Going in to darkness

Has anyone else noticed how modern (American, anyway) churches are being either built or renovated into these ultra dark venues?

All the light is focused on the performers while the people warm their pews in so much darkness you have a hard time criticizing other people's attire. You can't see them.

Seems like church used to be a place of fellowship, now it's just the Big Sunday Show.

"Up here! Pay attention up here!"

No need to bring a Bible, everything you need to see is up on the big screen.

Hmmmmm. Isn't there something in Scripture about the kingdom of darkness? I guess men do love darkness. Easier to check their Ashley Madison accounts if no one is looking.

Looks like we spoke about it here as well . It seems to be happening more and more :

https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=54130&post_id=376314&order=0&viewmode=flat&pid=0&forum=48#376314

Tom- what is the difference if you read the bible during a church service in s paper book, a smartphone (that's what I do) an iPad or following the verses on the screen?

If the verse is on the screen, at least people have to read it unless they avert the eyes.

Churches that use screens to project song lyrics etc dim the lights because it is easier to see the screen.

I haven't been in a church in a good long while that doesn't dim the lights somewhat during worship.

I think you are reading way more into this. Let's face it, in the great great majority of churches the action IS up front. I bet this was even true in Tozers and Spurgeons churches.

The black walled staging is a recent (within 20 years) trend. They were used in bars and nightclubs forever ago to accommodate stage lighting for music acts. The church simply co-opted a lot of that venue's ways.

Unmistakably, these outer forms and structures communicate something. Where the church in the west for the last 150 years has basically been "all up front", it increasingly communicated that God speaks from the pulpit, that the pulpit is where the spiritual action is happening. Instead of being merely a platform, the stage soon enough became the center of attention, and whoever occupied it was the one basking in it. The stage -- consciously, I submit -- became a reason for something from the audience and not a tool to deliver something to the audience.

With the advance of "praise and worship", so called, and hipster preachers from 22 to 82, an array of equipment and advanced staging has come with it. It brings its own inherent message: "look at us", "this is what matters", "follow us", "value this". The "us" and "this" is the performance package and the performers. We are now, as never before, expressly encouraged and invited to attend and participate in church based on the quality of that package. This is a basis for being together and being there at all that is wholly separate from the Gospel itself, wholly distinct from the life in Christ.

I can tell you first hand that being a participant in this from the pew, participating FOR the stage, is now a measurement of a new kind of discipleship that values almost exclusively the feedback from the audience. Not much else matters. That feedback is raised hands, emotional angst and expression as an end unto itself, and putting money in the offering plate or bag or card swiper. In short, the venue and its events (music, singing concert style, and rally/motivation/psychology as preaching) have become the reason for the church in America. And, where that is not so, churches are either repenting of it or dying from the inability to adapt to it.

If you will pardon the analogy, especially non-Americans and non southern U.S. folks who read this, we have arrived at the age of the church version of college football's spread, hurry up no huddle offense. It is fast paced, gadgety, gimmicky, and all the rage, and you either adapt to it or wind up in the Music City Bowl. But, what you dare not do is fold your arms and say "that is NOT football." Unless, of course, you are a football purist who is willing to walk away from this new game because it bears only the faintest resemblance to football. And, as a self proclaimed purist, it ain't football. And, I want no part of it.

I think we have to be careful about ascribing evil intent or motives to churches like you describe.

Coaches that use the no huddle offense are just taking advantage of the enemy's weakness.

I think a huge motive behind the packaging you describe is to get people in church who would otherwise be sitting on their rumps at home. Some (many) of those folks really get saved.

We can argue about whether the packaging is the right way to go about it but it seems to work, and I don't think there is evil intent behind it.

I would much rather have unsaved friends and loved ones attend a church they like than not attend a church they don't like.

Come on, let's not judge according to appearances.

This should not be an issue anyway because the church is not a building or a venue, but the body of Christ. This distinction is made very clear by Paul in Romans 16:5 - "...greet the church that is in their house."

If it happens to be a dark venue, let's hope that makes the light of Christ shine even brighter ;)

I think it is less evil intent, more love of power and attention. Thank you Tim for that eloquent response, I too see the dark thing as a departure from the appeal to mutual fellowship and learning to walk together in Christ to that physically exciting interaction between an audience and a performer.

I preach fairly often, my "audience" is a group of about 60 handicapped adults and a scattering of volunteers and care-givers. I need light in there, to watch the reactions of individuals, to let them see each other, to facilitate the interactivity that preaching to mentally handicapped people requires- it takes the whole group to get through a message!

In all of it, the light is important as they learn to speak and love each other, often rising to their feet to go and give someone on the other side of the room an encouraging hug. And some have trouble walking!

Yes it is different from regular church, but it wouldn't work in a dark venue.

I like light.

