Question
How does assimilation work as a rival discipleship that often feels like common sense?
Summary:
Assimilation is the form of rival discipleship hardest to detect because it doesn’t feel like a competing formation. It feels like sense itself. It shapes what seems reasonable, what seems normal, what seems like just how things are. A Christian who has been assimilated rarely experiences the assimilation as compromise.
Assimilation is the form of rival discipleship hardest to see insofar as it feels like sense itself. It doesn’t announce itself as a competing formation. It arrives as the background assumption against which everything else is interpreted.
The pattern is visible historically. The church in Laodicea became materially rich through participation in the commerce of the Roman Empire (Rev 3:14-22). That commerce often involved trade guilds organized around the worship of patron deities. Participation required small but meaningful concessions to the imperial sacred-social order. The concessions weren’t experienced as betrayals. They were experienced as the practical cost of functioning in the world as it was. Laodicea didn’t suffer a moment of dramatic apostasy. It suffered a slow drift into functional compromise that felt, in each moment, like the reasonable way to live.
The same pattern operates now, though the particulars differ. The logic of consumer capitalism has embedded itself deeply in American life. We don’t experience this logic as a rival sacred-social order. We experience it as the way the world works. Success is measured in earnings. Lives are arranged around careers. Time is treated as a commodity to be managed for maximum return. None of this feels like discipleship to a rival order. It feels like adulthood.
The same assimilation is visible in how the church has absorbed the logic of the digital platform. Many congregations now measure their health by metrics borrowed directly from social media: reach, engagement, growth. The assumption is that what works for platforms works for churches, and that the church’s task is to deploy the tools effectively. Platforms are formative. They operate according to a logic of attention capture and emotional intensity that isn’t neutral with respect to Christian formation. A church that organizes itself around these metrics will, over time, produce the kind of Christians the platform rewards. The assimilation happens in the church’s own practices of measurement and planning.
What makes assimilation difficult to resist is that it doesn’t ask permission. It operates at the level of plausibility. It shapes what seems reasonable, what seems normal, what seems like just how things are. A Christian who has been assimilated into a rival sacred-social order rarely experiences themselves as having compromised. They experience themselves as having matured. Their faith, they believe, has become more realistic, more grown-up, more engaged with the world as it is.
The diagnostic test for assimilation isn’t whether a practice feels comfortable. It is whether the practice forms us in the direction of Christ or away from him. That test is harder than it sounds. Assimilation hides in the ordinary. The question isn’t whether we have committed obvious apostasy. It is whether our instincts, our priorities, our emotional responses, and our use of time have been shaped by the Kingdom of God or by some rival order that has embedded itself in the texture of ordinary life.
Recognizing assimilation requires the slow development of a theological disposition that can perceive the sacred-social order underlying a given practice. That disposition doesn’t emerge from reading about the problem. It emerges from being formed in an alternative community whose practices make the rival orders visible by contrast. The church, at its best, is the community whose life makes the world’s assimilating pressures perceptible. Without such a community, the pressures operate without resistance because they operate without being seen.
Key Takeaways: Assimilation as Rival Discipleship
• Laodicea’s Drift: The church didn’t suffer dramatic apostasy. It suffered a slow drift into compromise that felt, in each moment, like the reasonable way to live (Rev 3:14-22).
• Contemporary Forms: Consumer capitalism and platform logic both operate as sacred-social orders embedded in ordinary life. They feel like adulthood, not discipleship to a rival.
• The Diagnostic Test: The question isn’t whether a practice feels comfortable. It is whether the practice forms us toward Christ or away from him.
• The “So What”: Recognizing assimilation requires being formed in a community whose practices make rival orders visible by contrast. The church’s communal life is the diagnostic instrument.
About the Author
James Spencer, PhD, is a theologian, author, and host of the Thinking Christian podcast, where he writes and speaks on Christian formation, political theology, and technology. He holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and completed the Institute for Educational Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He serves as President of the D.L. Moody Center in Northfield, Massachusetts, as adjunct faculty in Wheaton College’s MA in Leadership program, and as an Associate Research Fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Christianity.com, and Sojourners; he has been quoted in The Telegraph; and he is a regular guest on Stand in the Gap Today with the American Pastors Network. His forthcoming book is Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press, Fall 2026). Learn more at jamesgspencer.com.