An open letter to open churches

by Ruth Wilkinson

An open letter to open churches:

There are many day to day issues and decisions that we face that are not directly prescribed or proscribed in Scripture. Situations in which we need to ask ourselves WWJD and do our best.

Ministry during this season of pandemic guidelines has presented us with a need to be flexible, and to understand and perhaps rediscover our priorities.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had people quote to me Hebrews 10:25, which says, “Do not stay away from our worship meetings as some habitually do…” as a push back against government mandated or requested suspensions of Sunday gatherings. “See?” goes the argument, “we are commanded to gather! We aren’t going to disobey God just because the government tells us to.”

On one hand, I agree. If the government were commanding us to disobey God, I hope we would stand up against that. Christ has had His enemies throughout history and will continue to do so until the end, and the Church must declare her allegiance.

Except that’s not what the government is asking us to do today. In the Hebrews passage, the word variously translated “neglect” or “forsake” (enkataleipō) in the original language has a context of permanence. It speaks of abandoning or leaving behind. Not of temporarily finding other ways to connect with each other. Not of telling the worship team to stand down for a while. Not of expecting the preacher to do without an audience for a time. But (and this is a ‘worship leader’ speaking) Sunday mornings are not the Church. Those gatherings are good, healthy and powerful. I would argue that they aren’t who we are. They are not Christ’s kingdom.

I choose instead to consider passages like 2 Corinthians 10:23-24:

“”I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. 

“I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.

No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.”

The believers to whom these words were written were having to make difficult decisions around personal freedom, and relational influence. The idols in question for them were enculturated false gods. For us, liberty itself can be a false god. We insist on indulging in the pleasures it provides, while demanding that everyone recognize our right to do so, regardless of the effect it has on the people around us and their perception of the Body of Christ.

Even more strongly worded are passages in Amos 5. God expresses His distaste toward the gathered worship of Israel, ostensibly an act of obedience and honor. True, God has Himself instituted these “festivals” and inspired the writing of these “songs,” but when practiced without humility and in the face of a callous disregard to the vulnerable in their society, God refuses to receive that honor. And of course, Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

Given the principles at work in these scriptures, my choice is clear. To suspend my rights in solidarity with those around me, to do the hard work of finding other ways to connect with people in need, to “stay home.”

True, the government has, in this most recent lockdown, given houses of worship an almost exclusive exception. But just because I am offered privilege does not mean I have to accept it. I am a member of my community. I will live as such.

Winter: A Test of Faith

101 Degrees of Separation: On New Year’s Day 2009, Ippswich in Australia was expecting a high of +38C, which is about 100F. Meanwhile, back at home, my Weather Network indicator on my computer was showing that we were heading to a low of -18C, which is about -1F. The Aussies high temperature on a summer mid-afternoon Thursday would be occurring at the same time as my Wednesday mid-winter night. That’s 101 Fahrenheit degrees difference. That day I was asking, “Are we even on the same planet?”

While every post here every day is supposed to be faith focused, a lot lately have had the church life tag. Today is no exception. The pictures are repeats that I’ve now used four times here — I find the contrast fascinating — but the written part is new.

It’s anecdotal and it’s subjective, but it seems to me like whenever a massive storm system is moving through our region, it impacts Sunday morning church attendance. Yesterday was the second week in a row where the crowd size was down in our part of the world. The week before it was a snowstorm. Yesterday it was a threat of freezing rain.

The word threat is key here. The Weather Network seems to send out more warnings than necessary, but of course each time you tap the prompt on your phone, they are selling more advertising, I guess. I use something called Weather Underground, which I’m told is connected to AccuWeather. They seem to be in panic mode fewer times each month.

Threat is also important because as Canadians, we know how to drive in winter, and part of that knowledge is that sometimes you just stay home. We’re just that extra bit laid back so that if we don’t make the sales appointment, or don’t make it to the office, it’s not the end of the world. I get the impression that most Americans think they can just force their way through the elements to get where they perceive they need to be. And then the 6:30 newscasts in the U.S. are peppered with accident video. Cars spinning out of control, trucks flipped over, wreckage being towed away.

But back to our subject.

