ABSTRACT
The highest leaders in the church were and mostly are fixated on the seemingly unlimited benefits that mass media promise regarding evangelization efforts. Despite its resistance to other aspects of modernity, the Church has embraced each new communications innovation as a providential aid in fulfilling the Great Commission. The need does exist, however, to point to—and beyond—the barriers to understanding the global culture industries that are constructed by many official Church statements to date. The Church’s leaders may be incapable of recognizing the threats to Christian practice and life because they are remaking the Church in the image and likeness of the global culture industries. Church media to date seem largely out of touch, behind the standards of media acceptability established by entertainment-oriented and -driven products. Churches pursuing such strategies study and imitate the marketing, administration, and promotional strategies of firms like Disney, IBM, and Xerox.
