Ten Things In Church That Drive Me Nuts
1) Browbeating visitors to fill out information cards
(Is this a good idea with all the identity theft problems we’re having?)
2) Making a big deal of how many people attended last Sunday
(Since when is numerical size an indicator of the Holy Spirit moving? After 3 years of ministry and then literally dying for them, Jesus had only 120 followers in the upper room who then went out and changed the world.)
3) Putting first-time visitors in the spotlight (i.e., special parking spots out front, standing during the service, special name tags, etc.)
(If I’m a visitor, especially an unbeliever, these things don’t make me feel loved; they make me feel like I’ve got a big bulls-eye painted out my back.)
4) Prayers filled with archaic language that nobody uses anymore in everyday talk
(If God only understands this kind of language, we’re all in big trouble.)
5) Interminable altar calls
(At least everyone is praying ….. that SOMEONE would get up there so we can get out of here.)
6) Pastors yelling/screaming the sermon one moment and then dying to a whisper the next to manipulate your emotions
(Sheesh - if your TV did that you’d throw a shoe through it.)
7) Only mute whispering is heard (or complete silence) half an hour before the service even starts
(It’s not a funeral! Are we afraid we’re going to wake up God?)
8) Classes with forced separation by age group
(Huh? How in the world are the young supposed to learn from the elderly wise? Or the older able to keep in tune with younger generation? What about cross-pollination?)
9) Worship that’s sung with as much gusto/enthusiasm/heart as the pledge of allegiance was recited in grade school
(Huh? And these same people get fanatical and go bonkers over a football game a few hours later.)
10) Where things are done simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”
(Wake up!!! Maybe that’s the problem.)
Nuff said.
Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
__________________________
Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)
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Goodstuf. Did you write
Goodstuf. Did you write that, Bob? That one will get sent around the country. :)
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__________________________David Thew
Sojourn Founding Pastor
David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
Thewblog
twitter.com/davidthew
Yes - I wrote it yesterday
Yes - I wrote it yesterday afternoon after thinking in the car about how frustrating some of these things are.
Bob Pratico
__________________________Fides Quaerens Intellectum
Bob Pratico
Fides Quaerens Intellectum
(my Sojourn blog)
laughing and crying out
laughing and crying out loud…
–
__________________________David Thew
Sojourn Founding Pastor
David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
Thewblog
twitter.com/davidthew
Hilarious. Would be even
Hilarious. Would be even funnier if it wasn’t all so true. Whats even funnier is that Bob had the guts to say it all. I’ve thought the altar call thing many times but have always tried to hide that particular thought from God!
The growth thing is interesting. I had a preacher tell me that “we are obviously following Gods will because the church keeps growing.” Oh really? Cancer grows too. A month later the preacher was arrested and the church fell apart.
Good work Bob!
Lemme chip in here with the
Lemme chip in here with the flip side of all this: the things that really appeal to me about Sojourn, and why I’m thrilled to be going here now. (If this gets just painfully self-congratulatory, I’ll probably stop typing pretty soon now.)
- A website that is not static. That’s how I visited Sojourn for the first time, was getting involved in these discussions. Then I wanted to start spending time with you guys, and so I showed up.
- I really like that the service is as long as it is. Typically, services that involve the amount of stuff that Sojourn does (i.e., communion every Sunday) either feel rushed because they’re only an hour, or they run over and annoy everyone in Sunday School, which leads me into the next two points of
- Communion every Sunday. Bob had a great point on why this is a good idea last Sunday, and I agree. I’ve never been in a church that does this, though, which is pretty interesting, now that I think about it.
I also like how Sojourn has eliminated some traditional Churchy stuff. Stuff like:
- No Sunday School (which gives you a long enough time for a service that does not feel rushed, in addition). Being new in Sunday School is not fun even if you are already in a church somewhere else, so this has got to be scary to the non-churched. You’re crammed into a small group before you even make it out the door. Getting involved with a small group shouldn’t be this traumatic - it should be in someone’s house, and questions like “So, what are you into” should be followed up with other questions like “Hey, do you want a beer?” Questions like “How about you introduce yourself to the entire class” are not quite as good, in my opinion.
- No formal church building. This is a huge turnoff for people who have had a bad experience with Christianity. They don’t want to be caught anywhere near the thing.
- A general lack of formal and uncomfortable clothes. Breaking down the barriers between secular and sacred means that what I do for the rest of the week should be just as sacred as Sunday morning, so why should I dress up for it? (I mean … look nice. But let’s not put on suits just to impress other people.)
- A general atmosphere that does not feel “churchy.”
So … quite a bit of what I really appreciate is wrapped up in the general philosophy at Sojourn that asks the question: “What do we have in traditional Christian culture that gets in the way of non-Christians being willing to walk in the front door,” answering the question intelligently, and then getting rid of that stuff, whatever it is - provided, of course, that you’re not throwing out anything that’s vital to the historic orthodoxy, y’know?
- garrett
__________________________- garrett (golfsierra.org/blog)
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