I would think pastors get discouraged with weather developments. After all, they’re playing on God’s team. It’s not supposed to be that way. Talking to a Children’s Ministry director yesterday, I also considered that if your kids are local, and therefore make it to church, but your volunteers live a greater distance away, then you’ve got other problems. There are also fewer visitors. Lower offerings. And preaching a series means that some people, if they don’t catch up online, have missed key developments in the teaching sequence.

So Sunday at lunch I prayed and asked God if he would at least consider arranging the weather elements so that churches in our area could catch a break next week. These storm systems take days to develop and migrate, so I figured a week’s notice was giving him a lot of time to put something together.

A Blog Post No One Will Read

I’m later posting today, and I’m writing this knowing that this will largely go unread in North America, as everyone is preoccupied with a major sporting event, the one Internet Monk referred to yesterday as the Superb Owl, because there is an obsession with not trespassing on the event’s trademarked name.

I’m also listening to a delayed broadcast of this morning’s service from North Point as I type. I was late for that one as well, but I can tell that their game-related “opener” ran about nine minutes. That’s a lot of time to subtract from a worship service for the purpose of creating a visitor-friendly welcome or setting a relaxed atmosphere for regulars. I mean, try explaining this part of the “liturgy” to an Episcopalian. There isn’t a section in the Book of Common Prayer that says, ‘the officiant will pause and do a stand-up routine about the closest state college football team.’

At risk of offending a whole lot of people, I don’t think sports commentary has any place in the worship service. Ditto comments about the weather. From the call to worship to the benediction, the service should focus on God, Jesus, confession, forgiveness, the body of Christ, the resurrection and commissioning to leave and take the good news into the world.

I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, and I’m all for seeker-friendly services (though seeker-targeted is another subject) but I just think we overindulge the sports enthusiasts and alienate those who came for the purpose of connecting with God and getting what they need for the 167 hours in the week to follow.

To everything there is a season: A time for sports and a time for worship. But that worship hour is precious and let’s not squander a minute of it.

…Okay, now go enjoy the game.

Can You Be Spontaneous and Liturgical at the Same Time?

Okay, let’s get the title question out of the way quickly: The answer is ‘no.’ To adopt a liturgical form is by definition to do away with spontaneity completely. Why pose the question?

If you were a fly on the wall at our house last night, the discussion was about the churches that would call themselves “spirit-led” vs. the ones which follow a more “scripted” worship order at weekend services. There are advantages to both of course. Many — dare I say most? — Evangelical churches lack the richness and depth one finds in an Episcopalian or Anglican setting. But when it comes to prayer, particularly if the prayer is for you and some need you are facing, you want someone who doesn’t need to read a prayer out of book.¹

In many Evangelical environments, every word that is spoken is not written out ahead of time.² This produces a tendency to “wing it.” On the other hand, those same Evangelicals often enter a liturgical environment and find it too sterile. Let’s face it, you can tell when someone who is reading something is just reading it.

On the other hand, we have Millennials reporting to be preferring a more traditional worship environment. Does this do away with extemporaneous praying? Eliminate the pastor being led to introduce a new direction into the sermon? Or is the desired outcome more a blend of what we have now, and what we had 100 years ago? ³

Cruising the interwebs, we found a piece by J.C. Holsinger at the Assemblies of God website. It’s too long to post in its entirety here but I hope some of you will click through. (Click the title below.) I like the way — from the perspective of his denomination — this article bridges the divide.

Pentecostal liturgy?

…When the Assemblies of God was formed, the founders deliberately avoided using the words sacrament and liturgy. In fact, the founders carefully called the ceremonies of the church ordinances to avoid any sacramental connection. Hence rather than sacramentalism which the word liturgy historically brings with it, Pentecostals more accurately have ordinances and ceremonies. However, these ceremonies are important in educating and binding the generations of Christians together. Therefore, continuity and carefulness in performing these ceremonies should be practiced.

I attended a wedding recently where the pastor opened the ceremony with a prayer: “As we hear these young people repeat their vows, may those of us who are married be reminded of the same vows we once took. Lord, help us to reaffirm our vows to You and to each other.” When he finished the prayer I almost shouted “Amen” because that is one of the most valuable purposes of ceremony–to educate and reaffirm important truths held in common, not just to provide a private or personal experience.

