artificial garbage

That is literally what it is called here. We certainly need more of it in the church and in our thinking. I am suggesting that we need to cultivate artificial garbage into the churches activities! Artificial garbage is critical for growth and health! Artificial garbage is what they call fertilizer here :-)

There is nothing needing fertilizer more than the church. Unfortunately we cannot just crank up a mulcher and chop up leaves and banana peels and have the church grow. No, we need Holy Spirit as never before, especially to combat what Ritzer calls the “McDonalization” of the world. While the business world wants everyone to experience the American culture of jeans, T-shirts, Reeboks and junk food - thus the “McDonaldization”, this is a death knell for the church.

It is always amazing to me how people who spend 1000’s of dollars to come a visit here, invariably want to go to our local McDonalds. Mind you, our McDonalds is far superior to the grease-pit experience you would have in most North American MCD’s, it still is just a burger and a fry in the end. No, I am starting to believe that they want the known rather than an actual burger and fry. That is actually what McDonalds is marketing around the world - a stable experience no matter where you are in the world. And let me tell you, when you are desperate for a bathroom, you know you can always find a reasonably clean one in . . . well, McDonalds of course.

But this McDonaldization in the church is deadly, literally. Today I had a conversation with the National Church President here that I have waited eight years to have . . . he told me . . . finally . . . we need a Macedonian expression of the Gospel here . . . that the Americanization (read McDonaldization) of the gospel around the world is, he believes, actually preventing most people from even considering the gospel in any serious manner. It becomes just another idea import, rather than being the same gospel that was first preached in the world right here 2000 years ago!!

Our president is right on the mark. It opened the door for a frank assessment of what might need to change in order for a movement of people toward God to happen here . . . for thousands to come to Christ, rather one here and one there . . . occasionally. Artificial garbage is needed everywhere, but nowhere more than here.