I had the pleasure to work at an Apple Store for a few years. Yes, it has amazing products and an impeccably designed space, but more than anything, it works to cultivate a culture.
Best I can tell, “Church Membership” is a remnant of Christendom denominations use to distinguish themselves. The idea was that you become a member of a certain local church. This was usually denoted by a formal catechism or a conversion experience. You are more or less a member for life, and are expected to transfer said membership to a church of the same denomination if you move. More recent churches that can be traced by to the Church Growth movement of the 80s developed membership classes, which seem like basically a soft catechesis.
The world desperately needs our churches to be the Church well. This means clearly articulating how one learns and follows the way of Jesus in our culture (a disciple), and then articulating what it is that a disciple does. Discipleship cannot happen in a vacuum. Church is the community that naturally occurs because following Jesus always has relational implications. All communities have a culture.
Church membership (for lack of a better word) should describe the expectations of a person who has chosen to associate with the framework for discipleship that a local church uses. The process of discipleship cannot be extricated from the culture it takes place within.
Many aspects of the way of Jesus are unique. Creating culture, on the other hand, is not. Churches can and should learn from anyone who does culture well. Here are seven ideas that I learned from the Apple Store that will help.
1. Onboarding is EVERYTHING.
When I started at Apple, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near a store. They took us offsite, where we learned about Apple history, our expected behavior and each other. We didn’t even touch computers for the first week! Sometimes, it feels like churches are saying “sign here, and you’re a member”. Apple takes a few weeks. Jesus spent three years. Why don’t we take time on the front end to create a culture?
2. Learn to talk nice.
When people ask what we did in sales training at Apple, I tell them we pretty much focused on how to talk to people without being a jerk. At Apple, we were taught specific methods of listening without assuming, asking meaningful questions, and building relational bridges. We weren’t told to be nice. We were given tools to express respect and care for others.
Dallas Willard said that the lack of a “curriculum for Christlikeness” was the elephant in the church.
“We must begin to think about what, exactly, we would do to help people …[learn] to do the things Jesus taught so that they would actually come to do them routinely. …How would we train ourselves to ‘learn from Jesus how to live our life as he would live it if he were we’?”
One recognizable feature of “members” should be how they speak. This doesn’t mean avoiding four letter words. If Christians can learn to listen and speak with their families, other Christians and those with whom they disagree, it will go a long way toward presenting Jesus’s kingdom to the world.
3. What we wear matters.
You know when you go to an Apple Store you’ll be greeted by some kid in a blue t-shirt. What we wear carries expectations and responsibilities. Over the last few hundred years, we’ve seen church’s expectations on clothing be boiled down to rules for modesty (that only applied to women), and Sunday dress, and then abandoned altogether.
This is a far cry from the Christian tradition of dressing “modestly”. Inspired by the words of Jesus, “do not worry about what you wear” centuries of Christians have come up with codes of dressing modestly. For the monks, it was a plain robe and belt. Puritans were known for their somber colors, and Quakers for their plain clothing. At their purest, these are not personality-squelching rules. They are a method for expressing a philosophy that what is on the outside is not as important as the inside.
What if church members were recognizable by how they dressed? Could we redefined modesty to express Jesus’s values? Perhaps today it would mean relying on second-hand clothing, so we had more disposable income to give to the poor. It might mean only buying clothing that was produced humanely, where workers were paid a fair wage.
4. Membership should be really, really exclusive.
While at Apple, I often heard that it was easier to get into an Ivy League school than to get a job at the store. I have no idea how to research this, but I know it created a sense of unique, exclusive community.
The Post-Christendom church needs to revisit the idea of exclusivity. The gospel is unequivocally for every man, woman and child. Following Jesus, on the other hand, is very tough. Jesus said things like “sell all your stuff and follow me.” The people who are actually willing to do this would make a rather exclusive club. Church membership should be for anyone, but it should never be easy.
5. Never speak poorly of others.
Apple is a superior product. Because of that, they have no need to speak poorly of others, whether competitors or customers. We were taught to “always assume positive intent“and to never insult a competitor. You can never build yourself up by pushing someone else down.
You might say “Wait! Jesus was critical of the scribes and the Pharisees!” This is true, but you must keep in mind that Jesus always focuses on the wrongness of their actions. Also, Jesus restricted his debates to Jewish religious leaders. His arguments were more akin to family squabbles than to public smear campaigns.
And he was Jesus.
What if church members handled their disputes in-house? What if they never spoke poorly of those with different politics or religion? If God is on your side, there’s no excuse for being mean.
6. Know Goliath’s height.
In 2003, Apple took out ads in newspapers across the country describing their market share goals, saying “5 down, 95 to go.” As Apple employees, we knew we had a great product, and we knew exactly what we were up against.
The Bible gives a lot of details about Goliath. We know he was 6½ cubits, or 9 feet 7 inches tall, what he was wearing, and how many siblings he had. As the church carves out its place in a post-Christendom world, we need to know what we’re up against. Our Goliaths include broken ways of doing church, self-righteous secularism, hard-to-navigate pluralisms, broken systems that hurt and enslave our fellow human beings and the powers and principalities.
Members need to know who their Goliath is, how tall he is, and how to respond to it in a Jesus-like manner.
7. Spend enough time together to like each other.
When I was at Apple, we didn’t just work together. We ate together. We went to movies together. We got apartments together. And we partied together. A lot. I got so tired I had to institute an “only two Apple parties a week” rule.
Sunday morning friendships aren’t enough. If the church is really a counter offer to the way the world does community, we have to find a way to rearrange our lives so that we spend enough time together that we actually like each other.
What do you think is missing from church membership?
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