How Churches Became Cruise Ships

Passengers no longer board a ship to get from one port to another–that form of transportation has been eclipsed by air travel. But millions do board ships every year as a destination, a vacation at sea, and return to the same port from which they began. In a series of well written posts, Skye Jethani chronicles the rise of the megachurch and its implications for the faith.

“The church-as-destination model hasn’t advanced the church in America, it has consolidated it.Comparing changes in passenger shipping, to church growth.”

There is no neutrality in technology, or method. Every decision we make to do one thing results in a decision not to do another. When Christians embrace a new model of ministry, it is the unintended consequences that are often overlooked.

Read part 1 here.

Part 2 here.

Part 3 here.

Unintended(?) Consequences

I often marvel at the speed at which some in the Evangelical community have abandoned Biblical teaching on marriage, family, and sexuality. Some are stumbling all over themselves to appear to be on the “right side of history,” wherever that side might be, fluid as it is, and are the early adapters of all things not-chaste. In their haste to appear non-judgmental (which, of course, simply shifts the object of their judgment from one set of principles to another), the consequences of bad theology are ignored. This, coupled with bad public policy, places the ever-current Evangelical in stranger and more remote places; strange enough and remote enough that it is fair to ask if they have left altogether.

Stella Morabito of The Federalist lists six reasons that point to a whopper of an unintended consequence. My point in posting this is to ask those who consider themselves Evangelical Christians, is this what you want?