If Burgess Meredith and Britney Spears had a love child . . .
So I went to a "mega-church" this weekend, for the first time in quite a while and its got me thinking about all kinds of things. Having been way more involved in church politics than I would like to admit, I am still trying to repent of some of the awful things that I have done in my past when handling church business. With that said, I am always trying to chew over things more so I no longer make the same mistakes and sometimes I think pointing out positives and negatives can really create some good dialogue. So here it is – A review, or a good chewing over if you will. Feel free to chime in
The church was in Cincinnati – that's the only info that's relevant - some of you that know me might know which church it is, but for the purpose of this discussion, its not necessary
The good:
1.The music was excellent – as I would expect it to be when you can pull from such a big talent pool
2.The service featured creative sketches that were both funny and entertaining – Its great to keep people laughing and to not always be serious. I think this helps people stay focused. If the church needs anything, it needs to remember how to laugh
3.Multitude of programs and small groups – If you are willing to call someone or speak out, it would be easy to get involved. There is something for everyone – and for any focus you may want
4.The atmosphere – It was electric. It was Super Bowl Sunday. People were tailgating in the church parking lot. Free Hot Dogs, Free Coffee. A lot of young, good-looking professionals. Hipsters volunteering everywhere. People that look like me, or at least, look as hip as I want to feel (this truly is a compliment)
Rather than saying bad, or the bad, I am just going to ask questions. Questions I would ask of any church, for the most part, and questions that I believe should be asked. *No church is perfect – sorry to break that to ya, but considering its full of ruffians like me and you, what could we possibly expect?
Questions:
At one point should a church spend its money on itself rather than on the needs of its community, city, nation and world?
Are custom football jerseys at $300 a pop necessary for one Sunday?
Is it important to buy 10,000 people who come to your church a hot dog (presumably mostly from an affluent neighborhood) rather than buying 10,000 hotdogs for people who wouldn't otherwise eat today?
Could we set a better example in spending money on others than spending money on ourselves?
Are too many churches hiding behind the idea "that we are doing this to save souls" to justify spending money on themselves and their congregants?
Does the parable of the rich man and the widow have something to say about this (Mark 12:41-43), or does the multitude of deeds a large church can do put them in God's positive column, even if they are still spending lots on themselves?
Can we preach about the difference about knowing God's will and doing God's will and mention tithing to the church in the same message?
Can the cornerstone of a message's gimmick/theme revolve around the identity of a head pastor – or more simply stated, should we make a big deal about who the head pastor is at all times (or even more simply, can you lead a mega-church and not come off as arrogant)?
What is more important, the amount of money you take in, or the amount of people that attend? Or, how do we measure success?
Just because someone attends the "god-show" are we to assume they took anything from it?
Does spectacle equal experience?
Is it a mega-churches responsibility to lead the way in recycling by Serving God and Saving the Planet?
Does a large church have the responsibility to serve fair trade coffee so they can look the attendees in the eye and say "this cup of coffee did not oppress anybody" even if it means they have to spend a little more? Or is coffee unnecessary anyway?
Are gadgets God-approved spending, since after all, it gives people a better experience?
Do people attend because its God, or because its cool?
Is a mega-church a gateway, and can they only take you so far?
When you focus on toys and gadgets and gimmicks is it still possible to focus equally, or even more so, on God?
Is a mega-church like a Wal-mart to your local mom and pop shop?
I honestly don't have a lot of answers to these questions. I have heard stock answers to many of them and have spoken passionately about others, but either way, I think they are worth asking. I cannot condemn any church. I have my thoughts and opinions.
Showing posts with label doctrine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doctrine. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
I think, therefore I’m not
People often ask me questions about the Emerging Church. What makes this interesting is, I have never claimed to be a member and I guess the great irony is, if you claim to be, your not anyway, and if you say your not, you may be . . .its all rather confusing.
I do not have enough stuff figured out to be accepted by anyone, but either way, here is a good synopsis. . .
What is the Emerging Movement protesting? Let me count the ways.
That's not an attempt to be funny: there is a list of at least ten items the Emerging Movement is protesting, and most would agree that it has its finger on some hot buttons. And let it be said that its primary focus in protestation is the evangelical movement and, sometimes but not always, the mega-churches that so clearly define and set the tone for the evangelical movement.
