Bub & Pie wrote a post today about the difficulty of staying committed to a church when they use guilt to talk you into doing stuff. My Hero and I have been having a similar discussion every Sunday around 12:15 about our church.
For us, the discussion is not so much about the guilt thing as it is just a general embarrassment issue. Why, for example, can't they spell-check the powerpoint? Or tell us where the nursery is (Doodle turns 1 in a couple weeks and I just found out I could drop her off - and we've been going there since before she was conceived!)? At first it was endearing: "Aw, look how down-home they are. Name-tags! Donuts! 'Life' instead of 'like'!". Now that we've been around for a while, we know that the name tags are worn by a handful of die-hard greeters, the donuts are leftovers that have been frozen since last week, and the spelling errors are plentiful.
The embarrassment lies in the fact that this stuff is, in our opinion, on the tacky side. We know that the intent is great but that the execution is amateur at best, pathetic at worst. It makes us reluctant to want to invite our friends - and this is where it gets sticky, every week. The
emerging church movement serves to remind everyone that broadly speaking, people our age are looking for high-quality, technologically savvy "events" on a Sunday morning. While I don't agree with that entirely (I think a well-thought-out sermon can make up for a lack of movie clips and light shows), I do think that folks my age expect a degree of professionalism that may have not been necessary (or available) in the age of type-written, mimeographed bulletins - and are apt to write off the entire experience based on poor presentation. I don't think this is very nice of them (or - let's be honest - me), but it's been my experience, both in and out of church.
My struggle is whether it's shallow of me to base my willingness to invite friends (or, for that matter, my own attendance) on some bad powerpointing, or if a lack of attention to typos is somehow indicative of a deeper lack of attention to the lives of those within the congregation. Granted, we aren't very involved right now - I know that involvement increases one's feeling of inclusion - but we also aren't seeing much that's motivating us to get involved. Do I really want to drag other people into this? Do I want to stick around for it myself?
For the time being, we're staying put. We both know that church is not just about whether we think they're succeeding at making us feel good every week. It's a commitment, like B&P said, to a group of people who we may or may not agree with as far as what's Important on Sunday mornings, but who are part of the same body we are and who ardently desire to love and follow Christ. Just don't ask us to wear our nametags.
When a friend at work expressed a desire to have a pair of her very own, I was happy to haggle with her (let's face it, they're fun, but if they're not for me or family, I'm not likely to want to do it for free). She's an excellent beader (beadress?), so I'm making this pair for her in exchange for a set of dangle-free stitch-markers (here's an example). I'm using Paton's Kroy, my trusty Addis, and I'm having a blast.
