Posted on 03/09/2007 3:53:04 PM PST by Terriergal
Facilities and physical environment have a lot to do with what happens in a weekend worship service. The shape of your building will shape your service. Walk into some buildings and your mood will instantly brighten. Walk into other buildings and you'll feel depressed. The shape of a room can change a mood instantly; so can the temperature of room; so can the lighting in a room. Be aware of these factors and use them. Figure out what mood you want your service to project and then create it.
One of the problems we face in maintaining the church environment is that we tend to overlook defects after about four weeks. Once you become familiar with a building, you stop noticing what's wrong with it. The defects and disorder don't bother you as much as they did when you first noticed them. You become oblivious to the faded paint, the frayed carpet, the chipped pulpit, the outdated tract rack in the vestibule, the old bulletins left inside hymnals, the stack of stuff on the piano, and the burned-out light bulbs overhead.
Unfortunately, these things stand out immediately to visitors. They notice details.
One way to combat this tendency is to do an Environmental Impact Report on your church. Get a photographer to walk around your facilities and take pictures from the eyes of a visitor. Then show those pictures to your leaders and determine what needs to be changed. In particular here are some environmental factors you need to pay close attention to:
(Excerpt) Read more at christianpost.com ...
Rick Warren=heretic.
Do you live some place where it gets really warm?
Here in Minnesota, it might not be the issue that you're raising. I have fond memories of hot summer Sunday mornings, with the church doors open and the fans overhead. Lemonade and fellowship after the service out on the lawn in the shade. Kids playing on the playground. Birds singing.
But March is our snowiest month here and so those memories might be a bit hazy just now.
You attract more flies with lemonade than with vinegar, if life gives you lemons.
:>)
"Call me shallow,
but I agree with Mr. Warren. You creat the image of God in your worship setting."
I think what you mean is that the church presents a perspective of God through its appearance. At least it presents a perspective about how much the members of the church care about God and what aspects they care about. Presenting a dilapidated, dirty, cluttered church does not say good things about God. A chapel of cushions and translucent curtains presents a god of pleasure, while an ascetic chapel presents a joyless god. Both are unbiblical.
And while air conditioning might not matter to an African tribe, you cannot present a message to an audience with shocked senses.
"I have fond memories of hot summer Sunday mornings, with the church doors open and the fans overhead. Lemonade and fellowship after the service out on the lawn in the shade."
You had the church doors *open* with *fans*! Lemonade! Shade! Blasphemy. If they really wanted to come to worship, they would sweat it out for hours under the hot sun.
/s
"Oh, but to consider sitting at the feet of Jesus or Paul. Wouldn't that be enough to consider some inconvenience to hear the message they would have to share?"
Remember God brought Jesus into a society where there were well kept roads. I think Jesus and Paul used them to get from city to city when they preached. Paul also used ships for travel.
We shouldn't get into the falsehood that technology is unspiritual. Jesus and Paul used the technologies of their day. Calling some technological convenience in a church that is common to the society that surrounds it "unspiritual" is not at all Biblical. I don't think it adds to your rewards in heaven to go from your air-conditioned house in an air-conditioned car to a sweltering church and toughing it out.
Tell ya what, look up a purpose driven church in your area and you won't find me.
You didn't like the 5 point summary of the uncompromisable message at 135 then?
I'm not sure what you mean here. God has laid out the terms which are the same for everyone -- God calls us through the Gospel and convicts of sin, and has the same requirements of everyone.
I'm wondering if I was supposed to take 169 as an insult...(?)
Wow... people thought I was being a little extreme when I said Rick Warren was a false teacher in 2005 when I got church disciplined for confronting our pastor on his bad behavior. I applaud you for cutting to the chase!
I think you're the one "putting the emphasis on the look of the building". In particular, you seem to want to make people suffer through the service:
"There is nothing wrong with these considerations, except when it becomes a matter of pandering to people who aren't willing to experience some possible discomfort in finding a place to park or sit! Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit on a dirt floor and listen to the Apostle Paul talk about Christ?"
I'm impressed that you think of your pastor as Paul, but I think you are inferring that there was room on said dirt floor.
"How ever did Christianity ever grow in the conditions of the early church? No air conditioning, mood lighting, staging, comfort. It's a miracle that people responded to the message of grace given that level of discomfort."
Since these things didn't exist at the time, it is a disingenuous remark at best.
We're a warm, caring community of believers who gather to worship together. I don't believe we start planning worship with determining what "mood we wanted to project. " There are other churches in the area with air conditioning and larger facilities, including one with a cupholder for the lattes sold prior to service, but we choose to worship together anyway. We do change lightbulbs and care for the facilities out of respect and love.
We lost our seeker-driven pastor last year due to the desire of the congregation to hear the meat of the word rather than "examining our culture" and " packaging the gospel." Older members of our church were told they wouldn't receive attention because it was necessary to reach a different demographic. People who questioned what was happening were told to leave. It was painful.
Did you read the article? Perhaps through the various posts you've lost track of who is putting the emphasis on conducting an environmental impact study and projecting a mood?
My point is that the content of the message is more important than the environment.
I'm wondering what this heretical teaching is. Is Warren teaching that Jesus wasn't divine, wasn't man, or in some other way denying the Trinity? Does he believe that there is salvation outside of Jesus? Does he preach that the Bible isn't God's word?
Someone cue me in here.
This article is about the environment surrounding the message. Do you believe the message entirely trumps the environment surrounding it?
I went to the Ukraine (near the Black Sea) with a church group to work with kids who otherwise would not have been able to attend camp. It was unbearably hot. Mosquitoes were awful. Grasshoppers as big as small birds. No air conditioning, no fan, no ice, no breeze, no screens on the windows. I remember thinking that this would have been the environment in which the Apostles spread the message of salvation.
I don't mean to convey that technology is unspiritual. However, I'll bet the Apostles didn't spend much time thinking: what kind of a mood do we want to project?
I don't think I examined your posts that closely.
My comment was a generic one.
Agreed.
I have no problem with honest facilitation.
Some things we know can facilitate, heighten a sense of awe, worship, intimacy with God and other believers. Some things we know can or will hinder such.
It's stupid, imho, to avoid paying attention to such things.
If the MOTIVE becomes a vain glorious fantasy that human manipulation of setting etc. can EQUAL intimacy with God etc. or manipulate God
THEN
we have a problem.
"We lost our seeker-driven pastor last year due to the desire of the congregation to hear the meat of the word rather than "examining our culture" and " packaging the gospel." Older members of our church were told they wouldn't receive attention because it was necessary to reach a different demographic. People who questioned what was happening were told to leave. It was painful."
I've seen several (two Methodist, one Baptist, and one Presbyterian) churches that were very comfortable with the people there and did not want to bring anyone new in (except maybe blood-relatives). These churches had basically devolved into Christian social clubs that were set in their ways so much that the pastors no longer bothered to ask about members being saved (altar calls or the like). While I believe they would consider themselves "welcoming", but they presented the opposite image.
I'm not sure if in our Biblically illiterate society that preachers should be going deep into the meat of the word to the wide congregation. It's very possible that the aging congregation in your church was more prepared for deeper messages than the surrounding community, but such a thing clashed with the goal of reaching the surrounding community. If this is the case, who should be made uncomfortable: the current members or new people to the church?
"I remember thinking that this would have been the environment in which the Apostles spread the message of salvation."
That was how the Apostles, members of the early church, jews, and pagans all around lived their lives. You can make the argument the John the Baptist went out of his way to be more acetic, but the Apostles did not go out of their way to suffer. They went out of their way to spread the gospel.
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