Cult Following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 2)

Part of the reason that this article has proved to be a hot-button issue is because of the spiritually-seeking people that many have claimed to be concerned about. There are 2 main schools of thought that I have heard on this issue

 

1. We should not change who we are because spiritually seeking people need to know what we are like. This sometimes does not take into account the fact that the methods of communication and the general corporate worship experience may or may not be relevant (need improvement, etc…) in contemporary culture
   
   
2. We should change, remove, mask or hide everything that would make a spiritually seeking person uncomfortable in our corporate worship gathering and in the event that we are not able do remove everything (like singing a bunch of songs, praying or giving an offering), we shall apologize profusely for it in the hope that our apology will be accepted and that the seeker shall overlook these shortcomings

 

 This second entry is going to be about a couple of things that I have been forced to increasingly wrestle with over the past few years as I have sought to find ways to relate to the culture in which I now live.

 

The expression that I have heard – an expression that I think accurately describes the cultural state of affairs with relation to Christianity in our country – is that Canada is a post-modern, post-Christian society. If post-modernism and post-Christianity mean nothing to you, please google both terms and you’ll find a plethora of information on both topics.

 

While the church may have had a large part to play in the formation of contemporary society, the truth is that over the years Canadians have turned their back on the church and in large part become suspicious of it. This is obviously not without the help of the church, the misuse of its (the church) power and influence and the growing disconnect with contemporary culture because of a refusal to recognize the times and adapt to them. Obviously there is more to it than this and I have read literally HUNDREDS of articles and books on this movement of culture into a post-modern, post-Christian state. You should too!

 

My personal experience has shown me three predominant groups of people that belong to the mission field that we seek to reach out to and that we hope would walk through our doors.

 

1. The indifferent and disinterested group (with or without prior experience with the church)
2. The cynical, hostile and suspicious group (with or without prior experience with the church)
3. The group that are on a search for an authentic spiritual experience (with or without prior experience with the church)

 

I am sure that we could add to these groups a host of other groups, but these are the ones I will choose to speak about from this point on.

 

Groups 1 and 2 mentioned above will most likely not darken the doorpost of a church unless they are dragged or somehow forcefully coerced. Heh! We all know this, don’t we? It is even more unlikely that they will walk into a worship space like ours because of the pre-conceived negative connotations that the word “Pentecostal” has.

 

Because these groups (1 and 2) of people are highly unlikely to come to our worship services, even when they do they view everything through the tainted lens of cynicism. This means that just about every experience in the church is going to look staged or reek with a lack of authenticity. The corporate singing is going to look like mindless chanting and the message and ministry times are going to look like hypnotic suggestion more than an authentic take on spiritual and contemporary issues. I believe that this is the category to which Mr. Holock who wrote the article that I circulated belongs. If we try to make changes to our corporate worship gatherings with these 2 groups of people in mind, we are wasting our time.

 

My personal belief is that these 2 groups of people can only change their attitude about the church when they become convinced that our walk matches our talk. Our worship services are a mockery to them because our high-flying rhetoric about being the change in the world we want to see and other such stuff is just that… empty words. Our songs are meaningless and repetitive because we are singing about being salt and light and yet in the world today, the salt and light are severely lacking. 

 

Outside of a personal miraculous intervention from God, such people will only change their mind about the church and about Christianity in general when they see a sustained, different approach by the church to issues OUTSIDE of the four walls of the church. Not one that seeks to forcefully influence contemporary culture and speaks down to it from a higher moral vantage point, but one that becomes a true advocate for justice and mercy down in the trenches in a world that severely lacks it. As I said earlier, there is nothing that our corporate worship gathering can change to influence these 2 groups because who we are inside the church is not who they see outside it and so everything that happens inside – from the greeters, to the guy with dreads, to the oh-so-enthusiastic pastor Mark looks extremely ridiculous.

 

The third group of people, who are on a journey seeking an authentic spiritual experience and connection with God (regardless of the definition they might have of who that God is at the time) are the ones who may wander into our doors uninvited, or accept our invitation to church. These are the ones that I have found are more willing to come again even after a less-than-perfect first encounter with the corporate worship experience because they may sense and even experience something more than just a staged weekly gathering.

 

We are therefore faced with a dilemma when they walk in. Do we hide who we really are so that they are not put off by the strangeness WE THINK they may have a problem with when they first encounter us? Do we hide the things we ourselves are personally wrestling over assuming that these spiritually seeking people shall experience the same battle? However, if we adjust our corporate gathering so that it is less “scary” what authentic, passionate, transcendent experience are we left with? We have to assume that we are going to be one of many stops (both denominational and religious) in this person’s quest to find a meaningful encounter with God (ambiguous definition at this point of course). How will we make the experience memorable and not bland then? We also must ask whether what we are currently doing actually DOES NOT harm us in the eyes of a true seeker… because we who are on the worship team are not really seekers in that sense. 

 

This, I think, is where the real debate lies because there are 3 key things all going on at the same time in our worship services

 

1. Communion with God – which has to take first priority in our service and so everything, from a worship facilitator’s standpoint, has to be done with this as priority number 1 and so we cannot strip away the things, the moments, the churchisms that facilitate this.
   
   
2. Communion with each other – because the second most important purpose of the corporate worship gathering as we have defined it in this community is actually NOT evangelism – even though it can serve that purpose – but rather fellowship as we find extensively through the psalms and a poignant piece of scripture in Hebrews 10: 25. Our thinking is that evangelism should actually happen OUTSIDE the corporate worship gathering… the act of bringing people into the family does not happen AT the family gatherings, but rather outside the family gatherings. This therefore is priority number 2 of worship facilitators and so we have to walk the tight rope between keeping the things that enhance this “communion with each other” and ensuring that we are not making relics out of things that were useful in the past, but not relevant to the growing fellowship with ever-changing generations and ethnicities
   
   
3. Connection with the previously churched/un-churched spiritually seeking person.

 

What, therefore, is the way forward?

 

In order to have any meaningful dialogue about this, we have to step out of the kind of thinking that makes our viewpoint right and all other opposing or differing opinions wrong. I would like to hear your thoughts about adjustments, changes, improvements to the corporate worship experience… not just things that PASTOR PAULO AND PASTOR MARK SHOULD DO, but also things that affect more than just the paid staff.

 

While this conversation should include comments about stylistic elements – vintage VS contemporary, old VS new, exuberance VS quiet meditation, one form of communication VS another, etc – I would like to hear some thoughts that are more than just re-dressing, because no matter how many times you change my clothes, I am still fundamentally the same person… the same goes for our corporate worship gatherings. Our continued discussion about improvements/adjustments to the worship gatherings has to go deeper than the dressing of the gathering. It has to be more than what the pastors should do and include what we who are part of the worship facilitation team can all do together.

 

Lets talk!