Should we really have a target audience in Worship?

Something that really drives me nuts about evangelical Christianity is the way we have turned it into a business.  We have something to market and sell.  I guess when you are trying to save the world from eternal damnation, you have to make the product look as attractive as possible.

The problem is, in making the “product” look as attractive as possible, we really dumb down what the gospel is all about.  Instead of teaching Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Savior of mankind, we market him as a fix all for all of our problems. 

No wonder so many become disillusioned with faith in God, because they did not become rich after coming to faith, or they did not have all illness healed.  Everything was not pretty and Rosy.

We tend to ignore the part of the Bible that states “in this world you will have trouble”  John 16:33 (Read on to what Jesus says) We are given hope here yes, we can have the peace of God when all hell breaks loose.  Hell will break loose, things will not always be good in this life, so lets stop trying to fool people into thinking it will.  (thanks to Rick McKinley for re-opening my eyes to this truth in his book This Beautiful Mess)

The other thing that really bugs me about the “marketing” of Christianity is the whole target audience thing.  My least favorite phrase is “this service is meant to target____”

This is problematic for me in a few ways.  It’s problematic because we tend to dumb down the gospel to the genie in the lamp tool who is simply here to meet my need.  I’m not at all saying that God does not meet my need, but I really don’t think he cares whether or not I get the good parking spot because I prayed to him to help me.

It is also problematic because it can tend to add to the individualistic nature of our society.  Where it is me first and I’ll think about others if it suits my need, or as long as it doesn’t make me uncomfortable.  We prove this point by having target audiences and making worship about our desires and tastes.  Worship becomes about what pleases me instead of what pleases God.  It also gives headway to the lie that Salvation is a personal choice that is between one person and God.  It’s becomes private and something I can be comfortable keeping to myself.

It is problematic because it creates marginalization and segregation.  When we have a target audience, we have a deliberate set of people we are trying to reach and the others…not so much.   We might try to make sure that there is inclusion for everyone, but in targeting specific groups we are sure to leave people out. 

When we sell Jesus to target audiences we tend to segregate old from young, men from women, singles from marrieds, rich from poor, etc etc the list could go on, I’m sure you get what I mean. 

When we have a target audience, we disassemble the community that God intended for us.  We water down the message of the gospel and what it means to live in the kingdom of God now. 

There is no easy solution, sure I believe that God meets us where we are, but I also highly doubt he wants to leave us there.  So how do we create genuine community living in the kingdom of God?  I think we need to go back to the basics and look at how Jesus did it.  Stop trying to sell the kingdom of God, and just live the kingdom of God….maybe that’s how evangelism should work. 

It’s funny, the tradition I grew up in (The Salvation Army) in it’s early days didn’t seem to care much what people thought of them and although you might argue that they had a “target audience”  they did not seem to be selling a popular version of Christianity.  What’s funny about it, is it seems that when the army was under fire for it’s practices (people were being thrown in jail, mocked, beat up etc) those are the times when the army grew the fastest and the most and many people met Jesus Christ.   Maybe there is a lesson in our roots.