WHAT CAN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY OFFER TO A CARNIVAL AGE

Recently I stepped out of my familiar comfort zone twice within a week’s time: to attend a non-denominational conference (spelled P-E-N-T-E-C-O-S-T-A-L) and then from there, to go on a Carnival cruise.  Oh my goodness!  I did not speak in tongues at the church thing, nor was there any onboard disaster with the cruise ship.  In other words, I survived.   Moreover, I heard some really, really good music in both places!  But these two experiences brought home some pretty significant realities to me:

·       *Pentecostalism is eating up American Christianity.  They have the energy and the counter-cultural motivation that has always been at the heart of great faith movements.  They are a haven of both creepy theology and extremely fun/emotive music.   As Christianity morphs into a fringe movement in America, the Pentecostals keep getting a bigger piece of the shrinking pie, which in turn pushes Christianity further to the margins and the fringe.

·       *Plain old American partying (circa 2013 on a Carnival cruise ship) is more satisfying than the best Pentecostal worship service, and a safer bet for mainstream American people who are not into the weird world of the religious right.  (I confess: I never knew this before.  But now I do.)

Most of us reading this don’t party (so to speak).  We go to church socials, but we are clueless about the world of down-and-dirty dancing, high powered DJs and crazy cool light shows that now play the role that great liturgy once played to wow the lives of young adults with something that stretches them far beyond the hum-drum of daily survival.  (And some folks add drugs and alcohol to that mix to take it to a level of intensity and danger that actually took my cousin’s life a few years ago.)

I confess again: I really never knew all this.  I mean I knew it in my head, but I did not know it from experience.  I grew up with 70s music all around, but since we did not dance at our house or at our church, the Carnival cruise was my first experience (at the age of 51) of actually boogying to Elton John in a 70s music retro dance.  Which, by the way, is something I highly recommend to all ages.

In the wake of these two very out-of-my-ordinary experiences, I am more aware than ever that:

·       *No church can compete with the high-tech entertainment, recreational and partying culture that has overtaken the USA – not even the Pentecostals!  

·       *Much of what church once offered in terms of meaning, emotional escape, grace-filled fellowship with other people, etc is now more excellently delivered in non-religious settings.  (Walt Kallistad wrote an intriguing book on church as entertainment a few years back, but folks – forget it – we cannot become Mardi Gras – and honestly, we don’t need to!)

·       *What we can do is to help people go deeper, to move beyond life as a string of escapist highs to a life of satisfying depth.  There almost always comes that point when the parties always get old, and we need more.  For some, drug and alcohol addiction brings this lesson home like nothing else – if it doesn’t kill them first.   There is a place (lost to many churches and to almost all bars and clubs today) of quiet where we learn to listen to the still small voice of Spirit beckoning us toward our greatest purposes, toward love for neighbors and toward pathways that offer joy – which is probably the best drug on the planet, highly addictive and with no downside. 

I am not saying that we throw in the towel on interesting and stimulating worship experiences.  There is no excuse for boring worship in this over-stimulated world of 2013.  And certainly no excuse for sloppy!!  But well produced experiences alone will not gain the attention or the respect of this generation.  The world is crying out for something more, for something that the entertainment/recreation industry cannot deliver.   The church needs to find its way to that place in the human economy.  If we don’t find our place, I can promise you that more of our grand kids will be Buddhists and Hindus and the like than will be Christian.  Someone is going to fill the spiritual vacuum – of that we can be sure!

The spiritual communities that help people discover and plumb the depths of their spirituality will find a place of great value in the world that is coming!   The spiritual communities that are known as places of grace that coach people toward rich and generous lives – they will be ascendant in the years before us!   The churches that teach people how to live like Jesus rather than simply how to bash the rest of the world over the head with Jesus – those churches have a rich future.

Will the church(es) you lead be in the mix?