Redux: "Premiocre" Church
It's like Wayfair for church
An article in the April 2020 issue of The Atlantic entitled, “It’s All So…Premiocre” by Amanda Mull, recounts the author’s adventures in furnishing her new apartment. (It’s enjoyable, you should totally read it). In brief, the challenge she faced was creating an aesthetically pleasing, designer look, at a budget price.
This led her to the conclusion that she would have to settle for what she called “premiocre” furniture. A combination of the words, “premium” and “mediocre”. The term described for her high-quality goods and experiences at affordable prices. As Ms. Mull put it, premiocre goods are the way into “a particular consumer class”. She goes on to say that these kinds of goods “provide a conduit for a person of middling means to transport herself into the lavish life she wants, if only within the highly edited confines of a carefully staged Instagram photo.”
Or put more succinctly as she does a couple of paragraphs later, “things you buy because they’re masquerading as more exceptional than they are.” The ultimate tragedy with her premiocre chairs however, was even though it was easier and cheaper it ultimately led to a dinner guest ending up crashing to the floor!
Wayfair for Church
Reading these words, it struck me; We do ‘premiocre’ Church all the time!
Here’s what I mean. These days, we see what the “big” churches do for their production or their ministry strategy all the time. Week in and week out we are seeing what they are producing and then next week tons of small to medium size churches are doing the same things. Why does this happen? We believe there is something significant that God is doing there and perhaps a little facelift will bring about a similar result.
There is nothing wrong with having a quality production, or learning from other churches strategies, but it can be tempting to look at the form that influential churches are using and simply copy the form. If we try and be the church down the street we will end up a cheap knock off that, once tested, clearly doesn’t do what the original does.
This turns our churches in something akin to Wayfair, mimicking high quality and life changing, but quite cheap in reality. In our desperate attempt to provide a meaningful experience for people we create the illusion of an exceptional community. We long to be a people of significance but often are cheap updates are a thinly veiled veneer, covering of the cracks of a quite normal people.
Normal, by which I just mean, ordinary or everyday, need not be dull or void of God’s work however. It is in our own everyday lives of community that we can find something creatively unique about who we are and what God is doing among us.
Finding A Unique Voice
The Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century centered on a need to resist the over industrialization that was creating homogenous design through mass production. There was no longer uniqueness from place to place. We need a similar movement in our churches today.
We so often settle for the pre-fabricated and ready-made. It is way easier, and I get it, sometimes time is not on our side. But as much as possible, I think there is a space opening up in this time, when there is more digital content than ever coming from churches, to create something that is unique, that isn’t like everything else we come across. That isn’t premiocre, but is authentically us.
Remember, the big influential church you know and love isn’t doing what they are doing because some other church is doing it. As much as I can be cynical of mega-church practices, often they are doing what they are doing because they know who they are. They know their assignment and their context and what works for them. Do what works for your church!
Don’t let someone come to your church gathering as you try and be a people you are not. Don’t let people visit your church and not experience what God is doing among you. Be a real community! Pay attention to what God is doing uniquely in and through you.
Remember, you have to keep people with what you win them with and it’s tough to sustain something that isn’t your true self. Dig deeper, search for the more God has for you and your church and find your own creative instincts instead of succumbing to the same old way of doing things.
Elegance over Entertainment
As I wrote a few weeks ago in my post, “Wrestling with Beauty,” we need Elegance, not Entertainment in the church these days. If our goal is Entertainment we will take the quick, often homogenous route, to do something that quickly catches people’s eye then seek to re-capture their eye week after week.
If our goal is elegance, we will be thoughtful about how God is uniquely working in our communities. We will seek to shape worship services and strategies that form people towards Jesus’ way of life, not just excite. This will take a creative wisdom, that need not be complicated, but it does need to be born out of an authentic community that is truly discerning how God is at work among them.
Let’s not be cheap, friends. The Gospel is far too beautiful for that.
Really enjoyed this read and the metaphor of “Wayfair church.”