The Sign Post

Just wanted to take a moment to recommend the first full fledged poetry book I have ever purchased. Many Small Lights by our friend Kristen McCarty and with photos by her friend Aaron Courter is definitely worth your attention. The poetry is genuine, engaging and multi-layered. The photography is superb. I have been reading it slowly, a little at a time so as to be able to soak up each poem and let it form me in some way. It is true that I would have liked this book because my friend wrote it, but I am truely excited by it because of it's excellence. If you like poetry, want to like poetry or want to be engrossed on a journey through life and emotion - buy this book.

I have obviously not been blogging lately. It has not been because I don't have any thoughts running around in my head that need working out. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I have been distracted by the ever so addictive micro-blogging. I started on Twitter, a gateway drug, and then moved on to the harder stuff: Facebook. It is strange that I became addicted so quickly to something that I had looked on condescendingly just a few days before. To be honest, neither one is very impressive as websites or networks go. The functionality is extremely limited for such wildly popular phenomena. Perhaps the key to their popularity is the simplicity and how quickly they can be mastered. Nonetheless, I became addicted to seeing what my freinds and a few complete strangers that asked to be my friends were doing that day and it all came in a convenient package that I could enjoy on the go or at my liesure. Anyway, if anyone has wondered why I haven't been blogging it was because I have been microblogging about absolutely nothing of any significance. Much like the content of this post.

The past few days I have been wondering what happened to the now mythological ideas of rest and free time. Even as we speak I am overridden with guilt due to the fact that I am not at the gym. This is the first opportunity I've had in a while to just sit down and rest rather than constantly running. I feel like the pace of life has definitely become a hindrance to both my spiritual formation and my attitude. I am not always, in fact not often, the husband, friend, son, grandson or anything that I want to be. I do not spend as much time with the people I care about as I should and spend too much time worried about the things that are not as important in the long run. A change in priorities and time management is in order. Now the question is how?

I don't usually write a lot about mega churches, but with the tiny readership I now have, I felt it might be helpful (to me personally) to write out my thoughts on the subject since for some odd reason it was on my mind today. The opinions I am about to express are just that, opinions. If you disagree or think I don't know what I am talking about, good for you. My thoughts are developed strictly around the mega churches I have been in and around. For this post, I will probably just explore all the ways that mega churches are like shopping malls.
1. Big buildings - many megas now are in buildings roughly the same size as shopping malls and personally I think you will soon see some megas buying some of the empty shopping malls cropping up in metropolitan areas. It is far too easy to bash on the millions of dollars spent on these buildings and the waste of resources and lack of focusing those resources on any kind of kingdom work.
2. Diversity - In the same way that shopping malls have a wide variety of stores in order to draw all sorts of people in, megas have all different kinds of services at all different times of the day to draw in every kind of consumer.
3. Entertainment - Most, if not all, shopping malls will have a movie theater and / or arcade to entertain kids (or sometimes kids and dad) while the parents go shop. In the exact same way most megas have their youth sunday school classes / theme park time at the same time as the worship services so the kids can be entertained and out of parents hair while the parents consume/shop.
4. Parking stinks - Sorry just a personal rant, everyone in our cuslture is in a hurry to consume and parking is often hairy at either venue.
5. Numbers driven - Shopping malls at their core are simply driven by a stores ability to pay rent, however, that ability to pay rent is determined by the amount of traffic they are able to produce x the number of shoppers they can turn into customers. In the same way, megas are all about the number of shoppers that can get through the door. The traffic they generate x the number of shoppers they can "convert" into tithers = ability to pay mortgage. This is an obvious theme in the megas I know as evidenced by the multiple kiosks near all doorways where customers / participants can sign in and those computers deliver a running total to each of the worship centers, shops and major venues in the building where everyone can see them and take a sense of pride in those numbers, therefore generating an interest in helping make those numbers bigger.
6. Class divisions - this is one that certainly may not ring true in every instance, but I can think of few where it does. The shopping malls in our area are class driven. Lower income families shop at this mall. Higher income families shop at that one and the elite (monetarily) shop at a smaller but much higher priced shopping center yet. In much the same way churches in general, not just megas, seem to be divided by a class system based primarily on income. You can tell by the cars in the parking lots and the clothes worn by participants. This often creates a "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality that is unhealthy in any situation much less in a place where the beatitudes are supposed to define our membership criteria.
7. Driven by consumerism - I know this is an easy mark, but no discussion of the subject would be complete if it neglected this characteristic. Shopping malls are driven by consumerism. Consumerism creates a need in a persons mind for a certain product. This need can be developed by promising consumers they won't be happy/cool / complete unless they have this product. This need can be developed by promising a better quality of life with the purchase of their products. A need can also be developed by exposing people to life with the product and then taking it away. The list goes on and on and advertisers find new ways every day to create these needs. Megas are driven by the same consumerism that shopping malls depend on. They create a need in a consumers head using the same criteria mentioned above. One aspect of this consumerism that is not mentioned often enough is that the non-megas are also creating this need for the megas unbeknownced to the non-megas. The way they do this is through "youth groups". You don't have to think about it too hard to see that this is really mega-church member training. Once again, this is not always the case and should not be taken as an absolute. There are good ways of creating discipleship and community within groups of young people. But most of the youth groups that gain notariety within a community are those that pull in large numbers of students, tailor the messages to whatever style of language / clothing / look / product that kids want rather than what they need. Most YGs find infinite numbers of ways to entertain youth in order to get them to come to their own seperate service and the kids know all to well that if this one isn't entertaining enough or doesn't have the "right people" in attendance they can just go down the street to the next one. This is the environment we raise our children in and then we ship them off to college for a few years where they do the same thing if they are involved in a church at all. Then we bring them back home and expect them to be a part of the general congregation with people of all ages that they feel they have nothing in common with and ask them to sit through hyms and a sermon centered around discipleship and later, if they are lucky, they can come to a business meeting or prayer service for quiet reflection. It is only natural that their first reaction is to think that they have had the "old bait and switch" pulled on them. Their second reaction would naturally be to go and find a youth group for adults, a.k.a. mega-church.
This post is already far too long so I am going to quit here, but this should at least make some good fodder for discussion or reflection or perhaps disagreement.

I am an accidental subscriber to Time magazine. It was one of those forced free trial deals where they ended up charging $45 to your check card without you knowing it for a magazine you didn't want in the first place. I have been repeatedly disappointed in this magazine but this last week there was a surprising article written by Kurt Anderson, a former writer for the magazine. The article is called The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for America? This article is honestly written a couple years after everyone should have seen it coming but it raises some good points and interesting questions. Is America ready to play second fiddle to China? How does the world climate change if China is the new world superpower? Are Americans going to be able to start living practically? There is a lot to think about there. I don't agree with his (and most other "American Dreamers") ideas for how America can remain "on top of the world", but the questions raised are ones that we are all going to have to deal with at some point.