Modern society attempts either to personalize or individualize everything… A common question is, ‘What does that mean to you?” The implication is that your experience and other people’s experiences are equally valid…

Can such tendencies to personalize and individualize everything ultimately destroy the purposes and continuity of ceremonies in a society?

Consider God’s command that Joshua require the leaders of the 12 Tribes to take a stone from the Jordan River to create a memorial. What if each of the 12 leaders or the 12 Tribes themselves had said, “We want to personalize our part of the ceremony.” Or, “I would rather bring a log,” or “I’ll pick up a pretty shell from the river that is special and meaningful to me.” Instead, they heightened the meaning with all the leaders repeating exactly the same ceremony. This made it possible for the next generation to ask, “What mean you by these stones?” and to be educated about God and their responsibilities to His purposes.

Repetition and consistency of common procedures heighten the meaning and importance of ceremony…

For example, if a respected Christian couple brings their child for dedication and the minister says, “I know you are good Christians, so I am not going to ask you whether you will bring up your child in church,” does that not destroy the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to prick the hearts of all parents present as to whether they are carrying out their vows?

Do we as church leaders affirm the importance of godly homes if at a Pentecostal church wedding the bridesmaids and bride come down the aisle more appropriately dressed for a nightclub than a church? Or music is sung at a Pentecostal church wedding that has sexual overtones more in keeping with a cabaret?

What about our ceremonies for the ordinance of water baptism? Is the meaning of “being buried with Christ and resurrected with Him” lost if we allow silly comments about the coldness of the water or ask, “Are you scared?”

Ceremonies need not be formal or stiff, of course. Given our church’s history and theology, ceremonies can be relaxed and natural. However, is it not easy to cross the fine line between relaxed and natural and instead produce silliness that destroys the basic teaching purposes of the ceremony? …

Also interesting was information about an academic book releasing in 2017 by Mark Cartledge and A. J. Swoboda, Scripting Pentecost. You can read about that at this link.

Your comments are welcome. We’ll return to this topic soon!

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¹ There are always exceptions to everything and one is a book that is a favorite among Pentecostals and Charismatics, Prayers that Avail Much which uses what would be termed Spirit-filled language, but consists entirely of pre-formatted prayers which can be used in a variety of life situations.

² For a look at a brief period where something resembling liturgy overlapped Evangelical history, check out the Responsive Readings section of old hymnbooks.

³ For one approach to creating liturgy in a more current culture, check out my brief 2011 review of Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne et al.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Your Church’s Comfort Sweet Spots

Sometimes we don’t realize the way first-time visitors see things when the walk into our buildings, or maybe, like this Community Baptist Church van, we’re just not thinking ahead.

I’ve never actually been in a church where the color of the carpet was an issue, but the topic stands in for a host of other topics when people are discussing superficial things they don’t like about a particular place of worship.

Still, there are some superficial environmental details which impact how effective ministry can be. For example, why is sometimes the pastor seems to really connect with people during the sermon, and other weeks when people are less responsive. It may have to do with things you don’t think about.

Sound

• If the sound is turned up too high, people feel like they are being shouted at. It’s the live equivalent of me typing a sentence in CAPITAL LETTERS, back when people actually interacted in groups. Of course, there are some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches where the preacher’s words are amplified at rock concert volumes, but I think we have natural defenses that want to shut off any message bombarding us at high decibels.
• If the sound is turned down too low, I believe that even if you’re hearing every single word, you’re using some mental processing capacity to strain to catch those phrases and sentences, at the expense of being able to use that capacity to process the actual content of the words, and their applicability to your situation.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle, and find a way to keep it consistent week-to-week.

Temperature

• If the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is turned up too high, people feel sticky in the summer and sleepy in the winter. If the temperature makes you feel comfy and cozy like you’re lying under a couple of blankets, you will indeed nod off.
• If the thermostat is turned down too low, people are squirming or perhaps even needing to use the restrooms. Preservation instinct takes over, and the message processing capacity diminishes.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle. Sometimes, if you’re not sure, you need to take 15 seconds to survey the audience on this one.

