A tale of two videos
I have seen two videos recently one made me cry the other made me cringe.
The first video made me cry because it ignited the passion I have for seeing the Church fulfil it’s purpose which is praising God. The video was about the Global Day of Prayer.
The Global Day of Prayer started as a South African thing in one or two stadiums and then it spread to the rest of Africa. Last year they had people from all over the world praying on the same day. When I watched it I couldn’t help thinking this is what we are made for.
The other video was a promo for Greg Laurie. It made me cringe because the focus of the video seemed to me to be on how God made me feel.
It goes something like this let's for arguement sake call it the pente cycle:
I’m feeling stink.
I go to a gathering of Christians.
I get a warm fuzzy.
I go home.
Two days later I’m feeling stink again.
The speaker has left town.
I don’t know how to get the warm fuzzy again.
These two videos show a different perspective on Church.
In the first video the people are coming together to give something to God, the glory and honour due to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
In the second video the people are coming together to get some thing from God (a pente experience).
The first video shows what Church is supposed to be like. The second video show what it too often is like.
Church is totally not about us (contrary to most the songs we sing) it’s about praising our Father. To often my Church (including me) have had the second view particularly in the youth group.
Looking back at my time spent as a youth leader I feel that we were baby sitting the young people between these experiences they were having at outside events Easter Camp, Harvest etc. The young people weren’t growing. We were focusing on the wrong thing, what we needed to focus on was discipleship equipping these young people for the world as a Christian, the ups and the downs and the battles. The experience you get from these events (which may be God) is fantastic but more important is the question; In two years time will these people be better equipped to face the battles?
At the end of the Laurie video they had a stat thing on the screen:
Number attending the events: 20,000
Number of “commitments”: 2,000
They needed another few stats:
Number understanding their “commitment”: 200
Number following through their "commitment": 20
Number discipled to help others to make "commitments": 2
Can you see the pente in me fighting with the cynic in me?
posted by Steve-a-saurus at 2:58 PM
2 Comments:
Steve - I am with you 100%, mate. I was thinking maybe Greg Laurie would be alright until I saw the various videos which featured people literally saying, "I felt awful and then I asked God into my heart and now I feel wonderful", or, "I lost my job and suffered through an abusive marriage, but now I know everything is going to be OK and I'll get a job" etc.
I realised (and I'm sad to realise it) this could be exactly like every other major crusade - a massive response, but only a tiny number who actually stick.
I'm worried about the way we sell our faith in NZ - it should be emphasised Christ is *not* an emo pick-me-up, nor is he a sparkly new product to make our lives better - he doesn't promise our lives will be all good and full of happiness and blessings, and nothing will go wrong ; but he does promise he will walk with us through everything.
I couldn't help but wonder what our imprisoned, tortured, and underground Christian family overseas would think of the version of Christianity we're selling.
And *so* yes with the prayer thing! It's been cool seeing various things throughout the year that have shown what real Christianity is like/about.
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