I was struck by this paragraph as he quotes some researchers commenting on the waywardness of colleges to fulfill their primary responsibilities as academic institutions (please read the whole article to get the context):
The dilemma, says Arum and Roska, is that schools have come to care more about such things as “admission yields, graduation rates, faculty research productivity, pharmaceutical patents, deluxe dormitory rooms, elaborate student centers and state-of-the-art athletic facilities complete with luxury boxes” than a quality education. Or more succinctly, “Colleges have abandoned responsibility for shaping students’ academic development and instead have come to embrace a service model that caters to satisfying students’ expressed desires.”
It's that last sentence that caused me to think about many churches today. Maybe we could change a few words and it would read like this: "[Many] churches have abandoned responsibility for shaping [church members' spiritual maturity] and instead have come to embrace a [consumer/customer] model that caters to satisfying [church members'] expressed desires."
May God save us from our consumer mentality.
What do you think?
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