Lighting

• The modern church spends a fortune on stage lighting, which includes something called “backlighting” which helps give definition to people on the platform. However, depending on where you are sitting, these lights can be shining directly into the audience seating. After the first five minutes it gets annoying and after as little as fifteen minutes you have a headache.
• On the other hand, some churches are so dark it’s creepy. (We covered this topic in the list link a few days ago here.) Combine the absence of light with a high temperature and you have a perfect recipe for slumber once the sermon starts.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle. One church I know turns up the lights for the sermon so people can follow along in their Bibles and make notes. Trouble is, in other auditorium contexts, when the lights come up it means the show is over! 

Smell

• Some churches smell like a church; there’s no other way to say that. Is it the wooden pews? Something given off by old hymnbooks? Stale air from a sanctuary that’s sat relatively idle since the previous week’s service? It could also be something not quite so neutral. Maybe it’s the smell of sweaty socks from a sports night the youth group had downstairs the night before. Or the smell of food from the potluck taking place after the service. It might even be the smell of perfumes worn by mostly female adherents who are mostly above a certain age; a scent many are allergic to. (We’ve discussed that last one in this popular post.)
  
• Of course, you can try to compensate for any and all of the above with products that prove the adage that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. The result can actually cause some people to wince as they enter, or after prolonged exposure.

Although we would never admit it, some of us who attend older church buildings have a subconscious affinity to the smell of the church building, but no clue how it impacts first time visitors. Maybe the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics have the cure: Just burn off any transgressing smells. You can read more about that in my next book, The Case for Candles.

So what superficials have affected worship in your past experience?

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From last week’s link list, here’s an excellent article dealing with the exterior that greets first-time visitors:

• Judging a Book by its Cover Department: How much attention does your church pay to the outside of your facility? A ten-point church exterior evaluation checklist

 

Finding Blog Topics in the Middle of Sunday Worship

On Sunday our church had its annual “Church In The Park” service. Since we normally meet at two different service times, it’s nice to have everyone altogether.

During the worship time, I couldn’t help but look around and see families and individuals in the unique out-of-doors context. There was one family that I’ve known for years, but their one child seemed troubled during the singing time. Another family that I’ve known a long time is new to this church and it was great to see them entering in wholeheartedly as we we worshiped. I saw a number of people who were by themselves and as this particular service especially caters to families with kids, I made a point to speak to one of them.

I also wondered how the four of us looked to others.

Every picture tells a story; each person is an unfolding story.

“Paul;” some will be thinking, “It was the worship time, and you should have been focused on the attributes of God, his love and majesty, and expressing your thanksgiving and praise to him.”

I guess I allowed myself this different track because of something my wife said to my youngest son earlier in the week about how she is experiencing that time in our weekend services. I asked her to explain:

As an introvert with eclectic music tastes, I find the ‘modern worship’ pool at the churches we attend growing increasingly shallow and, to be honest, uninteresting.  As we stand and sit and stand again during the ‘worship time’, I am less and less engaged in the singing, so I look around. 

I see a man who I remember going through a dark time several years ago and recall how God brought him through.  I see a woman still healing from her surgery, hands raised, eyes closed and a smile on her face.  I see a family, faithful attenders, working to stay close to each other despite disappointments and pain.  I see a woman trusting God for an answer in the middle of her weakness and anxiety.   And the weight, the power, the joy of what God has done in their lives, of what he is continuing to do, hook themselves into my heart. 

In looking into those lives I’m reminded of God’s faithfulness, love, healing and hope deeply and irresistibly.  In that, and in silence, I worship. 

This all got me thinking as well about how some of my fellow-bloggers say they have a tough time coming up with topics; that they never know what to write about.

Look around you.

There are many, many stories. If they are ‘too close to home’ then change up the names, locations and situations, but keep the essence of what you see. If you’re not a good storyteller, then generalize what you feel are the important themes that come to mind. (‘I’ve been thinking lately about…’) 

Summing this up, I think the making of a good writer involves (a) being out and about in the real world, and (b) being observant; having one’s eyes open. Even in the middle of worship when everyone else’s eyes are closed.

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Photo: Applegate Christian Fellowship in Oregon. They don’t have to go to the park, they have this on their property.

Wednesday Link List

Each week, I get paid to write teasers for some great online resources, as well as some quirky ones.

