What can be done about the pretty American church?

As the American church works hard at being beautiful it goes through a great many contortions to appeal to our consumerist society.  Several years ago a minister at a rapidly growing, emerging, mega church told me: “To grow a church all you really need is great music and children’s ministry.  If you have those you can get by with average preaching.”  In other words, you better have star power where people want star power. 

“Come to church and you could win a free Harley Davidson motorcycle.”  One church, in an effort to teach the community about grace-the gift that makes glad, actually had a drawing during their worship service in which they gave away a new motorcycle.  I attended one church, a satellite of the mother church, in which the pastor apologized for reading a long passage of Scripture before his teaching.  This church would be very appealing to a secular person-great light show, loud band (yes ear plugs were offered), high volume fog machine, a comforting teaching about building a better life and home, very little Scripture-clearly nothing to scandalize or offend. 

If we appeal to the consumer mindset of our culture by crafting worship to suit the culture, will it be up to our culture to say “enough”?  If our capacity to reach the world is dependent on star power, what shall we do with our ministers, churches and servants who will never be stars?  In hundreds of ways, some subtle, others not, we communicate to the Christian community, “You should be in a church with epic awesomeness at every turn.”  In my own community a pastor from a star kind of church was talking with a couple that attended a smaller congregation.  When they expressed their contentment to stay with their own church the pastor asked, “What could ***** church possible offer that we don’t have?” The star church is very good at attracting people, more often than not Christians from other congregations.  In our efforts to make the church irresistibly attractive to our world, we may be sowing the seeds of our own demise.  

While I do not doubt the sincerity of those who are pushing the church to be more available to the culture at large, I believe we are reaching a tipping point at which the church will become culture expressed in religious terms and nothing more.  I understand that culture will inevitably have an impact on the ministry of the church.  I also understand that we must not assume that the sub-culture of the church will be easily understood by the world at large.  However, a constant danger for the church is to be so shaped by and pursuant of the culture that it becomes apostate.  It has happened to a church culture with a much deeper theological heritage than ours. Take for example Bishop Ludwig Muller and the efforts of the Reichskirche.  I do not believe that the church in American will turn into a political machine.  Our temptation lays more to the glitz, glamour, and polish of entertainment.  In the name of reaching more people and growing bigger, in the effort to have a grander show and more exciting experience, to be or imitate the new, newest thing, we shift our focus from the eternal to the latest church beautiful effort.

Allow me to offer a disclaimer here.  I am not advocating sloppy, poor quality, dead ritual, mind numbing worship.  I have watched churches throw together efforts of such poor quality that I was embarrassed for them.  I have heard musical presentations that were hideous beyond description.  What I am advocating is that the church rediscover the ancient beauty of worship.

It is said that the Reformation moved the center of worship from the altar to the pulpit, from saying the Mass to preaching scripture.  It has also been said that the church growth movement moved the center of worship from the pulpit to the praise band.  I believe that it is time to move the center of worship again.  I believe we can have worship that is deeply moving, yet can be conducted by those with less than star quality talent.

Here is where we can return to the ancient beauty of the church and for many it will be new.  We can rediscover the power and the beauty of worship that is centered in the Lord’s Supper.  To gather at the Lord’s Table every week was clearly the practice of the early church.  It is a practice in which the focus is on the One who is the sacrifice and taken away from any who would be a star.  It is the drama of the life, death, and resurrection of the One whom we claim to worship.  It is a table that welcomes all true believers, while reminding each that they are present only by grace.  When compared with the body and blood of Christ the grandest light, fog, and music shows become a shallow flirtation.   

Some would argue that to make the Lord’s Table the center of worship every week would cause it to lose its significance.  I have seen this in churches when communion meditations are poorly prepared, when little thought is given to the cross and when communion is treated as a prelude to a sermon.  We do not think the Lord’s Table is critical and so we prepare for it as if it is not critical. 

But I believe that if we put the effort into making the Lord’s Table significant, it will be significant.  If we spend adequate time in prayer and scripture as we approach communion we will find that it is consistently a source of strength and worship.  I have worshipped in the grand event church and with stars on stage.  And I have worshipped in the small gathering where there was an absence of stars, but we stood in awe of the Savior and ate His body and drank His blood.  I will always choose the nail scared hands to the star-studded stage.