Apples to Apples?

When I lived in Plumville there was this little hardware store next to the post office, it was run by a family who lived in a house next door to the hardware store.  It was packed to the rafters with tools and paint and well, hardware.  When you went in, you didn't really browse, in fact you didn't really move around that much at all, it was sort of like a closet with stuff hanging all over.  You told the proprietor what you wanted, they got it for you, told you how much it was and you paid for it.  It was pretty straightforward.  Honestly, they had most things that you would need and would order things for you if they didn't.  After a couple of visits to the hardware store, as someone who has become thoroughly accustomed to the age of giant box stores like WalMart, Lowes, Best Buy and Home Depot, I kind of fell in love with that little store.
Eventually, the store closed, like so many other local businesses in small rural towns have.  The folks wanted to retire, and they couldn't find anyone who wanted to take over the business.  Honestly it was a hard sell, you were never going to get rich, you were going to be limited by how much stuff you could fit into that little store, and how many hours you could spend there finding nuts and bolts for local people working on a project or farmers fixing something around the farm.  The town actually mourned a little bit for that store, as they did for the little mom and pop diner across the road that also became the victim of retirement.
The thing is, there just didn't seem to be any way to keep them going.  They weren't really competitive with the big guys and, no matter how much love they got from their people, there just weren't enough people.  Numbers never lie, and that is the sad and crushing reality of the world we live in.
These days there are little buds of something happening though.  Buy local movements, micro agriculture, micro finance, micro breweries (praise God from whom all blessings flow).  People will sometimes go out of their way to support a small independent retailer rather than Wal-Mart, which is probably cheaper and probably more convenient, because they value the smallness and they want to support the local economy.  I love going to Farmer's Markets in the summer time and getting really good produce, rather than to the big chain grocery stores.  But these things are just blips on the radar, and will probably always remain merely luxuries for those who are privileged enough to access that way of consuming.
I don't have much hope that our economic reality will ever change back to the way it was, and given that those in the retail industry, large or small, are 100% beholden to consumer preferences and market forces, I don't know if there is anything to be done other than protect what will always be a small and flickering flame.
Now church is a different story, maybe, I hope.  Admittedly, churches have bit and swallowed some very problematic ideas over the past fifty years or so.  We run things with a highly business oriented mind, and often the success or failure of our congregations is determined by whether or not we do some rather un-spiritual things well: budget, advertise, maintain "customer" satisfaction, and grow our market share.  Some churches have done it well, and are not shy about telling you how it "ought" to be done.  Others have had more trouble, and I'm tempted to think that perhaps we are caught in a wicked snare of very much the same design as the one that captured our beloved little hardware store, namely consumerism.
Consumerism is more than just an idea, it is an ideology that tell us that we need to buy a little bit more, or find something a little bit better. Consumerism does not look at the broken things on the floor and go about figuring out how to fix things, it rather wants to find new things to replace the old.  Consumerists does not look at something like a church (or a hardware store) as a relationship to be entered into, but as a thing that can and should meet their needs.
One of the things that I observed in our little hardware store was that it was the kind of place you would go if you needed to fix something that was broken, but rather not the sort of place you would go to buy a whole new thing.  For instance, do you need a spark plug or a replacement blade for your lawnmower?  They probably have that.  Do you want a bigger, better lawnmower? Maybe not, or they might not have the selection or the price range you were looking for.  They didn't try to market lumber or masonry raw materials, they didn't sell in bulk, they just did what they did, and there was/is value in that.
Whenever I run into a little place like that, I always catch myself thinking, "wow they just don't do it like this much anymore."  And to be honest I think that's a little sad.  I wonder if, fifty years from now, people will think the same thing about churches.  I wonder if we're not already a ways down that road.  I wonder if there is anything we can do to turn and repent.