My Critique of Some Aspects of Modern Churches and “Spirituality”.

Recently a blog called Liquid Egg Product had a post which has elicited some responses dealing with certain negative aspects of some churches and their music, and also dealing with spirituality in general. Shortly before reading the post and its responses I was already thinking of writing a post about similar things, spurred on by my reading of one Tom’s blog. (The Everyday Christian.) Reading Tom’s blog also turned out to be what spurred the LEP site to finish it’s post on the topic. So congrats to Tom on his provocative writing. My comment at LEP was pretty hefty and so I thought I would just post it instead of the post I was considering.

“I finally left a church and found a new one because I was so fed up with the theatricality. Sometimes it was subdued, but at times it would be way too obvious. It seemed like they were willing to do too much for numbers, and I kept thinking how we were not supposed conform to the world, yet the very way they would present themselves to the world in sermons and otherwise seemed like the height of conformity to the commercial and theatrical.

On the contemporary music, I think it is a little frightening when we have a generation who can happily repeat a simple refrain praising God twenty times in a row but which doesn’t know the words to more than a single hymn or two if any. When I hear a part of a song I’m uncomfortable with I often just stay quiet for that portion of the song, words like “I’m in love with you Jesus.” may be the type of thing I might be quiet during. But I have no problem with “I Love you Jesus.” Another thing about the more modern music replacing the old which I think churches need to consider, is the cost it has to some of the elderly. It is kind of like taking away some of their more precious memories, by taking away their favorite hymns from the selections. I think we can have contemporary music, but do we have to do away with the older so thoroughly? I agree with Grandma, and have often been irritated with the focus on the singer in the songs. It particularly strikes me how many times the word “I” pops up in so many songs as opposed to “you”. And I agree with Tom, the emotional is overemphasized, and I doubt its long term contribution to a person’s spiritual growth. Seems more often like a temporary high, of the emotional type. Not that I think we shouldn’t have exhilarating songs, but the emphasis seems a bit much.

I suspect these changes are a result in part of the “seeker sensitive” movement, which seems to have gone too far in terms of like I said earlier, conforming to the world. It was an interesting confirmation of my dislike for the turn things have taken when willow creek community church, the flagship of the seeker sensitive movement, found in a well done study that while they were thriving in numbers, they found they were woefully low in the types of disciples of Christ who would continue to walk with God through home bible study, prayer, etc. after they left the church. The very things they were putting millions of dollars into thinking it would help people spiritually, weren’t working. And the things they weren’t focusing on, ended up being the things people were really crying out for. To their immense credit, the church has admitted its mistake and it now I believe is trying to make drastic changes to remedy the situation. Here:
http://www.rfmedia.org/blog/audio/rf_audiocast-2007-11-04-72477.mp3
is an interesting 7 minute 58 second commentary on the willow creek thing if anyone is interested.

As to vague “spirituality”, it has sort of become a catch all for all kinds of weird beliefs, to quote someone who would probably address this much better than me. “What a person needs to do is not be spiritual, but be spiritually right. You have a right to believe whatever you want, but what you believe needs to be right.” This kind of heart/feeling focused philosophy seems to me to cut off the mind as an informer of our beliefs. One problem is that the heart does lie sometimes, it is often not the best informer in the decision making process. I think the view of “always follow your heart”, or, “if it feels good then do it”, has had all kinds of harmful effects on peoples lives. While typing I think of one in particular, divorce. People seem to think that when you get married, then if the emotional sparks dissipate (which they tend to do so at some point.), then something has gone wrong and the love is gone and its time for a divorce. Love has to transcend the romantic feelings, it is as much a matter of the will and of commitment as it is a matter of the heart. In other words, love is more than just the flutter of a heart, it can be hard work, whatever the songs and poets might say. But the follow your heart mentality tends not to recognize that, and so marriages end up being based mostly on the feelings and not much on the will or commitment, and so they often fail. I guess I was feeling verbose today, I think I might make this comment a post on my blog.”

Tags: Christian music, Christianity, church, church music, churches, critiques, feelings, hymns, love, marriage, modern church, modern churches, spirituality, the heart, willow creek community church