• After 40 years as a writer, Philip Yancey looks at The Golden Age of Publishing.
• Analysis: Some hints as to a recent survey showing that the love Evangelicals have for Jewish people is not reciprocated.
• Someone you know may need this book: An interview with author J. J. Jasper on grieving the loss of a child.
• Christians in Mosul ordered to leave this city found their homes identified with a painted letter ‘N’ for ‘Nazarene.’
• The drive home and the Sunday dinner: A look at how to debrief the weekend sermon with your children.
• I have an inkling about this one: A movie probing the friendship between J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.
• The McCormick Ridge Holiness Church in Whitleyville, Tennessee begins life after buying back its building from the Wesleyan Church denomination after a dispute that began over what the pastor considered unethical investments in the pension fund for ministers.
• 

  You can also read today’s links at PARSE, a Christianity Today website; click this image

  If your church grows (like you want it to) some key people may lose their favorite seat. (And parking spot.)
• Canadian North Point affiliate pastor has a great back-catalog of leadership articles on his blog. Recently posted, 21 signs that a “closed” sign may be heading for your church, unless things change…
• …and another article which shows that, while you may not read tea leaves to spot societal shifts, you can read into 5 things Netflix can teach us.
• A Pentecostal who frequently writes as to why the (capital C) Church should permit women in ministry offers seven reasons why the same (capital C) Church often does not.
• Christian Leadership Parental Complications: When your child is dating a non-Christian. (The author says to skip the “unequal yoke” bit.) …
• …Related: “What if a daughter’s father took some responsibility not just in vetting a young man, but in investing in him and preparing him to make much of Jesus in dating and marriage?” How to date your daughter’s boyfriend.
• Some people think the Bible is just an ancient book that belongs in a museum. Now, that museum is becoming a reality.
• Perseverance (and preservation) of the saints: R. C. Sproul seems to allow the possibility of “falling past the point of no return.” Or appearing to have “irretrievably fallen.” A Reformer looks at apostasy…
• (…Which of course reminded me of the Steve Taylor song, Not Gonna Fall Away, which seems to exist on YouTube only in this 8-minute remix.)
• A North Carolina Baptist pastor takes scripture memorization to extremes.
• Do I really have what it takes to lead this missions trip? That and four other questions leaders ask while packing their suitcase.
• Flashing back to ’90s Christian culture: If I had a Kindle, I’d probably download this book, the title of which is…uh…
• Pastors have problems with what people think about them. That and nine other things they don’t admit publicly.
• Teaching teens that, over the long term, monogamy makes sense.
• A seemingly impossible story of pregnancy, pregnancy termination, and a live, healthy birth.
• After the upcoming Exodus: Gods and Kings movie releases, director Ridley Scott plans to tackle the life of King David.
• A social media ‘Dear John’ letter, only this one begins, “Dear Facebook…“
• Ten ways the seniors in your church can be integrated into youth ministry.
• Essay of Last Week: With 40 links last Wednesday, some things were edited. This one is Anne Marie Miller’s take on why discussions on modesty are often misdirected.
• Essay of This Week: Perhaps the way some Evangelicals do communion is “too painless.”
• 12 signs of abusive leadership in churches that pastors should not tolerate.
• This acoustic version of Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) was posted by K-LOVE back in October, but given the popularity of the song today, I mention it here.  The top ten video versions at YouTube have a combined viewership around 31,500,000…
• …while a group that often covers other artists songs, Worship Mob, is our Video of the Week with a 7-minute original song.
• Symbols Quiz Time: You have a fish on your car, and you know the dove represents the Holy Spirit, but what about the pelican?
• Moving forward, your church’s website will need to be mobile-compatible.
• Christian singer Natalie Grant makes her film debut in the movie Persecuted, an American political suspense thriller involving an evangelist framed for murder.
• Remember when the front of the church consisted of the choir loft, communion table, wooden pulpit and overstuffed high-back chairs?  That’s no longer the case.
• Here are three very disparate false assumptions that worship leaders can make…
• …also from Canada, this report on swimming upstream: A music society fights for the preservation of hymns by condemning modern worship leaders…
• …and concluding our music links trio, this writer calls the various distractions one encounters during worship time, Worshiping in the Wild. (Please do not feed the animals.)
• Finally, proving that the American-biased, success-based teaching of Joel Osteen has absolutely no application outside of, for example, the G20 nations, there is the website Third World Osteen.
• Well…I don’t know about you, but I could keep doing this all day, but…  Our closing image comes from The Master’s Table (click below) and was photographed at WalMart. (The upper image is also a t-shirt from Gardenfire.)
  

