When the Church Has to Feed the Machine
Have we built a church model that we now need people to sustain?
There’s a question I haven’t been able to shake lately: What if the church model we built to reach people has become a model we now need people to sustain?
I know that’s a loaded question. And before anybody takes this somewhere I’m not trying to go, this isn’t an attack on big churches. I’m not against church buildings, programs, technology, staff, contemporary worship, or doing things with excellence. I spent years in ministry. I understand why churches do these things, and most of the time I believe they begin with really good intentions.
We want to reach people. We want someone who hasn’t stepped inside a church in twenty years to feel comfortable walking through the doors. We want our children to want to be there. We want the music to sound good, the sermon to connect, the building to be welcoming, and people to leave wanting to come back.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
But I wonder if somewhere along the way there has been a slow fade.
We wanted to reach people, so we became seeker-friendly. We wanted them to come back, so naturally we started paying more attention to the experience. Production got better. Programs got bigger. Facilities got nicer. Branding got sharper. Staffing structures grew. We learned to do Sunday morning really, really well.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we started using a word I’ve heard countless times in church ministry:
Excellence.
I’m not against excellence. We should do things well. Being unprepared, disorganized, or careless isn't somehow more spiritual. If we're going to do something, there is nothing wrong with wanting to do it well.
But I’ve started wondering if sometimes we hide behind the word “excellence” because we don’t want to deal with what some of this can become.
Consumerism.
That’s harder to talk about.
It Was a Slow Fade
I don't think churches intentionally set out to create consumers. That's exactly why I call this a slow fade.
We want people to come, so we create an environment they want to attend. Once they come, we want them to return, so we keep improving what we offer. Better children's ministry. Better music. Better technology. Better environments. More programs. More options.
Then people naturally begin evaluating churches by what those churches offer.
Do I like the worship? Does the pastor keep my attention? Is there enough for my kids? What programs do they have? How long is the service? What can this church offer my family?
Before long, churches can feel the pressure to keep offering more because there is another church ten minutes down the road offering something else.
That's where I think the line can start getting blurry.
The church produces, and people consume. Because people consume, the church has to keep producing.
Eventually we can find ourselves in a place where we don't just want people to come because we want to reach them. We need them to come because the system we've built depends on them.
That should make us uncomfortable.
Somebody Has to Keep It Going
Think about what happens as a church grows. More people usually means more ministry, and more ministry often means more staff, more programs, larger facilities, more technology, more administration, and greater financial commitments.
Again, none of that is automatically bad.
Pastors and staff should be compensated. Buildings cost money to operate. Children's ministry costs money. Technology costs money. Ministry requires resources.
But once all of that infrastructure exists, somebody has to sustain it.
More people can mean more giving. More giving supports more staff, programs, buildings, production, and infrastructure. Then all of that infrastructure requires people to continue attending and giving.
It's a cycle.
And that's where something subtle can happen.
Growth stops being only something we celebrate because people are encountering Jesus. Growth can become something the organization needs to keep operating at its current level.
I don't think that necessarily means anybody is greedy. That's too simplistic. A pastor can genuinely love Jesus, genuinely care about people, and still find himself leading an organization with enormous financial and operational pressure.
Nobody necessarily planned for the machine to become this big.
It just grew.
And now somebody has to feed it.
When Did Making Disciples Become Keeping Consumers?
That brings me to the question underneath all of this:
When did making disciples start becoming about keeping consumers satisfied?
Jesus' commission wasn't complicated. He told His followers to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20).
A disciple isn't simply someone who attends something. They are someone who follows Jesus, who learns and changes as they become more like the one they are following. We are all being discipled by someone or something.
And that's where our normal measurements get complicated.
We can measure attendance. We can measure giving. We can count baptisms, memberships, small-group participation, social-media engagement, and how many people attended Easter.
Those numbers aren't meaningless. They represent real people, and even Acts occasionally tells us how many people were being added to the early Church.
But how do you measure spiritual maturity?
How do you put Christlikeness on a spreadsheet?
How do you measure someone becoming more patient with their spouse? Someone finally learning how to forgive? Someone opening their home to a lonely person? Someone quietly helping a family that can't pay its electric bill? Someone learning Scripture well enough to help another believer understand it? Someone remaining faithful to Jesus when their entire life falls apart?
Those things don't always make impressive annual reports.
But that's discipleship.
Barna has found that discipleship remains uneven among American Christians. In one study, 39% of Christians said they weren't engaged in discipleship either by being discipled or discipling someone else. Other research has found that relationships—including mentors, small groups, and family—remain important places where discipleship actually happens.
That makes sense to me.
Because a lot of spiritual formation simply cannot happen from a stage.
It happens in relationship.
Maybe Other People Noticed Before We Did
This may be one of the hardest parts for the American Church to hear.
Maybe we barely noticed the slow fade until other people did.
