Book Review of the McDonaldization of the Church (Consumer Culture and Church's Future)
Book
Review of the McDonaldization of the Church (Consumer Culture and
Church's Future)
John
Drane
- Introduction
The
McDonaldization of the Church (Consumer Culture and Church's Future),
published by Smyth and Helwys Publishing Inc., Georgia USA in 2001.
John William Drane started to write this book on 1980s. This
book is one of the most heart searching book that he ever written1.
The
author of this book
,
John William Drane, was a Head of Practical Theology in the
Department of Divinity at the university of Aberdeen. Then, by the
end of 2004 he had resigned from that post and is currently a
self-employed consultant working with churches of many different
denominations throughout the United Kingdom as well as
internationally2.
He also teaches at some seminaries as Fuller Theological Seminary,
visiting scholar at Spurgeon's college, visiting Fellow of St. John's
College, Durham and some other places. He wrote some books which are
best selling book such as : Introducing
the Old Testament
(3rd
edition 2011)and Introducing
the New Testament (3rd
edition 2010)
, The
McDonaldization of the Church (2000),
and After
McDonaldization (2008).
On
his book The McDonaldization of the Church, John Drane critiques the
ways the church functions in contemporary society. John Drane stated
that previous generation, the forebearers, had done a good job of
contextualizing the gospel into the culture of their day. But we in
our generation seemed to be disconnected from the previous
generations vision and enthusiasm. Some of the churches become museum
pieces, only as memorable of their works of the past. On
his website John Drane stated about his book3
:
“In
my best-selling books, The McDonaldization of the Church (published
in 2000 by Darton Longman & Todd in the UK, and Smyth &
Helwys in the USA), and then in After McDonaldization (Darton Longman
& Todd and Baker Academic, 2008) I have suggested that
Christianity has become over-rationalized in a way that prevents the
message of Jesus from being heard by today’s people. There is a
growing consensus among Christians of many different traditions that
without
radical reform, church as we know it has no future.”
In
this book, John Drane tried to engage with the challenge facing the
Church in the context of the rapid and, to a large extend,
unpredictable cultural change that we see around us4.
- Summary of the Book
On
the first chapter about Cultural
Change in Personal Perspective, John
Drane started with questions “What are the significant issues that
concern him in relation to the present state and future destiny of
the Christian Church in Western culture?”; “How and why he
arrived at this particular understanding of the situation?”.
The
writer exposed the some facts as: all the historic mainline churches
are struggling, the protestant churches seemed to be have no future,
average members of church attendants in Britain and Australasia are
over fifty years old, and younger generation have lost their interest
in the church. There are some dissatisfications from the un-church
people in England that the church could not enrich their own or their
children's live. There is a reality of “competition” or tension
of activities of the church and non religious leisure activities.
As response to this reality, we require to search the need of
post-modern people, and discover what a vibrant community of faith
might need to look like to address this need5.
Further John Drane exposed that many people left the church not
because of the lost of the faith, but simply because they have had
enough of intemperate behaviour and oppressive attitudes6.
On
the second chapter of Rational System and Human Values, he emphasized
that the chursh's primary concern must always be for people. In most
of area of life, rationalized system is growing in human activities
include recreation, industrial manufactures, sex; most of every point
of life controlled by rationality. Here John Drane gives a critique
to the church, “if the church offers the same things as the
rationalized world of work, why should people who are oppressed
elsewhere in their lives expect to find a resolution by joining the
church?”7.
Human being performed like robot and denied their humanity, we are
captured by the iron cage of a Mc Donaldized world. May be one of the
reason why people lost interest in what church seems to offer are the
rationality behind all things in the church, there is only one true
way to do things, include in our personal growth and spirituality,
and all done with church's neat spiritual formulations.
The
word “McDonaldization” is used to describe the destructive and
dehumanizing effects of social rationalization under the influence of
modernist thinking8.
There are four key element as the characteristics of the
McDonaldization process: efficiency,
calculability, predictability, and control.
And in chapter 3 of his book, John Drane gave the reason why people
struggle so much with this characteristics, and he explain about the
strengths and weaknesses of this characteristics in our church today.
The issue of power and control become the heart of McDonaldization
process which has rapidly influenced our church today.
