Lights.”
I wasn't positive if I heard appropriately. I requested the coed to repeat his reply.
“Lights.”
I fell into silence once more. I used to be clearly lacking one thing.
“You imply electrical energy? Like as an alternative of candles?” I requested uncertainly.
“No,” he replied. “I imply the lights—you recognize lights.”
After which it dawned on me. The scholar meant lighting—dimmers, spotlights, coloured lights, a complete vary of “stage lighting” controls—what you may discover at a stand-up present, theater manufacturing, or live performance.
I designed a query for a room of 40 freshmen: Suppose you traveled to a brand new metropolis subsequent weekend and determined to attend church on Sunday morning. What would you anticipate finding?
I typically ask this query to open a dialogue about liturgy, the “scripture” that varied traditions comply with in public worship, nonetheless “excessive” or “low” the church in query. College students normally consider greetings, ushers, pews, folks, sermons, tithing, prayer, Scripture. Generally he mentions communion. Confession of religion and confession of sins hardly ever.
More and more, nonetheless, college students are speaking about method: screens, movies, cameras, dwell broadcasts. The opposite parts are simply as technological, even when they don't consider them as such: microphones, headphones, multi-part bands, advanced manufacturing with many transferring elements. All indicators of technological improvement and adaptation; all comparatively new in Christian liturgy; not older than a number of generations, no less than so far as widespread ecclesiastical practices are involved.
All of this occurred to me in my scholar's first trustworthy thought in response to my query: Lights. When he imagined going to church, when he mentally entered a Christian home of worship, what got here to his thoughts earlier than anything was a managed lighting system. Dimmed lights for silent meditation, brilliant lights for blessing, highlight for preaching, totally different colours for various band members and their respective solo moments.
From the liturgy of phrase and sacrament to a theatrical gentle present. How did we get right here?
The very first thing you'll discover about my scholar's solutions is that they largely mirror expertise massive church buildings. My college students are typically Bible Belt evangelicals. Even when they arrive from a rural or small-town background, their upbringing feels just like the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is a mature megachurch with high quality worship “manufacturing.” That's how their toes vote after they transfer to a bigger metropolis like Abilene, and the identical is true after they transfer to a bigger city space like Houston or Austin or Dallas-Fort Price.
However based on latest research, the super-majority of American church buildings immediately have 100 or fewer members. Once we consider a typical congregation, we should always consider one which consists of two or three dozen households. Few congregations of this measurement have the assets—or are anticipated to—for skilled lighting. They're extra apprehensive about preserving the lights on in any respect.
Furthermore, whereas each church attendance and membership are declining and the typical church measurement is barely within the triple digits, a rising share of the entire church inhabitants is present in massive congregations. In different phrases, as the proportion of People who attend church shrinks, those that do to go to bigger church buildings increasingly more typically. This phenomenon distorts what feels just like the “common church” and thus what “typical worship” is.
To afford, keep, and function skilled lighting of the sort my scholar had in thoughts, a church must attain nicely above the ninetieth percentile of American congregation measurement, which is 250 regulars. However for my scholar, as for a lot of others, this measurement and its distinctive options are paradigmatic moderately than distinctive. They’re simply “what the church is immediately” that one would moderately anticipate when visiting a random church in a international metropolis.
This development is each a trigger and impact of church buildings investing in know-how that makes Sunday morning a extremely productive providing, whether or not for crowds or folks streaming from dwelling. Lengthy earlier than COVID-19, however exacerbated by the quarantine, many church buildings are competing in some sort of techno-liturgical arms race to draw seekers, particularly younger households and professionals, to the “Sunday morning expertise” of high-tech public worship providers.
For a lot of seasoned evangelicals among the many millennial and Zoomer generations, the end result—state-of-the-art skilled high-definition video, audio and music, with easy transitions and fancy lighting, all frictionless and Web-ready—merely turns into the norm. What’s that churchor worshipmeans
At its finest, the gospel retains the ability to chop by means of all of the noise. Within the worst case, believers don’t settle for both the phrase of the Lord or his physique and blood. As a substitute, they get a cut-rate TED Discuss, non secular however not spiritual, sandwiched between lengthy periods of a delicate rock live performance.