The long-term numbers are difficult to ignore. Pew Research Center's 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of American adults identify as Christian, compared with 78% in 2007. During that same period, the religiously unaffiliated share grew from 16% to 29%.
Those numbers do not prove that seeker-friendly churches, large buildings, worship production, or consumer Christianity caused people to leave. I think we need to be intellectually honest about that. People leave churches and Christianity for many different reasons, and loss of belief itself is a major one.
But some of the other answers people give should still make us pay attention.
Pew has found that among religiously unaffiliated Americans, 55% say dislike of religious organizations, bad experiences with religious people, or both are important reasons they're nonreligious. PRRI has likewise found leadership scandals among the reasons some Americans give for changing religious traditions.
We shouldn't manipulate those statistics to make them prove our argument.
But we shouldn't ignore them either.
People noticed things.
People started walking away. People started asking harder questions. People started questioning institutions they once trusted. Some started saying that what they were experiencing wasn't enough.
And maybe our first response shouldn't always be to tell them why they're wrong.
Maybe sometimes we need to listen.
Maybe People Aren't Finished With Jesus
There is another part of this story that I find incredibly interesting because the picture isn't simply that Americans don't want anything to do with Jesus anymore.
Pew has reported that the long decline in Christian identification appears to have slowed in recent years and may have temporarily leveled off. Barna reported in 2025 that 66% of American adults said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus that remained important in their lives, an increase from 54% in 2021.
There's also evidence that relationships matter deeply to younger Christians. In Barna research asking Christians to choose between a thought-provoking sermon and strong relationships with other Christians, Gen Z and Millennials were especially likely to choose relationships.
That gets my attention.
Maybe people aren't simply looking for a better show.
Maybe some are hungry for something real.
Community. Belonging. Truth. Relationships. A place where somebody actually knows their name. A place where difficult questions can be asked. A faith that doesn't end when the Sunday service does.
In other words, maybe they're hungry for discipleship.
The Alternative Isn't Less Church
This is where I want to be especially careful, because criticism of institutional Christianity can easily swing too far in the other direction.
I am not suggesting that the answer is less Church.
I'm not talking about isolated Christians sitting at home with a Bible and deciding they don't need anybody else. I'm not suggesting abandoning the local church. I'm certainly not suggesting that podcasts, livestreams, social media, or individual spirituality can replace Christian community.
We need the Church.
We need each other.
The New Testament doesn't give us a picture of Christianity lived in isolation. Acts 2:42–47 describes believers devoted to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. They shared life together. Hebrews 10:24–25 tells believers not to neglect gathering together, but to encourage one another. Paul describes the Church in 1 Corinthians 12 as a body whose individual members need one another.
Christian community isn't optional to discipleship. It's part of discipleship.
So maybe the alternative isn't less Church.
Maybe it's less machinery around it.
Does Anybody Actually Know You?
What if we started with people and discipleship and built everything else around that?
Instead of asking how many programs we can offer, maybe we ask whether those programs are helping people follow Jesus and actually know one another.
Instead of only asking, “Did they attend?” maybe we start asking another question:
Does anybody know them?
Does anybody notice when they're gone?
Does somebody know when their marriage is falling apart?
Does someone know they're sitting in a hospital waiting room?
Does somebody know they've started questioning their faith?
Does somebody know they lost their job?
Does somebody celebrate with them when life is good and sit beside them when everything falls apart?
That's Church.
You can sit in a room with 5,000 people every Sunday and still be completely alone.
You can also sit in a room with fifty people and be completely alone.
This isn't really about size.
It's about whether we've built community.
Sunday Still Matters
I also don't think the answer is minimizing the Sunday gathering.
Sunday matters.
There is something important about the people of God physically gathering to worship, hear Scripture, pray, receive Communion, encourage one another, and remember together who we are and whose we are.
Maybe Sunday simply needs to return to its proper place.
Sunday is where the Church gathers. It was never supposed to be the only place the Church functions.
The Church leaves the building and continues being the Church.
People gather around dinner tables. They open their homes. They study Scripture together. Older believers walk alongside younger believers. People pray for each other. Families help families. Someone brings dinner when a baby is born. Somebody sits in the emergency room when everything falls apart. Someone asks the uncomfortable question when a brother or sister starts drifting.
That's difficult to manufacture.
It isn't flashy.
It doesn't necessarily photograph well for Instagram.
But that's community.
And here's the thing about genuine community:
You can't consume it.
Real community requires something from you.
You have to show up. You have to know people and allow yourself to be known. You have to forgive people when they frustrate you. You have to serve when it's inconvenient. You have to listen. You have to carry someone else's burden.
And eventually you have to become vulnerable enough to let someone carry yours.
That's very different from walking into a building, watching something excellent for seventy-five minutes, and leaving without anybody really knowing you were there.
