A great article by Sally Morgenthaler (the worship guru for many church leaders and the major proponent of “worship evangelism”) brilliantly dissects the appeals of mega-churches, why they’re growing, who they’re actually attracting, and simply and devastatingly lays out why the worship in most churches has the effect of actually distancing people from authentic connection with God:

It would appear that we’re more than capable of creating our own view of the world, and we tend to promote and perpetuate that view in our sanctuaries and worship centers. Somehow, the show goes on… even if most of the unbelievers we thought we were reaching either weren’t there in the first place, or they left the building some time ago.

Early in 2005 an unchurched journalist attended one of the largest, worship-driven churches in the country. Here is his description of one particular service:

“The [worship team] was young and pretty, dressed in the kind of quality-cotton-punk clothing one buys at the Gap. ‘Lift up your hands, open the door,’ crooned the lead singer, an inoffensive tenor. Male singers at [this] and other megachurches are almost always tenors, their voices clean and indistinguishable, R&B-inflected one moment, New Country the next, with a little bit of early ’90s grunge at the beginning and the end.”

They sound like they’re singing in beer commercials, and perhaps this is not coincidental. The worship style is a kind of musical correlate to (their pastor’s) free market theology: designed for total accessibility, with the illusion of choice between strikingly similar brands. (He prefers the term flavors, and often uses Baskin-Robbins as a metaphor when explaining his views.) The drummers all stick to soft cymbals and beats anyone can handle; the guitarists deploy effects like artillery but condense them, so the highs and lows never stretch too wide. Lyrics tend to be rhythmic and pronunciation perfect, the better to sing along with when the words are projected onto movie screens. Breathy or wailing, vocalists drench their lines with emotion, but only within strict confines. There are no sad songs in a megachurch, and there are no angry songs. There are songs about desperation, but none about despair; songs convey longing only if it has already been fulfilled.”

No sad songs. No angry songs. Songs about desperation, but none about despair. Worship for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren’t interested.

The church that I left recently just took on a pastor that is a big proponent of the mega-church model: demographically tested musical styles, programmed services, multimedia displays, the works. Sally’s article only serves to reinforce my instinctive distaste for the approach – how soulless, calculating and spiritually threadbare, and above all, how ineffective it can be. As Sally says and as Scott has pointed out on his blog, statistically speaking, the approach isn’t drawing in and growing unchurched people looking to connect with God. It’s just moving church people around from place to place – wherever they can find a more entertaining experience and programs that fit their “lifestyle”.

If you’re interested at all in church leadership or practice in the evangelical context like I am, read the article. It’s worth some serious thought.

Sky and Anne are welcoming a new baby boy into the world today to join their other three and a half year old daughter, an occasion that they have been alternately loving and trepidatious for and which will certainly involve upheaval.  Two of my brothers continue to walk a totally foreign road of being unexpectedly and violently widowed.  Tomorrow Amira turns three years old, which has meant an overwhelming tempestuous firestorm of new emotions for her that she, and we, are learning how to navigate.

We hunger for certainty, for knowledge of what will come, for some kind of magic that will let us retain everything that is comfortable and familiar while at the time time radically changing us.  It’s not a luxury we as human beings will enjoy. There are times to rest in peaceful water, put down anchor, and other times to sail out and draw the map as you go. T.S. Eliot, one of my favorite poets, puts it well:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
…

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

~ from “East Coker”, The Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot)

I’m getting there. Just a week or two more of hard work and I will have gotten past this current hump of stuff.  Hopefully more posts after that.

In the meantime, here’s some music that means something.  Read an interview in Relevant Magazine with Ben Harper where he discusses his collaboration with the Blind Boys Of Alabama.  I got inspired to look up some video from their sessions and found this one.

Dedicated to Virginia who died yesterday; Micaela, Dian, Joe and Kathleen who have gone on ahead of us into the Great Dance; and to my beloved brothers Stephen and Matt who still have some road left to walk without them: