Branding the church

Neil Cole posted something interesting yesterday regarding the branding of churches with "church mergers" and the trend toward multi-site megachurches. His post, Cole-Slaw: Church: No Longer "Business" As Usual! is pretty blunt. Here are a couple of good quotes:

In the Bible the church is not defined but instead is described with pictures: a flock, a field, a family, a body, a bride, a branch, a building made of living stones. Never is it described by the pictures we typically have today: a building (w/ and address made of the non-living stones with stained glass a steeple and a sign with a logo), a business, a school or a hospital. We have substituted an organic and life producing view for an institutional one that does not produce life but at best simply tries to preserve it and contain it...

...The predominate way of seeing the church today contains, conforms and controls the people. The biblical pictures of the NT are all about releasing and reproducing the life of the church...

That and more. Good stuff! I really liked the idea of the church as described more than defined. We are not given lists of things on a to-do list for Sunday morning (or even told to meet primarily on Sunday morning in the first place!). Instead we are told what the church is like and from that we glean how we are to functions as the family of God on mission for God. Unfortunately we have "filled in the blanks" with religious claptrap and traditions instead of letting the church function as it should.