Avoiding Worship Consumption

In my online Theology of Worship class with Dan Kimball at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, one of the questions Dan raised this week is how the church can prevent "worship consumption. Here are some of my thoughts on that:

This past Thursday I attended an area-wide youth worker’s luncheon, hosted by the Portland Youth Foundation. I was mostly impressed by what I heard, as well as with the call for us as youth leaders to get our youth groups involved in our communities as the hands and feet of Jesus with a “no strings attached” philosophy.

Afterward I stopped by the Christian Supply book store table, and signed up for a subscription to a quarterly free box of stuff. (Hey, I’m part Scotch and I married a Dutchman. You don’t walk by free stuff. It’s anti-cultural.)

I got back to church and opened my free box. I pulled out an appropriately cool-looking, lightly stone-washed black baseball-style cap with “Jars of Clay Good Monsters” stitched in the same color on the front. I pulled out a pink concert t-shirt of some female music artist (whose name I don’t remember right now as the box is still at church), size small, and the accompanying CD with said artist’s Barbie-looking face staring back at me. There was a mini-poster for the movie Facing the Giants and a copy of the accompanying soundtrack, plus maybe half-a-dozen more CD’s in genres from hip hop to acoustic folk.

And I thought, “Since when did Christianity become an industry?” (To which you might respond, “Well, DUH, Sue. Have you been living under a ROCK?!?”)

Did you know that you used to be able to walk into a Christian book store, and if you couldn’t afford one, walk out with a free Keith Green cassette tape?

But bear with me.

Friday night I took my youth group to the 30-Hour Famine Rally in Beaverton, where several hundred kids gathered in an auditorium-style sanctuary, complete with two screens and all the latest sound and video technology. Even colored lights and lasers. A youth band played up front, maybe singing a lot of original songs, since there weren’t any CCLI numbers with the words on the screens and my kids hadn’t heard most of what they played. Several kids (not many of mine, after all we are Presbyterians) migrated down in front of the stage to be closer to the band and to pogo-stick and dance with the music. (One way. Jesus. You’re the only one I could live for. [One of the songs my kids had heard.])

We had been given a ticket on our way in, and our MC’s, a couple of culturally cool-looking guys who had good “up-front” skills, drew random numbers to give away free stuff, and threw more free stuff out into the crowd. We watched some very well-produced videos which did an excellent job of illustrating the contrasts between the abundance in the US and the poverty in other parts of the world.

But as I sat there I couldn’t help thinking, “The church and the Christian music industry have been doing culturally relevant things like this for years, but once these high school kids graduate from even the savviest of our programs, they are disappearing from the church left and right.”

Why?

Surely we are speaking their language. Surely we have entered their world. What were we doing Saturday night that isn’t “2007 American teenager”? It’s not like they go to youth events where we have robed choirs, pipe organ music, screechy sound systems, MC’s wearing pajama-looking green plaid pants (like one of our church’s 70-something parishioners), and dry, 3-point lectures.

Why?

If I give away the free stuff to visitors to our youth group, do you think that will encourage them to come back again? Is that what the free stuff is for? Does part of my job description include Christian industry marketing promoter? What would I be “saying” if I did that?

My final question is this: If we speak to our kids in the language of cultural consumerism, even if our words are “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” are we unintentionally communicating that the gospel and Christianity are just another couple of brands which you may opt to purchase or leave on the shelf at will, depending on your “needs”?

My response to the dilemma of worship consumerism: When planning our emerging worship gatherings, in the wider context of everything else we do as a church, we must learn to speak in the medium of covenant, not contract.

Which means you can't just add candles. You will also need to intentionallly equip people with the counter-consumer-culture skills of commitment and community.

(Now where did I leave that easy button?)

Love is still politically correct

Today my kids were up and dressed before I was. The occasion? Valentine's Day.

Back in October, I called my kids' schools to find out what happened for Halloween, because I had gotten no communication saying "no scary costumes" or anything such as that.

Turns out, the schools don't do anything with Halloween. Because of the controversy, they don't have Christmas parties either. The secretary at the elementary school said that the only holiday for which the classes are allowed to have a party is Valentine's Day.

It's a good thing love is still politically correct.

