Tim's Blog

Fabrication

Cecil wrote a great blog about the fabrication of church. Check it out here. This is some of my response...

Is church a fabricated place? Well…first off, it’s hard to talk about church as a place, because it isn’t. But I understand the intent of the question. Does cheesy music at an altar call lessen my intent of laying things down before the Lord? Was I impressed by the power of God or the pastor’s eloquent delivery? Am I infatuated with lights and sound or in love with God? Do I need these to make God appealing to a society that is so fabricated? Do I need to mass market Jesus?

I think that many people are frustrated because of what Steve writes about. When so much is put into a short weekend service it’s just easy to feel the presence of God. But is it becoming a spiritual junk food? A fix? Do I need the lights to see Jesus, or can I see him in my daily routine? Do I need a great band and sound system and video screen to sing to Jesus? What if all that was taken away, what would the church gatherings look like? What are we teaching by how we “do” church? “Do” is in quotes because I don’t think we do church, we are church. Worship isn’t something we do at a weekend service for an hour and then stop. Worship is who we are.

Let’s say that some of it is fabricated. Is that wrong? Does that make the decisions and the worship offered in church gatherings cheap? I don’t want to be presumptuous and say it’s up to me to determine the quality of something offered to God in worship. It’s a hard question. Let me know your thoughts.

posted by Tim Oas @ 1:45 AM