 

Kids and Communion: Sacrament or Snack-Time?

This is a topic that was covered here twice before, in February of 2011 and December, 2011. I’m presenting both complete today, but including the links because the December one attracted a number of comments. You can join that old comment thread or start a new one here that might get seen by more people.  The first article is more practical, the second more doctrinal. The first article also appeared on the day after a piece about children and (immersion) baptism, which is why it begins…

Continuing where we left off yesterday…

I like the story of the little boy who wanted to take part in the communion service that followed the Sunday morning offering. When told by his mother that he was too young to take communion, the eager participant whispered loud enough to be heard five rows back, “Why not? I just paid for it, didn’t I?”

~Stan Toler in Preacher’s Magazine

Last week was Communion Sunday at our home church. We attended the 9:00 AM service so that we could actually get to a second service at 10:30 at our other home church. The 9:00 AM service is attended by families with young children who wake up early, and I was horrified to glance and see a young boy of about six or seven helping himself as the bread and wine were passed. Maybe this story describes the kind of thing I’m referencing:

At my church, we had a special Easter night service, and we took communion. My brother was in there, and he’s only 6, so he doesn’t understand the meaning of it. When he saw the “crackers” and “grape juice” being passed around, he said “mommy! Its snack time! I want a snack too!” Obviously, he’s too young to take communion. But for those of us who do take it, do we see it as “snack time”? Communion is great. I love to hear Pastors words describing the night when Jesus and his 12 apostles took upon the 1st Holy Communion. I think since we do take communion regularly in church, we overlook the importance there is in it.

~Summer, a 15-year old in Illinois

But not everyone agrees with this approach:

I have allowed my children to take communion ever since they have told me that they love Jesus. I think 3 was the age they were first able to verbalize that.

We explain it to them each time as the bread and wine come around, and while they dont get it all, they know they are considered ok to partake.

This would not have happened in the world I grew up in.

~Andrew Hamilton at Backyard Missionary (no longer available)

The latter view is the one currently gaining popularity among Evangelical parents. And there are often compelling reasons for it. A children’s ministry specialist in New Zealand only ever posted four things on his or her blog, but one of them was this piece which argued for including all children because:

• The historical reason: Children would be included in Passover celebration;
• The Passover parallel: It is a means of teaching children about Christ’s deliverance for us;
• Salvation qualifies them: If they have prayed to receive Christ, which is not exclusive to adults, they should participate;
• The alternative is complicated: The age at which a child would be considered “ready” would actually vary for each child, and setting a specific age adds more complication;
• Communion is an act of worship, something children should be equally participating in.

Having read that, it might be easy to conclude that this is the side to which I personally lean.

That would be a mistake.

Despite the arguments above, I really think that Summer’s comment adequately describes the situation I saw firsthand last Sunday. As with yesterday’s piece here — Baptism: How Young is Too Young? — I think we are rushing our children to have ‘done’ certain things that perhaps we think will ‘seal’ them with God.

I thought it interesting that one of the pieces I studied in preparation for yesterday’s post suggested that the parents of children who would be strongly opposed doctrinally to infant baptism have no issues with their non-infant children being baptized very young. Another article described a boy so young they had to ‘float’ him over to the pastor, since he couldn’t touch the bottom.

I’ve often told the story of the young woman who told me that when she was confirmed in her church at age 14 — confirmation being the last ‘rite’ of spiritual passage for those churches that don’t practice believer’s baptism by immersion — she stopped attending because she ‘done’ everything there was to ‘do.’ She described it perfectly: “The day I officially joined the church was the day I left the church.”

Are we in too much of a hurry here to see our children complete these things so we can check them off a list? Are parents who would be horrified to see their daughters wearing skimpy outfits because that constitutes “growing up too fast” actually wanting their sons and daughters to “grow up spiritually too fast?”