I think it is less evil intent, more love of power and attention.

Leave it to God search the heart and test the mind, who will reward each man according to his deeds (Jer 17:10).

As an aside, some of the loveless / unsettling experiences I've had were at gothic buildings or bright venues. God honours those who honour Him, not the building where people gather.

I think we have to be careful about ascribing evil intent or motives to churches like you describe.

Coaches that use the no huddle offense are just taking advantage of the enemy's weakness.

I think a huge motive behind the packaging you describe is to get people in church who would otherwise be sitting on their rumps at home. Some (many) of those folks really get saved.

We can argue about whether the packaging is the right way to go about it but it seems to work, and I don't think there is evil intent behind it.

I would much rather have unsaved friends and loved ones attend a church they like than not attend a church they don't like.

I want to be careful, too. I'm sick of armchair QB'ing the church (to keep with our football analogy for now), and I'm guilty. You can simply rage at the darkness or be a light to those who are in it. I'm praying for the prophetic gift to come alive in the church to lovingly and sternly warn the church.

I have a degree in communications. The writings of Neil Postman and the thoughts of Marshall McLuhan (who coined the famous phrase, "the medium is the message") and of men like Malcolm Muggeridge have been aimed in the last 50 years toward describing this thing we now see. (I recommend Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death" and "Technopoly".) I want to admit my bias here, and explain that I am not condemning anyone with "evil intent or motives". I do not contend that anyone is intentionally setting out to do what they see as evil. I do contend that what they are doing is a kind of evil.

When I say that there has been a conscious effort to move the church to this "look to the stage, this is where God is happening" way of being, I am speaking of it as a communicative technology. The church's way of expressing itself IS its own message, and it simply is not the gospel of Jesus. It competes with the gospel. It serves, practically, to oppose the gospel. It creates a different kind of "hearer", and by extension, a different kind of "doer" than that which Jesus is calling and empowering and sending forth. That is the "evil" I contend occurs, and while evil is not the overt motive for these actions, it is deliberate action and evil the covert effect.

You say, "a huge motive behind the packaging you describe is to get people in church." But, the "in church" part of that outweighs the motive. The packaging has become the church; and, the packaging has become the content of another gospel and the substance of what it means to be part of a church. The packaging is more than a mailer to pique interest; it is a full on way of being that is the model of Christian living, and it is centered on what happens in these buildings during an hour or two of singing, performing and public speaking.

That "some (many) of those folks really get saved" is the end justifying the means. Let's assume that this statement (many are saved) is true. Are the lives of those saved then modeled into Christ in these fellowships? If American churches are successfully modeling and leading people to Christ-like living, the fruit of it is sorely lacking. To the extent that many of those folks really get saved, this way of being the church is manifestly working against their further maturity in Christ, against their further glorifying God day to day. It is a hard case to make to them, though, since they tend to enjoy the way it is to their own detriment.

I simply do not see that "attend a church they like" is a lesser evil to "not attending a church they don't like" if the process of both is not bearing fruit to the glory of God in actual human lives that are being transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus. I respectfully think we may have very different understandings of what it means to say "it seems to work".

This is precisely why the problem is pernicious. It is not well understood when people with facially right motives take real action to move people from "rumps at home" to church are held to a scrutiny of the ways in which they communicate a message. People tend to think that the means of communication are value-neutral and that is simply not true. The means of communication -- the medium of communication, that is -- comes loaded with its own values that can taint or change the pure gospel and the full out-living of the pure gospel.

The early church was conscious of this. Judaism itself was word based, not image based. Words as media have vastly different values than images. From early on, "I AM" has not shown Himself in images, and has made the knowledge of Himself through images anathema. God presented Himself as a God of words to the prophets, and in the fullness of time came in the fullness of human flesh as the Living Word. John's writings go overboard in making this clear about Jesus as the Word.

The church today presents the gospel as image. The church package is the image of the gospel. The church package is therefore the substance of the gospel. This is subtle and largely unnoticed to "the church", but not to those who know God as Word and are shaped by Him as the Word Alive. The life of those who know God, who know the gospel, as "Word Alive" is vastly different from those who know the gospel as the packaged content of the contemporary American church (in Australia at least, too). The fruit of those who know God as Word Alive is different from those who know Him as the content packaged in an image at church services. The church that knows God as the Word who is alive empowers itself among its members with a deeper, abiding internalization of the Word and presents a Word based proposition to the lost. The church that knows God as an image, even an image that has "saved" them, empowers itself by coming to the scene of an event (a church service) and needing an external affirmation of the continuing truth (that the image of God as seen and experienced through the church service package still 'works' this week) and presents the quality of the image and the interaction with this image to the lost. These are not differing qualities; these are differing kinds of being. And, I submit to you that the latter is evil even if it doesn't "intend to be", per se.

