revitalization

Industrial Christianity…

/ pastorfeltz / 4 Comments

Years ago, the church began to go through a process of ‘industrialization’. Churches streamlined everything: Bible studies, Sunday school, and so on. Everything was packaged to simplify the process and make it more “accessible”. Sunday school classes have their curriculum all written out. Bible studies used catchy slogans to be easily memorable (WWJD is a great example of this).

Industrial Christian

It makes sense. We live in an industrial country, so why not industrialize the church. It makes everything simpler and easer. Teachers are less intimidated by leading. Students can walk away with a catchy phrase or saying to remember the point of the lesson. Win-win.

Here’s the problem:

Disciples aren’t mass produced:
They’re hand crafted.

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Too Close for Comfort…

/ pastorfeltz / 1 Comment

Recently, I had four of my closest friends over to my house for a weekend (along with their two spouses and two dogs, it was a full house, and loads of fun). We spent the weekend playing board games for, quite literally, sixteen hours (it was probably more than that, but I wasn’t timing). Now, my house has the room space for this kind of shindig – kind of. I had one friend who was crashed on my sofa, but everyone else had their own room and bed/air mattress.

These friends know me fairly well. I’ve lived with them, gotten angry at them, laughed until I cried with them, and been my most ridiculous with them. One of them even tried to choke me one time (I must admit, I had asked him too). The level of intimacy we have with one an other is incredible, and it’s honestly why I value their friendships so much. (That, and the fact that they simply know too much about me, and it takes too long to break in a new set of friends).

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Putting the puzzle together…

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Life is a lot like trying to solve multiple puzzles at once. You’ve got your ‘family’ puzzle, where you sort out your relationships with parents and siblings. You’ve got your ‘school’ puzzle where you learn how to be responsible. And you’ve got a puzzle of your ‘dreams’ you’re trying to put together. Then as life goes on, your ‘school’ puzzle turns into ‘work/career’. Your ‘family’ puzzle gets a little bit bigger when you get married.

Now we all like to think that we can keep these puzzles together, in their respective boxes. But we’re kidding ourselves if we truly expect that to happen, because life happens. We move to college and it messes up our ‘school’ and ‘family’ boxes. We get fired from a job and it ruins our ‘job/career’ and ‘family’ puzzles. Eventually, we wind up with all of our puzzles just in one box; just a giant pile of pieces to a bunch of different puzzles. It’s super complicated and super messy.

And that’s not counting anyone else’s puzzles. Where is your spouse supposed to put their puzzles? You’ve already made a mess with yours?

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Bait and switch…

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There was a deli/corner grocery store where I grew up named ‘Troutwine’s Market’ (I don’t care if they’ve since named it ‘Steve’s). This market had a strategy for attracting customers that went a little like this: They would mark down the price on a few key staples – milk, eggs, bread – lower than the bigger chain stores. Then, they would have a price increase on some other items in the store as a way to offset the costs. It’s a form of ‘bait and switch’. “Come in for our cheap milk (and pay more for the yogurt)”.

It’s something that a lot of churches try to do. Tweak one or two things here and there, but keep the same basic culture everywhere else. Churches want young adults, so they try to draw them in. But they don’t want to change to reach them, so they try to preemptively compromise.

Donkey and carrot

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Falling on our swords…

/ pastorfeltz / 1 Comment

 

Tradition can be a powerful tool. If tradition is used right, it can connect us to past generations, teach us important lessons, and serve as a rite of passage into the next stages of our life. Liturgical Christians, like Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox have a fantastic grasp on great ways to use tradition well.

I love tradition, when it’s done right.

But tradition can also be overly romanticized and kind of stupid.

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