I Guess Maybe I'm Not Ready

So the other day I was reading something on the internet and I heard about this book called "Rapture Ready." I thought it sounded interesting so I went to my library's website (sorry, but I'll pay that $18 fine as soon as I can! Honest!) and put a hold on it. Then, the next day I went to pick it up. I was pretty excited because I always like to read an outsider's account of weird and popular subcultures (THEM by Jon Ronson is a great example) and I figured I was far enough removed from church and religiousness in general to find it funny yet non-condescending.

But then we got in the car and my wife read me the blurbs on the back. Two of them were good, but the third was written by.......wait for it........Brian Maclaren.

Just when I thought I'd finally escaped, there's that shiny bald head again. It's like you can't even throw a book without hitting a book either written or blurb by that dude. I know. I tried it when I got home. I hit a book blurbed and written by him.

Anyway, if I get around to reading the book, I'll let you know how it was, so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

Turn Off Your Smoke Machine

Warning: This post will discuss the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian church. If you can't take it, then stop reading now and save yourself. If you can take it, let's start a movement to end this horrible abomination.


Simply put, the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian Church is not any of the following:

1. Leadership


2. Fundamentalism


3. Guns


4. Stale Communion Bread/wafers (this one was close)


5. Reticence to change

No, it is not any of these. It is the architecture. Modern American churches by and large have the most boring, uninspiring, unhelpful architecture in the history of the known church universe. Let me "explain."

If I wanted to let everyone know that I was an obnoxious, horrible douche*ag (edited for content), would I drive a Jetta with a broken mirror and wear 5-year-old socks? NO! I would wear crisp power suits with red and blue striped ties, have a faux-hawk, drive a BMW 325xi (or maybe the Z4 convertible if I was going for the douchebag/tool difecta) and probably have a Hill badge displayed prominently on my person at all times. (Side note, by driving a Jetta with a broken mirror and wearing old clothes, I'm saying that I'm totally not in any way a douche).

Likewise, if the modern church is serious about it's beliefs that it and It alone hold the keys to the knowledge of good and evil (God = good, funky buttlovin' = evil, pants = ????*) then the church buildings need to show it. If the way, the Truth, and the Life is through the church, let me know, man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, if I knew all this important stuff about Jesus H. Christ, I would write it in big letters and perhaps statues of sinners burning in hell all over my church. Come on McLean Bible, give the people what they want need. Admittedly it's probably hard to simulate eternal hellfire but there's gotta be something you could do other than look like a mall (actually, there may be something to this....aw, never mind). At least try to be majestic or something like the Crystal Cathedral.

When it comes right down to it, the modern "traditional" American church is the only church movement/body/pantaloon in history to not match it's architecture with it's theology. here a just a few examples"

1. The Catholic Church - Huge, ostentatious cathedrals, some even built with the bones of their enemies**.
   What is says: "We own you. God lives here and we own him too. Plus, we have a truckload (cartload? Popemobileload?) of money, so we've got that going for us. Plus we have cool miters, so we've got that going for us."



2. Islamic Mosques - Tall minarets, domey looking things.
   What it says: I don't know. I don't speak Arabic.



3. Good Ol' One Room Clapboard Baptist Churches - "One Room Clapboard Churches" kinda says it all.
   What it says: One Room Clapboard Churches. Simplicity. Something to do with water or immersion, or squirt guns or something. Also potluck dinners that the same person will bring the same pot of spaghetti to every month for 50+ years.



4. "Emergent" "Churches" - so many options to reflect who they really are!
   
   • Coffee house - "Look how cool we are! We meet in a coffee house! A secular coffee house!"
   
   
   • An Old Warehouse - "Look how cool we are! We don't care at all about our image!"
   
   
   • And old unused church building - "Look how cool we are! We're 'subverting' the mainstream church!"
   
   
   • Strangely, for all the gushing over the "ancient-future" idea, I have yet to hear of an "Emergent" church that meets in underground catacombs like the authentically ancient Christians did. That would actually be pretty awesome.
   
   
   
5. Episcopalian Church - I don't know, something vaguely English/Celtic looking.
   What it says: "If you liked Lord of the Rings, you might be Episcopalian***!"



6. Unitarian Universalist - Anything they damn well want to build.
   What it says: "Do you like it? If not, we'll change it so you do like it!"

So come on mega-churches of America, take back the mantle of "most important buildings in the city!" Show the people what you're about! Bring out the Left Behind-style corpse dummies. Kill Persecute a Muslim. Fight in the Holy War! You've got a soul, now be a soldier! Or a construction worker!




*The Southern Baptist Convention recently published a document disavowing its former stance on the necessity of wearing pants. Pants-wearing is now technically a "greyish area" as defined by the bylaws of the Convention.****

**Could just be the bones of dead parishioners, teh internets were unclear on that point.

***If I am confusing Episcopalian and Anglican, please forgive me since I don't really care at all which is which.

****Not actually true. Pants are still required at all times.

Just So You Know

I don't know why this has to come from me since it seems like it would make more sense for certain other people to promote it, but Effloresce is here.

