Neil Postman could be right…

Neil Postman wrote a book: Amusing ourselves to death. And although Neil writes on his perspective on the way media is infultrating our culture and socitey 30 years ago… I think Neil Postman could be right about a few things.

I read his book 3 years ago and it has been helpful to guide my thoughts when deciding how to do church in ways that engage? Whether we do things at church because we give into the laziness & distractedness of our generation!

We sit in church singing praise to God while checking facebook on our iPhones. We listen to the sermon while writing our shopping list. We read our bibles while we eat our breakfast, comb our hair and brush our teeth, all the while we are listening to a new album we bought.

I don’t think we should make life impossible for our generation to be engage with the gospel at church. We should strive to be creative and relevant. However I do sometimes think less frills and whistles means people will have to think about their faith… and we allow the power of the gospel to transform.

It is sad that so many Christians I come into contact are so shy of their faith, haven’t thought deep about some of the issues of life that are effecting them or are just not confident knowing their way around their bibles – even after decades of being a Christian. I find this disturbing after all this is also the we are also living in an age where a high percentage of the western world are university educated. We can think but we choose to entertain ourselves to death and fill our minds with rubbish instead of the soothing and refreshing words of the gospel.

Sometimes churches perhaps try too hard to be engaging and make church more and more like a performance. Not in terms of lighting & production design but in the way the humble service leader just guides the night as though an MC at a wedding. Peoples hearts aren’t guided, peoples hearts are not engaged although they may be slightly entertained?

If you plan worship meetings, service lead or find it sad to see church attendees leave church unaffected>>> read more on The Necessity of Boredom @ Neue Ministry.