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It was the American sociologist, George Ritzer, who invented the term 'McDonaldisation' to describe the pervasive effect of the McDonalds business strategy on western society. He identified four key characteristics of this model. Firstly there is a swift and efficient style of doing business with the customer. Secondly, there is an emphasis on rapid economic growth of the business. Thirdly, there is a dependence on generating a universal and predictable customer experience. Finally, every aspect of that experience must be carefully controlled at all times. The Scottish writer John Drane went on to argue that the church is one of the organisations in our society that is most prone to being 'McDonald-ised'. There is much validity in this claim.

Arguably, today's Christianity is much too obsessed with ultra-efficient methods of swift spiritual change. A classic example is the archetypal Christian paperback book by an evangelical guru that claims to be able to change your inner life and your everyday relationships, through the implementation of a set of simple, sagacious instructions. The venerable notion of the Christian path as a long, arduous but rewarding journey of religious transformation has been replaced by a quick-fix version of illumination.

Many churches are also much too keen to play a numbers game, in which rapid growth is sought and success is evaluated in terms of the people filling up the pews. Spiritual excellence is a much more elusive thing than this. The success of a church which is part of God's mysterious and long-term plan for reaching out to humankind is not measured by the numbers of converts gained in an outreach blitz.

The bland predictability of much of the modern church experience must also be subject to critique. Formulaic worship involving an informal ambience, 'easy listening' worship songs and short, accessible homiletic offerings is in danger of robbing Christian communities of a collective sense of the sublime, the divine and the numinous.

And the carefully structured, re-useable models for evangelistic strategy, such as the Alpha course may be seen as mechanisms that can only work in a consumer society accustomed to experiencing religion as lifestyle and product, offered with a carefully modulated sales pitch. The 'exportable' models for church growth offered by such American churches as Willow Creek are comparable phenomena, similar in their structure to the business plans of modern-day managerialism.

In truth, the sacred narrative of sin and salvation is something that predates and transcends the culture of modern business theory. We only have to look at the bleeding, wounded figure of Christ on the cross to appreciate the radically different kind of leadership being given by Jesus to the thrusting self-presentation expected of the contemporary manager. And we have only to see the way in which the marginalised and the guilty are placed at the heart of the redemption story to realise that church probably ought to have a different ethos and a very different function from business.

Philip Orr