This article from Church Marketing Sucks addresses one of my personal pet peeves in American Christianity: the fact that the church is often a copycat of the world.  When we see something that is cool or successful in the world, we want to use it.  But we don’t use the cool or successful thing.  Instead we have to create our own, “holy” version.  The problem is that the Christian version is never as cool or as successful as the original.

YouTube creates a cool way to post and share video.  Rather than using YouTube, the church creates GodTube, now called Tangle. 

Facebook becomes a great place for people to interact and connect online.  The church responds by creating “Christian Facebook Alternatives” like Faithlight, Faithout (which has the same ad on the frontpage as the most common one on my Facebook page),  or LifeSpace.

There are some great free blogging platforms, such as WordPress, BlogSpot or Vox.  The church responds with things like ChristianBlog.com (where you have to initial a statement of faith saying that yes, in fact you are a child of God in order to register and create a blog) and LifeWithChrist.org.

Twitter becomes a nationwide craze, giving people the chance to talk about what they are doing and seeing what other people are doing, in 140 character bites.  The church responds with alternatives like Gospelr, and according to the xpiritmental blog, Godwitter is coming.

To me, there are a number of problems with this phenomenon.  Not the least of which is the fact that when the church tries to duplicate something, it is almost always inferior to the thing it is trying to copy.  For example, there are hundreds upon hundreds of ways that I could personalize the look of this blog.  If I were willing to pay a little bit of money for additional tools, there would be countless more things I could do.  However, the Christian blogging sites offer few, if any, ways to personalize the look of their blogs.

I am sypathetic to the concerns of people, particularly parents, who want to avoid the seamier side of the internet, but I don’t think a segregated, “Christian” internet is the way to go.  Sure, LifeSpace may not have some of the potential evils of Facebook.  But Facebook gives a way to demonstrate my beliefs and thoughts about God to my friends outside the church.  That won’t happen in a “Christian Facebook Alternative.”  GodTube — excuse me, Tangle — may not have videos that I probably shouldn’t be watching, but it will also never help me develop and practice skills in discernment.

Also, these Christian copycats have a negative impact on people outside the church.  People outside the church, and quite a few inside it for that matter, roll their eyes at these “Christian alternatives,” and people outside the church often think less of us for it.  Some see it as demeaning something that they like.  Others see it as Christians saying “I’m too good to be apart of something you are apart of.”  In either case, it makes it harder for followers of Jesus to reach and have an impact on people who don’t know him yet.

The church doesn’t exist so that Christians can avoid all contact with the rest of the world.  The church exists to help those outside of the church see the love of Jesus.  When we set up a separate, copycat world we separate ourselves from what should be our true mission.