Churches used to compare and compete with other churches down the road. You would hear about what another congregation was doing and you would try to repeat it, hijack it, improve it, or do the complete opposite to try to attract disgruntled folks down the road.
With the rise of social media, you can now compete with any church anywhere in the world. When you glance at any social media site on a Sunday afternoon, your feed fills up with people touting numbers or accomplishments from the day. While all these numbers and news reports are exciting, it can feed to rivalry, jealousy, and discontentment.
It has also created a sense of evangelical idolatry. We tend to see a church or a personality that we admire and we lock on to that person or group. Our measure of success is wrapped up in how that person would measure it.
Crawford Lorrits, at the Resurgence 13 Conference, talks about this evangelical idolatry (plus about 27 other great one-liners in the span of 3 1/2 minutes). Check it out here:
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
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