Is church passé?

Here's an article I've been wanting to write about since I first read it early last week. It ran on the front page of the LA Times under the headline, "God's Call Comes by Cell Phone." The opening line of the article reads as follows:

A recent national poll found just 17% of adults view the local church as essential for developing faith.

I was stunned by this statistic. (It turns out this research was done by Barna Group. You might find our more about this at Barna's website). I guess I shouldn't be so shocked. I'm always talking about how we live in a post-Christian society, but America has always been the bizzare exception. Christian faith is still a huge part of our culture (reduce and domesticated though it is).

So, if this survey is to be believed, the local church is diminishing in importance in people's lives. In it's place? You guessed it...technology! The kind of technology that makes it so simple for me to put this message on my website in a few minutes before I fall off to sleep. The same technology allows me to have a nice looking church website and even podcast my sermons. But it is not just the rise of technology that has contributed to the obsolescence of the local church. I think the local church is to blame as well.

In the modern era the church taught the gospel is a "thing" that can be given like a commodity. It can be packaged (I just this week heard a presenter say that the gospel has to be "packaged" in new ways for new generations). It can be marketed (presumably in different ways to different niche markets). It can be transferred to another person, like a house or a car. If the gospel is a "thing" in this way, then surely it can be boiled down to fit into a text message. If the gospel is primarily a commodity then a podcast will do. You simply download God's message onto your iPod and off you go with your dose of the gospel this week, with no messy church politics and annoying church members. No getting dressed up, fighting traffic, finding a parking place, dealing with the crying children. Why would you endure that if you can get God on your iPod?

But the gospel is profoundly more than this. I want to write more about this because the way to understand and teach the gospel deeply effects the methodology we use to teach and share that gospel. It even has me questioning my podcast lately. Why am I podcasting my sermons, after all?

Comments

[Neville Salvador]

I, too, read that L.A. Times article and was not surprised by it.

The challenge for both the local church and technology in being an important role in people's lives boils down to a term: "wholism" (I really don’t like this term, but it’s the first that comes to mind). Human beings are multi-faceted, complex beings; and partial, fragmented, disconnected events, forces and relationships are intrinsically less satisfying.

I am one who thinks there is no inherent incompatibility between "marketing" and the Gospel. I would say the same thing about "technology", "politics", "entertainment", and many other things some would prefer not to be a part of their local church, spirituality, religion, worship, or The Gospel. For me it is not a choice I have to make because it is not an option I have available to me. We were created multi-faceted, and complex, but whole and integrated beings.

I enter my local church as a whole person. I cannot (or choose not to) compartmentalize my life and check my "marketing", "political", "entertainment", "entrepreneur", "technology", or "artistic" hat at the door. I choose to offer all these facets of my being as a living sacrifice to God. I bring all of it into worship and service to someone bigger than any of these. Come to think of it, He was the author and originator of it all. I was created in his image, so I suspect there is an undercover or closet marketer, politician, and entertainer in the person of God. Why else would he make a flower smell, look and taste so good to "market" it to the bees and butterflies? I can’t think of many things more "entertaining" than a sunset or a sea otter in action. I cannot think of a more meaningful way to spend a Sabbath afternoon than in meeting fellow church members in the "political" process of dialogue about the future direction of the church. Politics, in its simplicity, is the process of arriving at (not what I want, not what you want, but) what "we" (all, collectively) want.

Listening to your sermon on an I-pod is a great way to use technology when I am out of town, or was distracted during your live sermon because the kids had a particularly bad day in church, and I had to wear my "parent hat" instead of my "listener hat". My plea to you, "Don’t give up your Podcasts". Technology (and I propose, marketing, politics, entertainment, etc.) and church can sit at the same table.

My plea to the youth in the L.A. Times article who have embraced technology: "Don’t abandon the local church; there are real, live people, rich relationships and deep insights that can be gained and developed when one does not have the option to tune out, turn-off or conveniently disconnect."

And finally, my plea to marketing professionals, politicians, entertainers, artists, and yes, even psychiatrists (not just preachers, teachers and medical professionals that SDAs seem to have no problem integrating with service to the church/for the Gospel), "Come to my church, and don't check your skills and talents at the door, use them in service to God!"

. . . got to run. I would prefer to philosophize all day, but my wife just called me for brunch; my kids are fighting again, and I need to put on my "referee" hat; and the family probably needs to head to the Hollywood hills and go for a hike to diffuse all the pent-up energies that urban living can produce; ahhh!, the joys and challenges of living an integrated, not-compartmentalized life . . .

[Sherman Haywood Cox II]

Could it be that our neglect of ecclesiology continues to bite us? Could it be that the user friendly churches and its too often user friendly gospel has taught us that church is solely about what I get out of it...and if I can get it elsewhere...why not go to where I can even if it ain't a church? Have we neglected the fact of God Saving communities so long that communities are no longer needed or neccesary to American spirituality? Have we neglected that church is not solely something that you make withdrawels from but also deposits that aid the community as a whole and others individually? Have we made our individualism the sole criteria of good religion/spirituality?