Wildesign Group Architects Inc.

Brad Abare, over at Church Marketing Sucks (dot com), has been moving through a series of posts on an impending, national identity crisis and how it's "funking our souls." He's been writing about how and why Americans are losing a sense of identity, where it used to come from, and why it doesn't anymore. Part 3 hit the blogosphere this morning with the idea that,

"When our identity is no longer found in who we are and how God sees us, we look to organizations to shape who we are and give meaning to our lives."

He gives four reasons that organizations are providing our missing "soul:"

1. Globalization. Because we're connected to everyone, everywhere, we've cease to be connected to the right things. We're connected digitally, but we're isolated physically.
   
   
2. Options. There are so many choices for everything in our society that it's paralyzing. We like companies like Trader Joe's and Apple that keep it simple and decide for us.
   
   
3. Branding. "We have a lot of the same stuff all trying to tell us why it's not the same stuff." So you pick a clothing brand because it's marketing speaks to you and it substitutes part of your missing identity.
   
   
4. Disruption. We work with our minds, therefore our minds become tired and our bodies become lazy. We don't connect because it's too hard and it takes too much time, and we come to identify ourselves by our work.

He promises that the last part of the series will diagram a soul and discuss the Church's role, but I thought we'd get a head start.

What is the Church's role? How do we keep local community alive in the midst of a global society? How do we keep things simple in an increasingly complex world? How do we reach out to people who see thousands of advertisements every day? How do we communicate a gospel of sacrifice and service to a people who are already overworked?