Fast Food Churches

American culture has a love affair with fast-food. We crave the taste, we appreciate the convenience, and we love the speed of getting our order and being on our way. We certainly have a plethora of fast-food restaurants to choose from. There is nothing wrong with enjoying some fast-food occasionally. However, I am afraid that this fast-food mentality has affected our outlook upon our church going.

When you go into McDonalds you can purchase a “Happy Meal”. Kids are delighted with the colorful box and the toy inside. Churches too are tempted to serve up happy meals. As long as we preach joyful, uplifting messages and choose programs that meet the felt needs of the congregation, people are happy. If everything is positive people will go away with a smile on their face but an empty space in their heart.

Some churches are like Burger King. “Have it your way” is the slogan that is on everyone’s mind. “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce” becomes, hold the teaching about a holy walk and hold the verses on God’s judgement. Have it your way was the song those surrounding the Tower of Babel must have sung as they were building their own way to heaven. But Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

An old Wendy’s commercial pictured an elderly lady coming into a fast-food restaurant that served burgers on fluffy buns. The lady said to her friends: “Where’s the beef”. Where indeed is the beef in our churches. Positive thinking and self-help sermons have replaced the preaching of the Word.

Fast food is probably here to stay. But my prayer is that the churches of Jesus Christ will choose to be a place that serves a healthy diet of careful and passionate exposition of scripture. Hearing the whole counsel of God should be our diet from the pulpit every Sunday. If our church resembles a fast-food restaurant, perhaps we can be like Arby’s who boldly advertises, “We have the meat”.