THE NOISY CHURCH

This from "Life And Times In The Fast Lane" made me think...

"When looking at our noise situation and our current church model, it can seem strange, even preposterous, like an out of body experience, or when you hear your own voice on the answering machine. It’s a model we have become so accustomed to and adept at, that it can be very hard to take an outside look at things. Our current model seems to be set up on the idea of the lecture. A group of people gather together, every week, to hear someone talk to them, hopefully to give them information that they didn’t already have, or if in the case that they did have it, that the new information would inform and lead them beyond their current level of information. While I haven’t done a lot of in depth study on this subject, I imagine this is direct root of part of our less noble Catholic heritage in which the gospel was handed down from Latin texts which the common layperson had no ability to read. This is a very simplistic explanation, of course, but this is my blog. Somewhere along the way, oh, about the time of Wesley and his cohorts, this lecture style, while not changing, became somewhat entertaining, with interesting personalities and former actors (Whitefield) occupying the pulpits. Religion as entertainment, as we have seen in the 20th century, really took off, especially with the baby boom generation which now occupies the seats of our mega churches every Sunday morning."

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