First, it protests too much tom-fakery in traditional churches. This generation of Christians is not as capable or interested in putting up fronts when it comes to "church" or when it gathers. Instead, it prefers a higher level of honesty. (Now the older generation would contend that hanging out dirty laundry is not advisable, while this generation is not so sanguine about the desire to protect.) Let me give one example: most evangelical Christians don't pray. (Stats show this.) Neither do they read their Bibles as often as they claim. (Stats also show this.) The Emerging Movement doesn't want this hidden in non-confession but wants it out in the open — and then it might even ask if reading the Bible is making a difference or if praying "works." It likes to ask these sorts of questions.
Second, it denounces the divisions in the Church. Why there needs to be so many kinds of Baptists or free church types or so many others kinds of churches is becoming more and more incomprehensible to the emerging generation. If the gospel is what it is supposed to be, if Jesus prayed for us to be "at one," and if we are supposed to be able to do things together, why not worship together? And, it denounces such divisions as much by raiding the entire Church tradition as anything else: increasingly the emerging generation finds things it likes in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions — things that were "no no"s to a previous generation.
Third, it sees cock-sure certainty as a cancer. I will touch on this origins for this tomorrow in my post on postmodernity, but the emerging generation does not find certaintist expressions as amenable as less certaintist expressions — even when the same thing can be said in different ways. Certainty denies the frailty of humans, the limitations of our own minds, the need for conversation and relationship and communal growth, and it sets itself up for collapse the minute a more complete grasp of knowledge is found.
Fourth, it refuses to separate action from articulation. If the older evangelical generation found doctrinal statements the chief way of setting up boundaries, the Emerging Movement wants to see one's articulation expressed by one's action. "By their fruits, ye shall know them…" (I fell into some KJV language, but the point is the same.)
Fifth, it wants individualism absorbed into incorporation: that is, the Emerging Movement encourages personal redemption but solo-Christianity is not what Jesus wants. He wants to form communities of faith not individual Christians. (By the way, this is not a false dichotomy; it is ancient form of hierarchy.) The Emerging Movement will ask as much about how a community's spiritual formation comes about as how individuals are being formed. (So my current poll will soon find an emerging complement.)
Sixth, the Emerging Movement's mindset is against marketing the gospel. It is the simplistic packaging of the gospel, so it is sometimes said, that causes so many problems in the Church today, so the gospel needs to be presented and performed in such a way that its rugged realities are clear in the summons to join in the work of God in our world today.
Seventh, the Emerging Movement despises the idea that Church is what takes place on Sunday Morning, between 11 and noon. Sunday morning, if it is at that time or another time, is when the Church gathers to worship and share life, but the work of the Church is what occurs during the week as the local community of faith performs the gospel. Frankly, for many, stomach flu breaks out when they think of the ornateness and the elaborateness and the expense of Sunday morning services.
Eighth, the Emerging Movement rejects the hierarchy and pyramid structure of many churches. Authority is in God — Father, Son, Spirit — and not in the pastor or the elders or the board of deacons. Scripture, it must be seen, is an expression of God's authority and not an independent authority. The very notion that one needs pastoral approval for one's calling or one's promptings or what one is permitted to do many find unconscionably usurping of God's authority.
Ninth, the social gospel cannot be separated from the spiritual gospel. The Emerging Movement combines the Liberal social gospel with the Evangelical spiritual gospel and comes up with something that is neither Liberal nor Evangelical. To use my words (and you can trace this in my Emerging Movement Category in the sidebar), it wants a "purple gospel." It is not so much a denial of either but a combination of both. (There's a big difference in those two ideas.)
Tenth, the Emerging Movement wants to be Worldly. Not in the Johannine sense or in the Pauline sense, but in the Kingdom sense: it knows that God is working to restore the entire creation into an expression of his glory and so it summons everyone to participate in the grant work of God to restore and redeem. It embraces culture and state and politics and business and it protests old-fashioned Christian separationism and enclave Christian circles. The walls between Church and World, so it is suggesting, need to be impermeable and not permeable, they need to be knocked down so the passage from one to the other is an imperceptible as the passing of Jesus from one person to another.
I do not have enough stuff figured out to be accepted by anyone, but either way, here is a good synopsis. . .
What is the Emerging Movement protesting? Let me count the ways.
