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.