the simple life

Someone recently shared their concern that some of the technology in use at our church might be directed at a crowd that has little use for it. This person’s position was that statistics and other evidences point to the idea that the baby boomers are thrusting their tech and their “contemporary” ideas on 20-30-year-olds who could care less; church is a place where they hope to escape being bombarded with technology. While I agree in theory, I am uncertain how that translates to practice.

I think the direction worship tech is going – away from flashy toward discreet - is healthy. However, I see the effective use of technology in worship as becoming less and less visible – not going away, but becoming less obvious. How can we use tech to augment rather than amaze – to encourage worship rather than supplant it. Good tech has always been, in my opinion, an attempt to "finesse" rather than "bombard."

Indeed, today’s young people appear to be leaning toward simplicity in worship and away from the over-produced excesses of the mega-church. However, in Washington, Illinois, we are still transitioning. I think the tech-savvy baby boomer is still our major demographic here, but things are shifting. This is why I am taking every opportunity to emphasize becoming more missional and why I am trying to interject more and more “low-tech” artistic contributions this year (like readings, drama, participatory worship events, etc.). I would also like to see involvement at WCC become simpler and simpler – more and more family friendly. Maybe what we need are fewer things to bombard them with?

The boomers’ worst legacy is not their fascination with technology or their eclectic musical tastes, but their relentless rat race. Perhaps the most important job of today’s church is to teach simplicity. Maybe today’s church should be about offering people help getting off the crazy treadmill of our daily lives. It is almost impossible to help people catch their breath in one hour on a Sunday; we need to teach that there is a better way. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is almost completely absent from our modern church vernacular, and we need to bring it back. How do we do this? I am not sure; I have ideas, but I’m willing to admit that they might not work. However, these seem like good questions as we move forward.

The trick is understanding that, whatever this shift is, it is not an indictment of the “classroom church” of our parents’ time or the “corporate church” of ours, but merely a culture shift. We also need to understand that the shift away from technological whiz-bangs is not a shift toward the church of the 1950’s, but toward the church of the first century; as restorationists, we should be tickled to death with this development, but we (the pre-boomers, the boomers, the busters, the gen-x-ers) are ALL creatures of habit.

Is everybody going to get on board if we start moving out of the fellowship hall and into the inner-city? Is everybody going to like it if we replace fluorescent light with candle light? Is everybody going to like everything we do? Nope. What does that mean to us? How do we keep trying to be all things to all people, that we might save a few? Not sure, but if we keep the dialog open we are at least trying.