Going back once more and more deeply to the football analogy, it is a different game. It uses footballs and helmets (or, crosses and bibles), it uses bleachers (or, pews or chairs), it blows whistles and calls plays (or, uses the lingo and jargon of the faith). It calls itself college football, and a lot of money is staked on people buying it as college football. But, it isn't football. It is a different game (a different gospel), and you can see the impact it has on what still is real football in the NFL (or, the church that knows God as the Word Alive) because almost nobody knows how to play real football when they arrive in the NFL (or, nobody knows how to model biblical Christ-likeness to each other or demonstrate it to the lost) and they either are slow to develop (or, they will hopefully come around to the truth one day) or the overall game (faith) is suffering through a change from what it was to what it will be --- which is something very different in kind (not biblical).

I guess I am not sure what you mean when you say it's a different gospel.

I attend a large multi site church and I admit that it is not my preferred "venue."

But the reason we keep attending is because the gospel IS preached and people ARE getting saved and baptized. Our pastor is not afraid to say convicting hard truths. Last week he repeated three times: "any sexual activity that is outside marriage between a man and a woman is sin." This was in the context of his preaching on the letter to Thyatira.

Now I realize there are Joel Osteen-y preachers out there who are sickening in their sweetness.

Granted it is hard for a lot of deep fellowship in a typical church service setting but that is what life groups are for. About 75% of the attendees at our church belong to a life group, which generally meet weekly.

My church is not perfect and I do complain about many of the things you mention. But we are serving in ministries and see the God-honoring things that go on.

Hi dolfan

I liked your response, i can see where others are coming from as well. over the last 3 years, i have been looking at NLP and hypnosis as i wanted to see how this all works physically, Biblically and spiritually. when exposing the inner works of this, i am absolutely shocked by how these techniques are very commonly used in many churches. I do not believe that the pastors are fully aware of this and that in their efforts to see growth in the church have adopted these things from other preachers without fully seeking it out from God and the word. These techniques are in use with music, stage settings, speech and actions. I am not going to expose what they are in this post for the sake of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ

TMK, I mean that by virtue of its packaging it is made different in kind. Think "Jesus Christ" vs. "Jesus Christ Superstar". Think "Your life is to die daily, to mortify your flesh on the very tree upon which Jesus was nailed, to be filled with the Spirit, to live the truth out in close quarters with others, seeing to them and not to yourself, all for the sake of the glory of God in Jesus Christ and not for your own self" vs. "He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree. ... Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss, and my heart beats violently inside of my chest....".

Different.

It is hard to get at this thing directly. When you speak of communication technologies and the biases they bring, you are forced into analogy and comparison and hard put to concretely state the proposition that the package is the substance, the medium is the message. But, I think the word pictures above are helpful to my effort.

The church as a package presents its own gospel that is not the NT gospel. It uses the language of the gospel, it references the Bible, but it is not producing men and women who are transformed into the likeness of Jesus. It is producing a generation of self-centered consumers who must return to the well every week or some other interval to get another prescription of the package to convince them that they are "okay" as long as they continue to come to the event and be part of the package where they can hear how God loves like a hurricane, etc., and how important they are to Him.

The gospel of Christ is not that. It is how important He is on His own, and how He has no need of us, and that His love for us is rooted in the fact that it is His image we now wretchedly bear and His motivation is not to love us in pity but to change us into the image of Jesus who is His express image bodily, how that He does not love us for us but He loves us for Himself and only to the extent He will make us like Himself do we have any value or worth at all.

The difference here has a profound impact on how life is lived out in the moments and days of our being. The church package, different gospel counsels me to keep trying, keep coming, keep believing, keep lifting my hopes to Him because He loves me so much that He will secure my way to Him for eternity and He will help me now to feel that love. So, if that's my input, my output is always motivated by my feelings, my need to be loved (as opposed to my need to be changed from the wretch that I am), my need to remember His love for me and how that I'm worth something to Him. I will walk around with an idea of my intrinsic worth, and on some levels I will thus begrudge Him whenever He presents me with the demand to change.

The gospel of Christ, though, counsels me to die, to repent, to seek Him in order to know Him, to rest on His promise of new life and a new spirit and a new mind that is not motivated by my feelings, but is motivated by the fact that regardless of how I feel about it I am a worm and this God who made me for Himself is going to have me for Himself in the manner in which He alone determines, and that is through the process of dying and being made new and alive in Christ as God transforms me from image to image and from glory to glory. I'm worth nothing, and so I give all my nothingness to Him freely because I know for a fact that He takes my nothing and changes me into someone like Himself. He makes me a new creation, and only because of this will I see Him ever. And, the means of that change is entirely different from the means provided in the context of the contemporary package church.

TMK...what is the difference if you read the bible during a church service in s paper book, a smartphone (that's what I do) an iPad or following the verses on the screen?

