America’s newest Dunkin’ Donuts store will be 1,056 feet from the front door of our house. You may have noticed that the old Connie’s Water Ice on Maple Avenue closed at the end of the summer as it always did, but this time for good. The building is getting a complete makeover and the old Connie’s sign has been covered with a temporary banner announcing that Dunkin’ Donuts is coming soon.
I’ve been watching the makeover day by day since the new Dunkin Donuts is just across the street from the entrance to our development. Everything about it says Dunkin Donuts. The font used on that temporary sign is a Dunkin’ Donuts font. The just added orange trim and the new brown siding on the old building are Dunkin’ orange and Donut brown. Or something like that. Dunkin’ Donuts pink will come soon.
I’m not much of a donut eater, and though we did not patronize it often, I am sad to see Connie’s summers-only ice cream stand replaced by the third Dunkin’ Donuts within two and a half miles of our house. But there it is. Orange, brown and pink. The same orange, brown and pink of the Dunkin’ Donuts in Penndel, Peoria and Pasadena.
America has been branded. We recognize the Golden Arches on the horizon long before we get to the off-ramp leading us to McDonald’s. Apple’s iconic logo, Ford’s blue oval, Coca Cola’s famous script, Starbuck’s ubiquitous mermaid – we make the expected brand connection in a millisecond. Our subconscious has been well trained. So even with the makeover not yet done, every time I leave home, I’m now reminded that America runs on Dunkin’.
The genius behind branding is sameness. Colors, fonts, logos and especially product. We want that Chocolate Kreme Filled donut we buy in Peoria to be just like the one we bought in Penndel and the Dunkin’ Dark coffee we order in Pasadena to taste exactly like the Dunkin’ Dark they sell in Peoria.
Branding runs on sameness.
As it often does with the things of the market and the culture, the North American church has too easily succumbed to the promises of branding. Once we’re inside the auditorium of a seeker-sensitive mega-church in Philadelphia there is little to distinguish it from a seeker-sensitive mega-church in Phoenix. Same songs in the praise set, same upbeat message from the same Plexiglas pulpit. Even an anti-mega emerging church in State College, PA, is just about the same as an anti-mega emerging church in Columbus, OH. Same funky couches and same denim-clad, modestly tattooed and very hip pastor. Mega, emerging and mainline are just brands, and branding runs on sameness.
But Christian isn’t a brand and a worship isn’t a product. Scripture calls us to a deep sameness of mind and love and then a wild diversity of gifts and ministries that cannot be tamed. “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind,” Paul writes the Philippians. It is a sameness that explodes into glorious difference.
Rooted in the same mind (the mind of Christ, Paul goes on to say), we are free to be the arm or the leg, the eye or the ear God has gifted us to be. Not just the authorized orange, brown and pink, but every shade of color on God’s amazing palette. We are free to be Macedonians and Corinthians, Ephesians and Galatians, Cretans and Romans. We are free to be contemplative and exuberant, traditional and contemporary, spontaneous and ordered. As Paul says, just because the hand is not the same as the foot, that does not make it any less a part of the body.
America may run on Dunkin’, but the church runs on the Spirit who empowers us to be of the same mind and the same love (the mind and the love of Christ), and then sends us to be so much more than orange, brown and pink. He sends us into the world to be every single color in God’s glorious rainbow of promise.