When I Survey the Wondrous Blog

Get it? I put "blog" in the title of the post! It's meta!

Anyway, it's still SURVEY WEEK here at ATOB so we'll keep on surveyin'. Only now it's going to be a big communal performance art/survey thing! How's that sound everyone? Here's the deal. We are communally going to write the best survey in the history of mankind. When someone answers it and then you read their answers, you will have a perfect picture of their true selves. If you meet them for the first time after you have read their responses it will be just like you are the oldest friends. This survey will bring world peace. This survey will be the world's best matchmaker, not Orly. This survey will play jazz trombone. This survey will eat your babies. This survey will divide by zero. This survey will crush your soul.

So, I will write a couple of questions and then everyone who reads this (and I mean everyone. If I check my site meter and I have more visits than comments, I will come and hunt you down and...um....do something that justifies the cost of a plane ticket to Prague or wherever) gets to chime in with more questions of your own devising. Then, we will compile them into one giant survey the likes of which the world has never seen. It will dominate the cluttered world of user generated online surveys, a world that is rife with Harry Potter and anime garbage. Then we will all post it on our blogs and MySpaces and Livejournals and stuff. Then we will give it it's own webpage which will look really cool and simple and iconic. It will get more traffic than Google. We will need a million warehouses full of servers to hold all the responses. Soon we will all go down in history as the group (or cohort, is that cooler?) that wrote the survey to end all surveys. Future generations will worship us as prophets, much like the Wyld Stallyns were worshipped in B&TEA.


This is the beginning of the greatest survey. It is called: From Time Immemorial

1. What is worse: Going to your favorite restaurant, ordering your favorite steak only underneath the steak is a scabby band-aid. Or?______________________

2. Do you like me [YES] [NO] Circle one.

3. What percent of all paper clips that you come in contact with do you unfold?

4. What are your five favorite movies? (Legally Blonde does not count)

5. Have you ever left a pair of underwear in the forest?

6. If zombies were real, would you be afraid of them?

7. How many Cold Cut Combos could you eat in a day?

8. How many times have you lost your keys in an article of clothing you are wearing?

9. Do you like almonds?

10. Does God exist?

11. Is there something better than pie?

12. What were/are the economic, social, and political consequences of Marbury vs. Madison?

13. Age?

14. Sex?

15. Location?

16. In your opinion, is there always room for one more, or not?


Okay, now it's your turn you ingrates. I don't think you realize how great this survey will be yet, do you? It will be everything I have claimed. One warning though. DO NOT ANSWER ANY OF THE QUESTIONS UNTIL THE WHOLE THING IS COMPLETE! I think that's obvious, but some of you might not. I'm just saying.

Oh yeah? Well Emerge from this!

First off, let me say that I really love my church. And please don't be offended.

I think the "Emergent" movement is dumb. For all it's talk about a new "conversation" that is honest and doesn't have the baggage of a built-vocabulary like the "institutional Church," I don't think it's that much different. There absolutely is a set of buzzwords that you need to know, and the buzzwords, at least to me, appear to be synonyms of the horrible, soul-crushing buzzwords that "Fundamentalists(!)" use. But not the same words mind you. The emergent church can't use the same semantics as those they are emerging from, right?

I guess the most frustrating thing about it for me is that, while I agree with many of the things the movement says, I don't want to be a part of no movement. I want to be a part of a church that does things however it wants! I don't care if other emergent churches do things a certain way and go to certain conferences and read certain books. Once we all start doing that, we're nothing but another denomination that'll soon have mega-churches of its own. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems that so often we are blind to our own ambitions, our own destiny. Without thinking independently, we'll all become that which we rail against. It's happened time and time again, both within the church and without. So 20 years down the road, don't say I didn't warn the movement.

And here's another thing. Can we drop the criticism of other churches already? Yes, I already know that we do things differently. Please stop reminding me of how stupid other churches are for the way they do things. Stop defining yourselves by what you are not, and start worrying about what you are! I'm not saying we shouldn't look around us, but there is a HUGE difference between saying, "eh, that's not really for me, but if it works for you..." which is what I thought the emergent thingy was all about and saying "what you are doing is different from my church in the following ways and this is why it is stupid and wrong and if I had enough guts I'd say you were going to hell, but that's what a IFB would say so I can't say it but I really think it."

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places (i.e. Ginkworld and The Ooze). As an example of what I mean, read this article by Frank
Viola (imagine my disappointment when I realized he was not the same Frank Viola that led the Minnesota Twins to the World Series in 1987.) He's trying to be evenhanded, but the whole article is predicated on the fact that we all know how stupid this other person's church is. Grrrrrrr!

Maybe y'all can educate me on how "emergent" is any different in essentials from any other denomination. I already know we do things differently, but are we any less elitist? Do you have a good book I can read? If you tell me to read any more articles or anything else by John O'Keefe, I'll just pretend like I didn't hear you.