I was eleven when my parents deemed me ready to take communion. While I question my decision to be baptized at 13, I think that this was a good age to enter into the Eucharist. I know that Catholic children receive First Communion at age seven, therefore I am fully prepared to stick to this view even if I end up part of a clear minority.

Church Life: Pleasing Everyone is Hard to Do

I’ve never actually been in a church where the color of the carpet was an issue, but the topic stands in for a host of other topics when people are discussing superficial things they don’t like about a particular place of worship.

Still, there are some superficials which impact how effective ministry can be. For example, why is sometimes the pastor seems to really connect with people during the sermon, and other weeks when people are less responsive. It may have to do with things you don’t think about.

Sound

• If the sound is turned up too high, people feel like they are being shouted at. It’s the live equivalent of me typing a sentence in CAPITAL LETTERS, back when people actually interacted in groups. Of course, there are some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches where the preacher’s words are amplified at rock concert volumes, but I think we have natural defenses that want to shut off any message bombarding us at high decibels.
• If the sound is turned down too low, I believe that even if you’re hearing every single word, you’re using some mental processing capacity to strain to catch those phrases and sentences,  at the expense of being able to use that capacity to process the actual content of the words, and their applicability to your situation.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle, and find a way to keep it consistent week-to-week.

Temperature

• If the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is turned up too high, people feel sticky in the summer and sleepy in the winter. If the temperature makes you feel comfy and cozy like you’re lying under a couple of blankets, you will indeed nod off.
• If the thermostat is turned down too low, people are squirming or perhaps even needing to use the restrooms. Preservation instinct takes over, and the message processing capacity diminishes.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle. Sometimes, if you’re not sure, you need to take 15 seconds to survey the audience on this one.

Lighting

• The modern church spends a fortune on stage lighting, which includes something called “backlighting” which helps give definition to people on the platform. However, depending on where you are sitting, these lights can be shining directly into the audience seating. After the first five minutes it gets annoying and after as little as fifteen minutes you have a headache.
• On the other hand, some churches are so dark it’s creepy. (We covered this topic in the list link a few days ago here.) Combine the absence of light with a high temperature and you have a perfect recipe for slumber once the sermon starts.

What you want is to find the sweet spot in the middle. One church I know turns up the lights for the sermon so people can follow along in their Bibles and make notes. Trouble is, in other auditorium contexts, when the lights come up it means the show is over!

So what superficials have affected worship in your past experience?

Wednesday Link List

This week’s links include:

• A consideration of “spontaneous” baptisms.  That’s how they did it in the book of Acts, so why not now?
• A look at the “spoken word” genre in church. It’s not poetry because it isn’t meant to read, but rather spoken.
• A suggestion that when the sermon is over, the church should stand and affirm one of the classic creeds. (Used this at C201 this week, too!)
  
• A 30 minute podcast with uber-blogger Michael Hyatt on responding to negative people.
• A warning about wolves! Lee Grady reminds us all that there are Christian con-artists out there.
• A video from a 100 Huntley St. interview with Ravi Zacharias Ministries lead Canadian apologist Andy Bannister. 
• A post in a continuing series of reminders that sometimes the serious side of Jon Acuff has as much to offer as the humorous.
  
• A website for Steeple Envy, a new book on the obsession some pastors have with church and building size by pastor and author Victor Cuccia.
  
• A CT article with three views wrestling with voting for a Mormon for U.S. President, if that’s an issue where you live.
  
• A somewhat related history article about the original Mormon vision for the state of Deseret.
• A video obituary for the founder of the Unification Church, Rev. Sun Myung Moon who died on the weekend.
  
• A website devoted to very early contemporary Christian music from the 1960s; and…
• A YouTube channel devoted to very early CCM from the ’60s and early ’70s.
• A word of encouragement and hope at the blog Pursued by God for Christian Singles.
• A rather amazing interview with Justin Lee, author of Torn:Rescuing The Gospel from the Gay vs. Christian Debate, and founder of the Gay Christian Network.
• A good “…and finally in the news” item: A mixed martial arts fighter and reality show host was jailed on suspicion of burglary last month after deputies responding to reports of a break-in said they found him naked inside a Southern California church.
• A thank-you to our two graphics providers (top and bottom) whose links are found when you click the images.