The insanely boring life…

In the past few weeks I have been noticing things. Things that irritate me so much, that I felt that I had to make a post about it. It is about our modern Christian Church.

People who know me will know that I give any excuse I can just to stay out of the church. Recently, though, the exhaustion from the one act play and the musical has been enough of an excuse. Why, though, do I make all these excuses? Because I cannot stand to be inside the church.

I go to the N. G. Church in Durbanville.

The pastor always has this uncontrollable urge to scream at us whenever he preaches. What makes it even worse, though, is the fact that my grandparents (with whom I live) feel compelled to sit right in front. The problem now is that the minister screams at us over a microphone and sprays his spit all over our faces. These days I take an umbrella along just save myself the time of cleaning up later.

But why do people avoid the church? Surely the ministers don’t squeal of excitement in every church? No, I think the problem lies in the content and length of the service.

These days, our time is restricted more and more. The church’s reasoning is that God only asks an hour of your time a week. I disagree with that. The Bible never mentions one hour of church a week, does it? In this day and age we only have Sundays in which we can truly relax (if we don’t have work to do for Monday). Church services at that time of the morning doesn’t give you much chance to do anything else on your day off. That leads me to the content of the sermon.

The pastor feels that he must say the same sentence in seven different ways. At the end of every Sunday we walk out of the church with the same message: “Believe in God, love everyone and be a good little boy ’till next Sunday.” So, if that is the message, why not just say that instead of spending an hour beating around the bush to come to that point anyway?

I don’t always have money on me to put into the money-bag-thing. The whole giving the church money affair has been blown out of proportion. They expect of you to put money into the bag and if you don’t, you are a bad Christian. The old ladies sitting close to you send you either a look of disgust or a look of “this poor child is going to rot in hell”. I wish they would stop with this “give us money, and if you don’t we will play on your conscience nonsense.”

Also, I am a practical person. I cannot stand to passively take in something if it not engaging and interesting. I can sit in a good movie for 3 hours, but an uninteresting movie kills me softly. The same goes for church. If they must have their hour-long sermon, the preacher must make sure that he has a message that will engage the audience for that period of time. I say “audience” for a reason. People who go to church are merely an audience to the farce that is happening at the front. If they make a more engaging service by means of audience participation, then surely we won’t die of boredom every time.

HOWEVER, I do not mean this happy-clappy nonsense that has taken over. That is even worse. I am a music lover, and being that I can enjoy music that is, at least, somewhat challenging. In these happy-clappy churches they sing that same song over and over and over and over again. It is enough to send me to the loony-bin. The song repeats the same simple melodies so many times, with one or two variations, that I can’t stand it.

And then those happy-clappy churches in which you to stand on your two feet for half an hour while you sing the same song over and over. But don’t dare sit down in the middle of the singing if your feet get sore, because surely then you haven’t been touched by the majesty of the song for hundredth time you have sung it. The glory of God surely hasn’t shown on you. They all stare at you as if you have been possessed by the Satan, the devil himself.

So, now we sit with two extremes: boring church and too-happy church. Both of them won’t last very long if they continue on the same road which they are on right now. We need a comfortable middle way. What does my perfect church look like?

Firstly, the service is between 30 and 45 minutes long. Secondly, the minister keeps his/her service concise and to the point. He engages the audience by practical methods, for instance a play or by incorporating audience participation. Thirdly, the minister must remember that he is using a microphone, so it is not necessary to scream at us. And finally, the band should stop recycling songs and either write new ones or not sing the same one three hundred times in a row.

That is what we need in this world. Church wasn’t about pleasing the masses in the past, but they have to realize that if they want to keep the Church of God alive, they really need to rethink their strategy.

Right, I am an actor in our school’s one act play this year, “And then the puppets danced…”. It is an extremely experimental piece since nothing of its nature has ever been performed before. Unfortunately for us, the judges at all the competitions so far have said that it is predictable and so forth. We reworked the entire script and tonight we performed in the Durbanville Arts Festival.

We were the second to last piece to perform of all four nights when the festival was on. I was one of the few who went to see all of the other pieces perform (4 every night for 4 nights). I saw some really excellent pieces and some really poor ones.

One of the pieces that stood out for me above all the others was Tygerberg High school’s  “Wie”, or otherwise translated to, “Who”. It was close to a religious experience. It was about a girl who died, and as a ghost she tells the story of how she died. It was done extremely creatively, to be totally honest. I thought that production would win the festival.

Tonight, after the final pieces performed, the winner was announced. We anxiously waited for the name of the winning school, and I was convinced that the judges were going to say “Tygerberg High School”, but no. It was our production that won!

When the woman judge said this there was a moment of deafening silence. We were all so shocked because NO ONE expected to win. NO ONE, I tell you. After the shock wore off, we all screamed like maniacs! I really thought I was going to have a heart attack!

But I am being dramatic again. Let me stop and go sleep. I can’t wait to tell everyone!

I’ve been extremely busy for the past few weeks. The One Act Play and the Pantomime that I am in have been taking up every waking moment of my life. Tonight, though, is the last performance of the Pantomime, then we’ll be done. I’m quite upset about that, but it had to end. The one act play is also drawing to a close. We have a few weeks left, though, and four (confirmed) performances.

Today, though, I took a break to go see the movie musical, Hairspray. I have to admit that I was blown away by it. It was the most fun I’ve had in a movie in the longest time. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. I downloaded the soundtrack immediately, of course, and I’m going to buy the sheet music at the end of the month. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favour. My opinion is a bit biased, though, because I LOVE movie musicals (and musicals in general), but just look at how every critic is praising the film.

But moving on, I think what I want to achieve with this post was just to say that I am still alive, even if the hard work we all put into both productions at school has almost killed the cast and company.