That's not an attempt to be funny: there is a list of at least ten items the Emerging Movement is protesting, and most would agree that it has its finger on some hot buttons. And let it be said that its primary focus in protestation is the evangelical movement and, sometimes but not always, the mega-churches that so clearly define and set the tone for the evangelical movement.
First, it protests too much tom-fakery in traditional churches. This generation of Christians is not as capable or interested in putting up fronts when it comes to "church" or when it gathers. Instead, it prefers a higher level of honesty. (Now the older generation would contend that hanging out dirty laundry is not advisable, while this generation is not so sanguine about the desire to protect.) Let me give one example: most evangelical Christians don't pray. (Stats show this.) Neither do they read their Bibles as often as they claim. (Stats also show this.) The Emerging Movement doesn't want this hidden in non-confession but wants it out in the open — and then it might even ask if reading the Bible is making a difference or if praying "works." It likes to ask these sorts of questions.
Second, it denounces the divisions in the Church. Why there needs to be so many kinds of Baptists or free church types or so many others kinds of churches is becoming more and more incomprehensible to the emerging generation. If the gospel is what it is supposed to be, if Jesus prayed for us to be "at one," and if we are supposed to be able to do things together, why not worship together? And, it denounces such divisions as much by raiding the entire Church tradition as anything else: increasingly the emerging generation finds things it likes in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions — things that were "no no"s to a previous generation.
Third, it sees cock-sure certainty as a cancer. I will touch on this origins for this tomorrow in my post on postmodernity, but the emerging generation does not find certaintist expressions as amenable as less certaintist expressions — even when the same thing can be said in different ways. Certainty denies the frailty of humans, the limitations of our own minds, the need for conversation and relationship and communal growth, and it sets itself up for collapse the minute a more complete grasp of knowledge is found.
Fourth, it refuses to separate action from articulation. If the older evangelical generation found doctrinal statements the chief way of setting up boundaries, the Emerging Movement wants to see one's articulation expressed by one's action. "By their fruits, ye shall know them…" (I fell into some KJV language, but the point is the same.)
Fifth, it wants individualism absorbed into incorporation: that is, the Emerging Movement encourages personal redemption but solo-Christianity is not what Jesus wants. He wants to form communities of faith not individual Christians. (By the way, this is not a false dichotomy; it is ancient form of hierarchy.) The Emerging Movement will ask as much about how a community's spiritual formation comes about as how individuals are being formed. (So my current poll will soon find an emerging complement.)
Sixth, the Emerging Movement's mindset is against marketing the gospel. It is the simplistic packaging of the gospel, so it is sometimes said, that causes so many problems in the Church today, so the gospel needs to be presented and performed in such a way that its rugged realities are clear in the summons to join in the work of God in our world today.
Seventh, the Emerging Movement despises the idea that Church is what takes place on Sunday Morning, between 11 and noon. Sunday morning, if it is at that time or another time, is when the Church gathers to worship and share life, but the work of the Church is what occurs during the week as the local community of faith performs the gospel. Frankly, for many, stomach flu breaks out when they think of the ornateness and the elaborateness and the expense of Sunday morning services.
Eighth, the Emerging Movement rejects the hierarchy and pyramid structure of many churches. Authority is in God — Father, Son, Spirit — and not in the pastor or the elders or the board of deacons. Scripture, it must be seen, is an expression of God's authority and not an independent authority. The very notion that one needs pastoral approval for one's calling or one's promptings or what one is permitted to do many find unconscionably usurping of God's authority.
Ninth, the social gospel cannot be separated from the spiritual gospel. The Emerging Movement combines the Liberal social gospel with the Evangelical spiritual gospel and comes up with something that is neither Liberal nor Evangelical. To use my words (and you can trace this in my Emerging Movement Category in the sidebar), it wants a "purple gospel." It is not so much a denial of either but a combination of both. (There's a big difference in those two ideas.)
Tenth, the Emerging Movement wants to be Worldly. Not in the Johannine sense or in the Pauline sense, but in the Kingdom sense: it knows that God is working to restore the entire creation into an expression of his glory and so it summons everyone to participate in the grant work of God to restore and redeem. It embraces culture and state and politics and business and it protests old-fashioned Christian separationism and enclave Christian circles. The walls between Church and World, so it is suggesting, need to be impermeable and not permeable, they need to be knocked down so the passage from one to the other is an imperceptible as the passing of Jesus from one person to another.
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