As members walk into the movie theater or auditorium for services, the pastor and his wife are in the front row, singing along and pumping their fists to loud pop music, played by a live band featuring electric guitars.
Suburban megachurches, move over. There’s a hipper game in town.
“We know a lot of people have left their mainline churches because it’s boring,” said Tory Farina, 31, lead pastor at High Point Church in Inver Grove Heights. “They felt they were forced to go. We want them to love it….Our Sunday services feel like a concert.”
High Point, which currently meets in an Inver Grove Heights movie theater, is a small portion of an exploding religious movement in the Twin Cities and nationally.
Hmmm…well, good luck to them with this method is suddenly thought of as “boring” to the demographic they are pandering to.
The Zeitgeist strikes again. If it starts as entertainment, it will remain such. People will leave when the novelty wears off. Did anyone ever tell these folks that church is not about entertainment?
My thought is – I don’t expect my marriage to be entertaining and would think someone who saw entertainment as the goal of marriage to be extraordinarily misguided. I don’t expect my role as father to be entertaining. I don’t expect my dear friends to entertain me. It’s not obvious to me why the relationship that church is, ought to entertain me. Of course like my other deepest commitments I experience a whole range of feelings in the context of those relationships. When I got up in the middle of the night for years on end to feed or comfort my young children – it was not uplifting, it was not entertaining – but it was love.
Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy temple;
praise him in teh firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts;
praise him for his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the blast of the ram’s horn;
praise him with lyre and harp.
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe.
Praise him him with resounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.
Hallelujah!
Mr. Keller,
Your point is…?
One mans “entertainment” might just be another man’s praise.
One is tempted to quote Lamentations in reply. My point is that exultation will be [i]part[/i] of what comes to us in worship (recognizing that such responses have too often been excluded in our worship – was it Archbishop Tutu who mischievously said the problem with COE services was that there wasn’t enough dancing?) – just as they are in the other places where we are schooled in love by the Lord (such as marriage). I delight in my children and their existence gives me joy – but I don’t judge the faithfulness of my love for them on a scale that measures only uplifting feelings. Like christian marriage, the aim of worship is not to produce exultant feelings or pleasurable experiences but to conform us to Christ.
It was this sentence that I think my point reflects upon, “We know a lot of people have left their mainline churches because it’s boring”.
If one begins at that point – what might one say to someone who says “Scripture is boring” or “doctrine is boring” or “my marriage is boring” or “my kids bore me”. I want to push back, just a little and say – are you sure you’re measuring by the right rule.