“Church Consumerism” is a term roughly defined as “shopping for a church family similar to how consumers shop for things in the open market.”
About a week ago I posted a blog post about how there is a lot of rhetoric that keeps people in bad churches, and keeps them from feeling freedom to look for a new one. After I posted that post, someone on FB replied simply that he “didn’t like the defense of church consumerism” in the post. That really got me thinking – I really don’t believe that I *had* defended church consumerism in that post, at least not directly. But now that the idea was mentioned, I just couldn’t resist. Ergo, I shall now begin this post as an all-out “Defense of Church Consumerism.” Why? Because the meme that “church consumerism is an awful, nonspiritual, wrong, detrimental thing which has no place in…
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James' Ramblings 
Thanks for re-posting this. I recall sociologist Rodney Stark saying that religion as a whole tends to thrive in highly competitive “markets,” in which each church/sect/etc. must strive to provide the most value to potential “customers.” In contrast, monopoly churches, like monopoly businesses, tend to grow lazy and their members/customers become apathetic. (The example he gave was of the state churches in Europe.)
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Good point.
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