What Little Miss Sunshine taught me about Church
Marcel Proust is someone I know nothing about. I feel like I should because he is acclaimed to be a rather well known author who wrote about memory in a seven part series, entitled Remembrance of Things Past.
In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.
With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:
"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".
Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.
When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being. Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".
While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory. Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo. Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Or just ask Clive.
The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's. We remember and we are pulled from that abyss. We remember and we are once again home. We remember and we are no longer alone. We remember and we are found.
In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.
With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:
"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".
Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.
When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being. Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".
While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory. Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo. Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Or just ask Clive.
The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's. We remember and we are pulled from that abyss. We remember and we are once again home. We remember and we are no longer alone. We remember and we are found.
IsItOld.com, Tom and Jerry and Christianity
There is this little site called is it old. What it does is you plug a link into the search bar, it will search for how long that link has been around and then give you a report of how old that link is. So while you may have just found this video of a tribe that has never had outside contact before (and it is still fascinating each time I watch it), according to is it old, this video is "really old".
What is nice about isitiold.com is that before I send a video out, I can sort of see if I am late to the party or not. It is like seeing a movie years after it has come out. No one wants to talk about Forrest Gump anymore. Even if you have just seen it for the first time.
Can you see where this is going with the way the Church proclaims the Gospel?
Each Sunday churches around the world have an opportunity to preach Good News to the world. And the problem is each week the Good News is presented in worship in such a way that, if it were plugged into isitold.com it would come back as "really old".
We tell the same story in the same ways that people can say "I get the gist of it" and walk away just fine without it. I do not need to see any more Tom and Jerry shows to "get the gist" of what is going on - Tom tries to capture the illusive Jerry.
People I encounter tell me that Christianity is nice because it teaches a good moral code or that it lays a good foundation for morality. Self-sacrifice, love, peace, reconciliation... I get the gist of what Christianity is about. I do not need to participate in a worshiping community to know what is being taught in the faith.
Christianity needs teachers and preachers who are willing and able to proclaim the Gospel in such a way that it captures the imagination of people once again. We need to stop preaching Tom and Jerry sermons, people get the gist of that rather quickly. No one tells their friends they need to see the new Tom and Jerry show because that way of telling the cat and mouse Story is really old. However, people told me that I needed to see the latest cat and mouse story out there.
What is nice about isitiold.com is that before I send a video out, I can sort of see if I am late to the party or not. It is like seeing a movie years after it has come out. No one wants to talk about Forrest Gump anymore. Even if you have just seen it for the first time.
Can you see where this is going with the way the Church proclaims the Gospel?
Each Sunday churches around the world have an opportunity to preach Good News to the world. And the problem is each week the Good News is presented in worship in such a way that, if it were plugged into isitold.com it would come back as "really old".
We tell the same story in the same ways that people can say "I get the gist of it" and walk away just fine without it. I do not need to see any more Tom and Jerry shows to "get the gist" of what is going on - Tom tries to capture the illusive Jerry.
People I encounter tell me that Christianity is nice because it teaches a good moral code or that it lays a good foundation for morality. Self-sacrifice, love, peace, reconciliation... I get the gist of what Christianity is about. I do not need to participate in a worshiping community to know what is being taught in the faith.
Christianity needs teachers and preachers who are willing and able to proclaim the Gospel in such a way that it captures the imagination of people once again. We need to stop preaching Tom and Jerry sermons, people get the gist of that rather quickly. No one tells their friends they need to see the new Tom and Jerry show because that way of telling the cat and mouse Story is really old. However, people told me that I needed to see the latest cat and mouse story out there.
Church Growth = "We need more people like us." Really?
There are efforts in the UMC to talk more about church growth. My cynical side will say that this focus on church growth is because the church is declining in terms of warm bodies in the pew and if the numbers of people in the pews were of the 1950's then we would not focus on church growth.
However, my non-cynical side of me says this is a good thing.
My only issue with this how church growth is defined.
If we define church growth meaning that we need to get more people into pews; that is to say if we define church growth as "getting more people to be like us" and become members - I do not think that is a great way to think of church growth.
Instead of thinking that church growth means "more people need to be like us", perhaps a healthier understanding is "we need to be more like Jesus".
When talking about church growth as primarily as getting more people, we are forgetting that the church is the Body of Christ and even people who are members of a church are part of the body of Christ. Church growth includes those who are already members of the church.
If we redirect all the resources we spend on trying to get more people to be like us to use them on getting us to be more like Christ then the church inevitably grows!
Friends, let us be honest here, if the church is growing by becoming more like Christ not only is the Church growing, but also non-Christians will be more interested in the Christian life.
I am convinced the life of Jesus is more attractive to people than any event or sermon series in the world.
However, my non-cynical side of me says this is a good thing.
My only issue with this how church growth is defined.
If we define church growth meaning that we need to get more people into pews; that is to say if we define church growth as "getting more people to be like us" and become members - I do not think that is a great way to think of church growth.
Instead of thinking that church growth means "more people need to be like us", perhaps a healthier understanding is "we need to be more like Jesus".
When talking about church growth as primarily as getting more people, we are forgetting that the church is the Body of Christ and even people who are members of a church are part of the body of Christ. Church growth includes those who are already members of the church.
If we redirect all the resources we spend on trying to get more people to be like us to use them on getting us to be more like Christ then the church inevitably grows!
Friends, let us be honest here, if the church is growing by becoming more like Christ not only is the Church growing, but also non-Christians will be more interested in the Christian life.
I am convinced the life of Jesus is more attractive to people than any event or sermon series in the world.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.