But I hope the party police don't find out Valentine was a Christian saint.

Following who?

At this moment a "Christian" version of American Idol is on TV. In my worship class at George Fox we have been lamenting the fact that so much of contemporary worship music is driven by pop culture, and here is yet another example of Christianity being shaped by culture.

Doesn't it seem that a Christian American Idol is an oxymoron? Is following Jesus supposed to be about attaining fame? About competing with others for a music contract?

Are the Buddhists creating a Buddhist American Idol? Is there a Muslim American Idol?

I understand that the unique thing about Christianity is that it is worked out in every culture. But are there some things about culture which it should not imitate?

Mystery bird

Today we saw a bird we couldn't identify. It was feeding from our upside-down suet feeder and had a yellow head with a black cap and black bar across the eye. I couldn't find anything that looked like it in our Audubon book or in a search engine I found online.

We also have a hummingbird that likes to hang around.

Walking With Angels

Last weekend I went to our church's women's retreat at Cannon Beach. Our topic was "angels."

I believe that there are spiritual beings called "angels," but being a highly pragmatic person, and not recalling ever interacting with such a being, I wasn't sure how much I would get out of the retreat. I thought, "Oh, well, I'll just hang out with the beach angels."

Of course, when you get a group of women together and let them talk, there is a kind of collective wisdom that is shared, and it was highly enjoyable getting to know better a number of the women at our church.

But the joke was really on me. One of the first things our retreat leader invited us to do on Saturday morning was to take a meditation stone and go out on the beach to meditate. As she passed out the "meditation stones," they just looked like flat, oval metal disks, but when I turned mine over, there was the impression of an angel. My "beach angel" after all.

So I took my angel and my camera for a walk during the meditation time, and then again later in the day. You can find images from my journey through our church website, then by clicking on "Women's Retreat" and then clicking on "here."

So no, I still haven't knowingly encountered a heavenly being, but I think I got an angelic message just the same. It was a great retreat.

(by the way, the slide show will deconstruct in a few weeks)

Growing up Christian Reformed

Today a topic at Scot McKnight’s blog is “Trumanist” Christianity. The term comes from the movie The Truman Show, in which Jim Carey portrays a man who is unaware that he exists in a completely contrived world.

I, too, grew up as a Trumanist Christian, and like in the Southwestern Baptist Seminary article that McKnight references, in a denomination convinced it had the monopoly on the truly true Truth. (I wonder if there is anything to the title The Tru(e)-man Show, or if I am reading too much into it.)

I remember hearing several stories of how, when some scholar or another questing person seriously studied the Bible, he (it was always he) was convinced that the Christian Reformed denomination (sorry, SBC) was the one most Biblical.

We knew we were right, and that God had elected us so. So many churches had given up their Sunday evening services, but in our thanksgiving we could continue to faithfully dedicate that time to the Lord. And there were so many other kinds of church folks who broke the Sabbath, using it for pleasure and frivolity (and even yard work!) when the Lord had commanded we set it aside for study and rest.

Those poor Baptists who didn’t have their babies baptized--they had to agonize so much about the eternal fate of a child should it die, while we had the assurance that the Bible taught that the children of believers are holy.

No, the Christian Reformed Church held the keys to the way, the truth, and the life, and joyful were the elect who found their way into the true fold.

Among many of its members, the attitude still exists, along with a general fear of relocating anywhere outside the CRC "map."

I am very thankful for the Christian training I got growing up Christian Reformed, and I hold to Reformed theology quite strongly. But it's been wonderful to get out of the bubble (and it's not even politically correct to claim you have a bubble when you are Presbyterian[USA]) and meet my Baptist, and Methodist, and Disciples, and pentecostal, and charismatic, and non/multi-denominational, and Catholic, and emerging brothers and sisters.

Discovering Portland Food

When Paul's mom was out over New Year's weekend, we paid a visit to Bob's Red Mill Store. We had lunch there and made a few purchases. We have especially enjoyed their Spice Apple Cake Mix. Yum!

Recently we were also introduced to New Season's Market. Lot's of organic foods and things you won't find just anywhere. We were happy to be there for curry sampling day. I'm sure we will be making many future purchases at both of these places.