Fallen and Flawed

D,

I’ve got a new theme park idea: Six Flags/Seven Sacraments. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

This post stirred some thoughts for me; I guess these have been brewing for a while, and your post brought them to the surface. So I hope you’ll bear with me, one curmudgeon to another.

First, it’s not surprising to me that Neil Postman’s premise in his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” which he wrote in the mid 80’s, is playing itself out in all aspects of our culture, which includes the church, and not just television news (one of the main focuses of his book).

I experienced this church-as-entertainment for the first time myself fairly recently. After moving out to Chicago from Boston, where I had been attending a traditional church with pews and stained-glass windows and such, which housed a congregation of about 100+ or so (not a bad size for New England), I started looking around for a place to worship in my newly adopted Midwest and visited a very large church with a congregation of 1,000+.

My culture shock began as I entered the sanctuary, which had row upon row of theater seating that descended down to a stage. On either side of the stage hung two huge video screens, onto which the television camera in the back projected the service taking place on the stage.

Now, I completely understand how this set-up serves a congregation so large, especially when many churches today have multiple satellite congregations that can all be networked together. I don’t want to come off as old fashioned, because I’m not, and honestly believe technology like this is a wonderful gift that clearly serves Christ and His body.

But as I looked around the church, I was struck by what seemed to me a high degree of passivity, particularly during worship.

And then it hit me.

We were all merely watching television that just happened to be tuned to a church service.

We have become such a passive, visually entertained and stimulated culture, (and this is coming from a visual artist, no less) that this mindset has permeated all aspects of life, including the church, at least it seems so in this church.

It troubled me to consider that even though people can actually attend a church service like this every week, it is very likely they walk out to the parking lot completely unaffected, and yet still attest to having attended church. In fact, I’ll bet for many sitting through a powerful movie often leaves a deeper impression.

I don’t have an answer, Demian. I think your call here to build the Kingdom on a foundation of substance instead of amusement is a good start.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and the thoughts of others who post here about how to change this.

Or am I simply deluding myself into thinking that this roller coaster is actually going somewhere?

“Amuse” literally means to not think. How much time do we waste looking for ways to not think?

Well said, Demian.

I think this is a particularly troubling trend in youth ministry. Having worked with our church youth group for over 10 years, I can’t count the number of times I’ve had young adults come up to my wife and I explaining that they weren’t connecting with the service or felt in touch with the Lord the way the service was structured.

What my wife and I came to understand was that many of these young people had these tremendous mountain top experiences at youth conventions and retreats, experiences where they were in stadium type atmospheres with loud music, light shows, and rah rah speakers. They had made a connection that what they felt at these gatherings was genuine worship and a genuine connection with God, so they found it very difficult to “experience God” in a more subdued enviroment.

This search for the next experience caused many to become dissatisfied with their home church, even though the gospel was clearly presented and God was being glorified in each service… and Dissatisfaction leads to Factions. Not a recipe for solid biblical discipleship, and one that teaches believers to trust their feelings instead of the scriptures.

What do we do about it? Fight it in our own lives first, and oppose it where it rears up at our local churches.

Honestly, in response to “Church as Entertainment”, we should look at it and treat it as exactly what it is… a drug.

The “experience” overshadows the Creator, the one we are to worship and the entertainment factor becomes the idol (Romans 1:23 in action). “Worship” then becomes about “our needs” and not about the fact that we have access to the Father to worship Him directly for everything He has provided in our lives.

When the hollow “worship” fails us (and it will), a desire for a stronger experience invades the will and a horrible spiral of spiritual destruction begins to spin out of control.

Lancing this boil and wrapping the wound in the tender mercies of Christ is the antidote. Bringing the “experience junkies” to the Bible and showing them how awesome and huge God is just within the pages of Scripture. Loving them like Christ, and bringing them over-and-over again to the Gospel is really all we can do. God is the only one that can change their hearts. But we are called to be His ambassadors. We are His visible representatives, and if we do not show care for the state of these confused souls, do we really know the Father?

Can I re-post this sometime?

Re-post away, good man.

Richard: When you said “passive experience like watching television” the light bulb went off. It breaks my heart and reminds me of M. Horton in Christless Christianity talking about church members “participating” in the sacraments. Not much doing when it’s geared to think. Like David said after you, “we spend so much time being mindless.”

Odi: The dreaded mountain top experience. It’s the fight always to get back to that point. Like a drug, as Eric pointed out. Not sure if you read Oswald Chambers, but read his devotional long enough and you’ll see his larger theme: obedience and worship in the ordinary things of life. That’s what Christ is looking for.

Eric: You’re right…the antidote is Christ. People may bail, but we must fear God and not man.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts! Looking for more!

Interesting post Demian, as always. I think the non-pentecostal churches are always going to have difficulty appealing to gradually decreasing attention spans. I went to a pentecostal church church one day and spoke to a senior member after the service. He was trying to tell me about the experience of the holy spirit, etc etc and I pointed out that all I saw was an emotion-filled pep talk with atmospheric music and appeals to vulnerable emotions whipping the crowd into a frenzy. He sort of hung his head and nodded (making me feel terrible, by the way!), acknowledging that he knew that to be the case too.

I have a feeling that there will always be pockets of conservative congregations. Not everyone is compatible with the pentecostal method and some people really do like to engage their brains.

Good for you for being bold and speaking out…but why did it make you feel terrible? Interesting. Always good to hear from you, James.

I felt terrible because I’d obviously dug up something that bothered him about the most important thing in his life, so I felt sorry for him.

For people like him who I think are self-deceived yet happy, a large part of me wonders whether I should just leave them be.

James…making people feel uncomfortable is not a bad thing if it improves them. Think discipline of children.

You’re right, but it’s hard when I feel sorry for them.

The zealous friend I went with, on the other hand, wants to deconvert the entire church