ChrisBranscome

Wow.  When I started this blog, I didn’t think I’d wind up talking about the church so much, but that’s how it’s shaping up so far.  My goal with these posts isn’t to complain, but to diagnose, toward the end of, hopefully, working toward something better.  Again, I invite you to read the Prologue to my first post, if you haven’t yet.

One Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, we were preparing the technology for a class being taught by our senior pastor – firing up the projectors, getting the computers started up….when we discovered that the unit which actually controls the screens wasn’t functioning.  Our main tech guy was feverishly troubleshooting the problem, and I was in the tech booth lending aid, but we weren’t getting anywhere, and it was time for the class to begin.

Meanwhile, there were a few people whose hair had spontaneously combusted, and some shockingly insulting things were said to our tech guy.  In the end, the problem was a faulty piece of equipment that needed to be replaced, a problem that couldn’t be solved that morning.  The class went forward without the video – and everyone loved it.

We had a similar problem yesterday, (another piece of equipment had gone bad) and while we found some workarounds, the stress level was again higher.

We have become so dependent on technology in our church that when it doesn’t work, it becomes a crisis bigger than death.  People who don’t get all that concerned about starvation in Somalia have aneurisms if the sound system acts up. While the majority of the people don’t react quite that strongly, many experience some sense of loss, stress, and confusion.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am absolutely a technology geek, and I love working with it, but I think that the church has become far too dependent on technology.  It has become not just another tool, but a crutch.  Somehow, people have forgotten that if anything meaningful happens among us when we gather, it’s the power of God at work, not the power of our amplifiers.

Yes, we need to strive for excellence (which is more of a heart issue than anything else), and yes, we need to use the tools we have as well as we can, but don’t believe for a second that God is crippled if the technology chokes at the last minute.

How does the congregation you attend react when the technology isn’t working?
Do you feel that it affects you personally if something messes up?
If you’re on staff at a church, how does the staff react to these kinds of problems?
How can we work towards a more healthy perspective on the use of technology for worship and discipleship?

If you haven’t read part one of this series, then please read at least the Prologue in that post, so that you will know what my objective is with these posts, and from what perspective they are written.

The senior pastor here where I work has a really great singing voice, and people love hearing him sing.  Lately, some people have been suggesting that he needs to sing the chants at our liturgical service, a.k.a. the “early service”, and given his gift, I can understand this suggestion.  But today, I was standing in my cubicle (I have converted my desk to a standing desk, but that’s for another post), and I overheard someone here in the office say the following:

We need to get Pastor to chant the liturgy, and we need to be sure to advertise it in the bulletin several weeks in advance.  Boy, if we did that, we’d have standing room only at the early service.

On the surface, this may seem pretty innocuous, and while it’s not all that dastardly, there are several misguided ideas behind this kind of thinking:

1) People will meet with God if we can get them into the church building.

This just isn’t Biblical.  Don’t get me wrong – there are instances of people meeting with God at various spiritual gatherings, but most of the time, the Biblical accounts of encounters with God happened out where life was already happening.  Moses was just tending to his sheep.   Saul (who became Paul) was walking traveling to a city.  A crippled beggar was sitting by the side of the road.  A young Samuel was just trying to get to sleep. A woman was getting water from the well.

…and yet, we continue to teach that our spiritual gatherings are where you should expect to meet with God, instead of teaching people to look for God all around them, and to teach the rest of the world that God is already with them.

2) Real ministry/prayer/teaching/worship happens at the church building.

Again, while we do see Jesus and others teaching and praying in the Temple sometimes, we see the greatest examples of ministry, prayers, teaching, and worship (which, remember, is more than singing) out in everyday life.  We have this idea that if we can just get people to the building, then they’ll experience the benefits of professional ministers, teachers, prayers, and worshipers.

What we must do instead is stop perpetuating the notion that real ministry is up to a select few, and happens only (or even just better) at specific places.  Peter wrote (1 Peter 2:9) that we are all part of a royal priesthood.  Ephesians 4:11-12 tells us that we are all to be playing a role in serving and building up each other.  1 Thessalonians 5:17 encourages us to pray continuously.   Even the Great Commission is best translated not “Go and make disciples,” but “As you go, make disciples.” Jesus modeled this for us not by insisting that his disciples come to His weekly class at the Temple, but by teaching them in streets, and by wells, and out in fields, and on boats…

Another conviction against this school of thought is that research continues to show, again and again, that regular attendance and involvement in churches does very little, if any, to make a person more like Christ.

3) Since we believe that 1 and 2 are true, then we should resort to various gimmicks to draw people in.

The problem with this is pretty obvious.  The Bible tells us of a people who lived lives of such love, hope, integrity, and wisdom that people were drawn into their community – into the Kingdom – by the people of the church, not by the building, or the programs, or the bands, or the gimmicks.  This can only happen as we learn again how to let our faith permeate every area of our every day lives, as we free ourselves from the pressure to always be at the church building, and to be out where life is already happening.

Prologue to the Vital Signs Posts

Roughly ten years ago, my career shifted rather unexpectedly from “systems administrator” to “full time church employee.”  Once I started working for the church, I began to think a lot more than I ever had about just what the Church is, how we need to be functioning, and what our role is in the world.  Spurred by several authors and speakers, especially over the past six or so years, I began asking some questions that I hadn’t ever thought to ask before, questions which were all variations on “Is the way that I grew up ‘doing church’ and the way that I’m ‘doing church’ now really the best way?”

At first, I found myself just seeing the sense of those people who were saying that some things needed to change, but over the past year or so, that has become a full fledged and deep seated conviction: The church must change.  I don’t mean that we need to throw away our theology or doctrine, and I don’t mean that we have to get rid of the old models of church structure.

Since this is no longer a brand new subject, and since so many other people have already gone into this at length, rather than try to spell out exactly what I do mean, I am going to uses these posts to tell stories of some things that I see happening in my experience, things which are like vital signs pointing to some serious health issues within the church.  I won’t wrap each post up with a tidy answer. In fact, I will probably usually close with some questions, though I do believe that there are answers and solutions. I also don’t intend for these posts to be negatively critical.  Rather, I hope that they will help to illustrate real examples of reasons that we need to make some adjustments in the church (or at least in the church where I work!).

Grieving Alone

Last Thursday evening, I was in the church building getting ready for band practice when I noticed a woman, someone I knew from our traditional service, sitting at the receptionist desk.  I hadn’t ever seen this woman there in the evenings, so I asked what had brought her there, and she told me that she was participating in a Grief Share group which we had recently started.  As we talked, I learned that she had recently lost both of her parents within a year of each other, and that she was going through some other difficulties as well.  Toward the end of our conversation, she referred to our Wednesday night programming (which we suspend during the summer and resume in the fall), and said

I can’t wait until our Wednesday night programming starts up again. I really miss the fellowship, and the teaching and learning.

As she said that, these are the questions that entered my mind:

Why are other Christians within the church not seeing to it that this woman is surrounded by friends who will share her pain, and that she only experiences “fellowship” when the church arranges fellowship events?

How have we taught her (inadvertently) that she can’t do any real learning on her own, and that she has to wait until the church organizes something for her?