Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude 1:3-4 (NIV)

Being a Christian has everything to do with following Jesus and living out His gospel every day. If we are not intentional about our spiritual walk, we may miss out on the many blessings and benefits that come with abiding in Christ. Many of us allow church culture, rather than the gospel, to define how we live and act. If we're not careful, we can let our church culture take us further away from following Christ.

A lot of what we see in the church today is a product of consumerism.

We have made church life too easy for too many of us. We consume instead of creating, we attend instead of engaging, we take instead of giving. The sight and sound of high-production worship doesn’t necessarily build intimacy and trust with God. When we replace the precious gospel in favour of a gospel of indulgence, churches become brand competitors and followers of Christ become customers of brands.

A church culture can become really toxic and cause a lot of theological confusion and contradictory beliefs. This was the case in many of the New Testament epistles. Jude warns us to watch out for those who contaminate the gospel and twist the truth to their own advantage. When the purity of the gospel is compromised, we lose the ability to believe and act.

How, then, can we free ourselves and our church communities from the culture of consumerism that has permeated the church and recapture the essence of biblical Christianity? We need to return to the simplicity of the gospel, that is to follow the words and way of Jesus. This will free us from getting tangled up with spurious ideas and burdensome rules that have nothing to do with loving God and having a personal relationship with Him.