My Grandmother used to tell me, it doesn't matter were the living word of God is written, even if it's on a bar restroom wall, it still the same as if you were reading it out of your Bible. And she would end with saying, it probably would have more effect written on the bar restroom wall, than in most Churches. Grandma was an on fire Christian woman for over 80 years, she lived to be 95.

Thanks Tim- I know where you are coming from.

Thank goodness you didn't quote the original phrase of that song which says "sloppy wet kiss" instead of "unforeseen kiss".

Either way, I about gag whenever I hear that song. I suspect Jesus may be as well.

Well spoken Tim,
And what depth !

I appreciate your post.

God bless,
elizabeth

Brother Tim,
While I can definitely relate to your perspectives put forth (including the college football;) and have myself been outspoken regarding this very thing, we would do well not to lump them all together and start throwing rocks. Just as has been stated here on SI before, the Lord has people in most all denominations who truly walk with Him, and no singular denomination nor doctrine exclusively possesses Him. Having said that, I too have been grieved in many of the same ways you have and have prayed diligently that the truth of His Spirit would be revealed to them and they would seek Him and not just play a numbers game while responding to felt needs. Tho I have found that I too needed to see that He is not limited by traditions no matter how holy they appear. Growing up in the CoC they, as you know, denounce any musical instruments, tho many other churches embrace them. I bring this up because they (CoC) say much the same as you are regarding the use of such "modern" inventions and conclude that the message gets distorted if not changed completely. They of course believe they are right and have the necessary justifications to back up their claims...

I admit I've struggled with this over the years and at times still do tho I found after much prayer that even in scripture there has always been this type of variety in people's personal relationship and subsequently their styles of worship. The example that comes to mind in this moment is two of the best known and beloved characters in the OT.
One is soooo conservative that he refuses even a toast to his own promotion in the Kings court, which was disrespectful to say the least, tho because of his reputation for his godly character (and friendship w/King Darius) he was allowed this exclusion.
The next is sooo wild that he not only eats the show bread off the altar but once did what amounts to naked cartwheels in front of the ark as they were bringing it back to Jerusalem, to the dismay of his wife Michal who when she spoke against this behavior was, if I remember correctly, cursed by God and made baron...
Now tho these two men were as different as night and day in their characters they were untied by their love and faith in God and by all accounts He loved them equally and used them both mightily.
But I've wondered if they had lived in close proximity if they would've had anything in common so as to be friends other than their faith.
Perhaps one or both might be skeptical of the other considering the contrast in their expressions of their faith.

So while I do share your concerns and believe you articulate them better than I could, perhaps we should respond in faith towards the Father and not in frustration towards the problem... as our God is an awesome God, and the universe itself cannot contain Him much less one way of doing
church.

Edit for spelling

I so appreciate where Tim has taken this, I must admit that my original post was spawned by a visit to a really dark church where I used to go some time ago- I was a bit overwhelmed by the intensity of the dark venue and how it affected me. Tim fleshed it out brilliantly- a better illumination than my guarded sarcasm. (Yuehan saw my post as "leveling accusations," no where near my intentions.) And as Tim skillfully progressed through his explanations, no names were mentioned- that wasn't the purpose at all.

Jesus framed much of His teaching in a context of light and darkness, I believe this is worth noting, and have personally come to prefer well lighted venues for assembling, worship, and responding to preaching. It is just a preference, not suggesting that those who like dark venues are going to Hell.

I attend a large multi site church and I admit that it is not my preferred "venue."

But the reason we keep attending is because the gospel IS preached and people ARE getting saved and baptized.

I like what TMK has said above. Many so called Christians in USA are justifying the mega Church they attend using similar reasons as TMK as used here.
I am not against mega Churches. I myself was born again or came to know Christ in a mega Church. But I do not believe they are a Church that Jesus is building. I am not saying they do not have a role in Christendom but I am only saying they are not God's plan for a Church. But God still uses them. The fact that a place or a person is used by God does not mean the person is 100% pleasing to God. I can quote so many scriptures to prove this point.

In my view Mega Churches are evangelical conventions. They are mainly there to evangelize large attendees. There is no real fellowship among the believers. All the mini groups that they encourage on weekdays to meet, are the Churches having guts to raise these mini groups as a Church by themselves? They do not because they are scared of losing their revenue. Don't get fooled by the mini weekday groups that these Churches encourage. They are not real fellowship unless they are groomed to become a local Church. Most of these mini groups have no real commitment. Different kinds of people meet based on their availability at different times. They are just prayer groups created to fill the vacuum of lack of fellowship in their mega Church.

God still uses them to save people who come there just to sit there for few hours and escape without being noticed by others. They might have many people being baptized and added to that group. Still they are not God's plan for a Church.