There isn’t a doubt that ministers in church buildings comparable to these have been motivated by good intentions. If extra folks wish to hear the gospel and reward God, shouldn't we allow them to? Shouldn't we construct it and pray they arrive?
Few would counsel that the sheer measurement of a constructing is proof of unbelief, nor would I counsel that microphones be abolished in favor of preachers gifted with naturally loud voices. It is a caricature of so-called Luddite fears about new know-how. The theological questions on know-how are extra critical. First, they hardly ever reply upfront. They’re recognizable on the bottom. However they require discernment. The mere proven fact that new know-how seems at first to assist the church's mission will not be sufficient.
As a substitute, we’d ask concerning the nature of Christian worship itself. I requested my college students what they might anticipate after they visited a church for the primary time. What ought to are they anticipating?
The historic reply of the Church over the centuries is that they need to anticipate a liturgy of Phrase and Sacrament. They need to know upfront that, with actual however restricted variations, they are going to pray, sing, profess their religion, confess their sins, hear the phrase of the Lord within the Scriptures, hear the gospel of the Lord in preaching, and obtain the seen phrase. from the physique and blood of the Lord, from the heavenly bread damaged for his or her salvation. No matter nation they’re in, no matter language they converse, whether or not they go to a city or metropolis, a congregation of 5,000 folks or a parish of fifty folks – that must be ready for them.
Be aware what is critical for the celebration of this liturgy: sisters and brothers gathered within the identify of Jesus, the chief, the Bible, some bread and wine. Believers, Scripture, the weather and a spot to convey them collectively. And it’s performed. The truth is, on any given Sunday morning all over the world you will discover them gathered in cathedrals, in homes, in flats, in purchasing malls, in cafeterias, in mud huts, out by rivers and below timber, hidden in cellars and attics for worry of being uncovered.
That is the genius of the Christian liturgy. Aside from the instruments wanted to provide texts (which lengthy predate printing) and foods and drinks (that are important to life), no know-how is critical for the church to worship the Lord in Spirit and reality. Maybe new applied sciences have the potential to assist. However they at all times have the potential to hurt, deform and disfigure.
On the one hand, worship is a type of catechesis. It shapes our hearts, minds and imaginations. Younger folks rightly anticipate on any given Sunday what they’ve seen and heard tons of of earlier Sundays. It’s clear to me that the present catechesis has labored, however in all of the improper methods.
Too many evangelicals assume that mainstream worship is what I’ve elsewhere known as a tech-church present—a efficiency in each sense of the phrase. Not a drama of the Eucharist or a reconstruction of the liturgical script, however a slick, high-definition manufacturing. If I’m appropriate that that is what many take into account regular, based mostly on its prevalence among the many bigger church buildings, then my suggestion is that ministers want to return to the drafting board. Again, I’d say, to the time-tested knowledge of the Phrase and the Sacrament. Name it the ABCs of Christian liturgy.
Alternatively, keep in mind who is ready to “compete” on this venerable arms race: huge church buildings in huge cities. Who can't? Everybody else. Which means no less than four-fifths of the choirs can’t play the sport on high-tech.
As tens of tens of millions of People have left the church over the previous few a long time, this can be a liturgical malpractice. It is usually short-sighted, given the mission of the church. However above all, it’s a failure of cohesion.
We don't need small church buildings to shut their doorways. We would like church buildings of each measurement, in each sort of location to flourish—as they’re, proper the place they’re. But when normal is the high-tech manufacturing I outlined above, then these church buildings, even when they’re in cities, will proceed to die as a result of they inevitably lack the assets to maintain up with the church Joneses.
A lot might be mentioned for a joyous service that communicates each unrestrained and Spirit-filled adoration. However devoted worship is, and subsequently must be, one thing any church can dono matter manufacturing degree.
We have to think about an alternate catechesis—one which reminds college students like me above all the risen Christ: his dwelling Phrase, his physique and blood, his gathered folks. The query is: What sort of worship would give rise to such a thought?
Brad East is Affiliate Professor of Theology at Abilene Christian College.