In
chapter fourth “Whom are we trying to reach?” John Drane stated
that our church today faced inescapable reality that the church as we
know is in decline. But on the other side there is a fact that we
live in a time when the over search for spirituality meaning has
never been more intense than it is now9.
We need to understand the key characteristic of our post-moderns
world today is that people do not like to be pigeonholed, they do not
like being treated with restrictive and inauthentic way. And we need
to understand their deep need and adjust to this need rather than to
force our standards to them.
In
this postmodern world, Drane offered seven distinct groups to whom
the church will need to relate to fulfill its evangelistic mandate:
the desperate poor, the hedonists, the traditionalists, the spiritual
searchers, the corporate achievers, the secularists, and the
apathetics. Drane stated that we need to find ways of reinventing the
Church so that we can relate the gospel to the family and community
orientation of such people10.
Our ministry have to focus and address to personal needs of these
people in their context.
In chapter 5, 6 and
7 Drane explores about worship, spiritual gifts, and telling story in
the bible. And in chapter 8 Drane talked about “dreaming the church
of the future”. For Drane, a blue print for the church of the
future is a church that would be as open and welcoming to the
desperate poor as to the spiritual searcher and other distinct
groups. The church today stands at a cross roads, we can either
continue with the modernist approach: views authority rooted in
universal methodology; or we can construct a different sort of
authority based on personal, individual experience and freely
acknowledging the kind of ambiguities and uncertainties of the human
experience in the post modern age. We need to find a new way in the
context of rapid cultural change to empower the message of the Gospel
for the post-modern age society.
3.
Response of the Book
I think this book is
based on a western perspective and context. We see the reality that
in western countries which was before a “Christendom” but now
changing to secular society. In Europe for example, the Christianity
is a thing of the past. The magnificent buildings in Europe churches
now is empty, only few people attend the service weekly in the
church compare to the capacity of the church building. Some of the
church convert the function as bars or cafe or any other secular
functions. The churches become museum pieces which portrayed its
magnificent only for the past. Christianity has been declined in
European society.
I
agree with John Drane that the previous generations had done a good
job of contextualizing the gospel in their generations, but we fail
to contextualize to our generations of the post-modern age. We still
use our McDonaldization ways which is very strict, dogmatic and
follow the same standard (standard package) in our approach to build
the church: We debate of our using of liturgy, whether used
traditional or contemporary music. We closed the door for the change
our liturgy, our worship became mechanical and lacking of spirit. In
McDonaldization, there is no room for something quite different,
everything have to be scrutinized by reason, through the mind,
setting aside emotions and intuitions11.
In McDonaldization,
everything have to be rationalized. And this become the weaknesses of
our church today, when the church also becomes over rationalize of
everything in the church. This makes people from outside the church
said that there is no differences between the church and the world,
the church also used the same standard with the world.
John Drane opens a
new way of thinking of the future of the church which needs to be
contextualized with the current culture. He also exposed the reality
of our today context. In our post modern era today, a lot of people
reject the truth offered by church not only because they reject the
truth itself, but also because of how the people inside of the church
run the church. Sometimes in the church we find that there is no room
for differences. The desperate poor, the hedonists, the
traditionalists, the spiritual searchers, the corporate achievers,
the secularists, and the apathetics cannot find their space in the
church. The church could not answer their need. They reject come to
the church because of routine worship and boring sermon. They lost
the true meaning of church in their life because they cannot find a
church which open and connect to their needs .
I hope we can find
our way to reach the next post modern generation and find a
contextual approach to share the gospel with them. John Drane opens
the way with this book. In our ministry today, this book becomes an
alarm for us to remind us that our world today is changing and we
need to understand the need of our world today in bringing the Gospel
to this generation. We need to be sensitive to the real need of this
age, and exercise flexibility in accepting changing in our ministry.
We need to open the door for a new guidance by the Holy Spirit about
how we do our ministry to meet the need of our society today in the
post modern world.
1John
Drane, The
McDonaldization of the Church, ( Georgia: Smyth and Helwys
Publishing Inc, 2001), p.1
2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drane
3http://www.johndrane.com/
6John
Drane, op.cit, p.12
7John
Drane, p. 35
8John
Drane, p. 39
9John
Drane, p. 65
10John
Drane, p.93
11John
Drane 198
