What the Church Needs Now is...

Love, sweet love.

And a much sharper socio-economic critique.

I know. This is not new territory. But this week, I hit my threshold of intolerance for new church plants. I watched a video for a church plant not far from my own neighborhood. It was full of shiny, serious/happy, beautiful white people "dreaming of what God will do" in their new church. Enough. This is the 600th video like this that I've seen. It's aesthetics and marketing savvy. I'm sure they're awesome people who love Jesus. But God does not need this church.

The world simply does not need more churches trying to "create community" and "do church in a new way."

The world needs people willing to throw themselves into the gears of the free-market system. The church needs people willing to be downwardly mobile for Jesus. The world needs Christians who want to dismantle the systems that create gross inequities among God's children.

I'd like to see a new church development that focuses on:

1. Campaign finance reform
2. Community economic development
3. Calling attention to individual and corporate tax cheats
4. Environmental sustainability

Jesus' image of salvation IS personal and existential. But it becomes that in and through engagement with the machinery of empire.

Why aren't there more new churches with a coherent socio-economic analysis?