Have I become a consumer of church products? In our effort to find a church we have, of course, gone to several and have started to return visit to some that seemed to offer the most promise. Then..disaster strikes. A Sunday experience resembling poor (meaning distracting) production value, vacuous content, and a lack of passion and focus that was very discouraging.
Hey I was a Pastor for five years. I know it is hard to hit every time, but scale and resources should be a factor as well.
Here is the rub. When did we all become such shiny, happy people holding hands. Life IS hard, for most (ALL) people. The Jesus I know lived that same life, maybe more on the rough edge than most of us. He did not start a shiny happy church, he started a real front line church, that dealt with the pain, social strata issues, hard issues of what truth is. Truth, that word that we seem to almost believe is relative, but is in actuality for all of us anything but. I know no one for whom life is perfectly relative. There is no relative bubble. We are all humbled by an absolute at some time or another.
I guess I am looking for authenticity, a buzz word with preferences attached I suppose. I have seen it, but at this point, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for – at least as it pertains to a church.
