to be insufficient reasons for leaving a church:

Here’s a link to his post.

After reading through his final list of (insufficient) reasons, I couldn’t help but think that all eight seem to have their roots in this modern day current of “consumer-oriented” religion. What do you think?