A place to snark and vent about CoC doctrine and/or our experiences in the CoC. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their experience and feelings are wrong, or why we disagree with them.
klp wrote:Well these older members were all kin to the leadership families, and the claim was that they would become "confused" because they could not follow a song leader or if the number of songs changed, etc. And of course confusion is akin to chaos and God is not the author or chaos...so bah-dah-bing things must be decent and in order meaning no variation from standard format. What I finally came to conclude after many issues was that they were unhappy people and disliked anyone who seemed to be doing anything to make "services" enjoyable.
But if the older members' confusion proceeded from burgeoning senile dementia, was God also at fault there, if He's not the author thereof?
Yes, your conclusion is probably the correct one - the hardline congregations have a decided interest in making sure that a church service isn't entertaining or enjoyable, and the not-so-hardline congregations often defer to unhappy people in such situations. I wish I could remember the author who said that leadership should never be within the purview of the perennially unhappy - they already have enough influence and power without handing it over to them wholesale.
There was a kid over on the 'other side' of the board who flat out stated that services are 'not supposed to fun'. Apparently enjoyment - or even the APPEARANCE of enjoyment - is of the debbil. If congregations aren't already deliberately PLANNING for services to be boring, they soon will be, given that mindset. Heaven forbid - GOD forbid - that any part of a service should actually please anybody at all, about anything at all.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
agricola wrote:There was a kid over on the 'other side' of the board who flat out stated that services are 'not supposed to fun'. Apparently enjoyment - or even the APPEARANCE of enjoyment - is of the debbil. If congregations aren't already deliberately PLANNING for services to be boring, they soon will be, given that mindset. Heaven forbid - GOD forbid - that any part of a service should actually please anybody at all, about anything at all.
Yes, that's so common a notion amongst conservative CofCs that it represents a kind of shibboleth within the group for identifying those with what they consider the proper view of a church service.
I get that it should not be entertainment for entertainment sake, should not be a consumer experience. But that concern just got so far out of hand...and of course some other denominations are about entertainment...there are extremes on this, neither it "good" IMO. So breaking out Heb 10:25 the focus in on attendance and not the purpose which is to be encouraged and enthused to endure and carry-on. So there ought to be some emotional aspect to the "assembly" that encourages and in a sense pumps the person up to keep on keeping on (don'tcha just love the clichés).
But then the sermon portion of the "assembly" consumes the largest chunk of time and is totally "consumer" mode...a clergy/laity aspect...the rest of the "assembly" (because we can't say they are an audience) is in passive consumer mode. It is no different from a movie or concert. So why is the sermon part OK to be consumed in a passive entertainment mode but the music portion is not?
And so the emotional component of singing is ignored or never recognized or taken advantage of...why not just read the word, what is the point of using verse/music/group if not to connect to some non-verbal, non-text aspect of the activity? So this notion that it doesn't matter what it sounds like or how it is done as long as the text is "not in error" is a rejection of the purpose and attention to only the logic of text and not the emotion of music.
And this reality puts the lie to the assertion that there is something wrong with the attendee if they do not find the "services" uplifting or encouraging. NO! The entire intent is to deaden and reduce the positive emotional connection aspect and to make it totally logic/text based. How could it ever "pump you up" when it is lacking the feature of a pump?
Of course I mean in all this positive emotions of love and enthusiasm....the emotions of fear and anger are always present and excused as being Godly fear and Righteous anger...whatever, it is mostly fear and anger that are ever present. Of course this is just my experience with conservative NI branch/franchise operations.
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
klp wrote:I get that it should not be entertainment for entertainment sake, should not be a consumer experience. But that concern just got so far out of hand...and of course some other denominations are about entertainment...there are extremes on this, neither it "good" IMO. So breaking out Heb 10:25 the focus in on attendance and not the purpose which is to be encouraged and enthused to endure and carry-on. So there ought to be some emotional aspect to the "assembly" that encourages and in a sense pumps the person up to keep on keeping on (don'tcha just love the clichés).
But then the sermon portion of the "assembly" consumes the largest chunk of time and is totally "consumer" mode...a clergy/laity aspect...the rest of the "assembly" (because we can't say they are an audience) is in passive consumer mode. It is no different from a movie or concert. So why is the sermon part OK to be consumed in a passive entertainment mode but the music portion is not?
And so the emotional component of singing is ignored or never recognized or taken advantage of...why not just read the word, what is the point of using verse/music/group if not to connect to some non-verbal, non-text aspect of the activity? So this notion that it doesn't matter what it sounds like or how it is done as long as the text is "not in error" is a rejection of the purpose and attention to only the logic of text and not the emotion of music.
And this reality puts the lie to the assertion that there is something wrong with the attendee if they do not find the "services" uplifting or encouraging. NO! The entire intent is to deaden and reduce the positive emotional connection aspect and to make it totally logic/text based. How could it ever "pump you up" when it is lacking the feature of a pump?
Of course I mean in all this positive emotions of love and enthusiasm....the emotions of fear and anger are always present and excused as being Godly fear and Righteous anger...whatever, it is mostly fear and anger that are ever present. Of course this is just my experience with conservative NI branch/franchise operations.
klp - that is one of the best summations of the nature of a coc 'worship service' combined with a critique of the wrongheadedness of the approach....thank you.
I believe your experience with conservative NI branch is pervasive throughout the entire spectrum of coc variations. The rare congregation which can escape that approach may actually grow and be a positive in people's lives - but the kind of place you describe is a drag on the world.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
I know there are many factors such as power/pride/control that drive many in CofC leadership...but behind it all I think ultimately there is a fear of being joyful, happy, and enjoying oneself while in "church". Yet they will beat you on the head with the phrase from David about being glad when it was time to go to the house of the Lord. Of course he looked forward to it, because he had joy and comfort there. It should be a joyful and happy place to be and then people would be glad when it is time to go. Now some folks can get out of hand and I guess Paul in his writings had to curtail some of the goings on, but that never meant it was a dreadful deadsville drudgery.
The whole building layout along with the prohibition of having even a glass of water was set up to create am inhospitable space. Yes, the congregation was specifically told even water bottles were not allowed in the "auditorium"...now medical exceptions were allowed. On guy had saliva glands destroyed during radiation treatment so he had an exception for water so that he could sing the dreadful songs. And yes it was announced that he could bring in water. oy And did I mention that when VBS was allowed there was a rule put in that nothing could be attached to the walls in the classroom wing because it would damage the paint and therefore be wasting the Lord's money having to repaint. I mean these people went out of their way to make it dreadful and joyless.
I am reminded of the Far Side Cartoon about the guy in Hell admiring the attention to detail in making Hell so horrible.... "Even the coffee's cold, they thought of everything." This is how I came to view CofC, an effort was made to avoid any possible joyfulness because there was a fear of actual joy and actually enjoying "church". So I think people came to derive a type of Pharisee joy of being extreme rule conformists and seeing others struggle or fail at the dictated norms and behaviors. So some people would grin when we had a 5 day meeting with a preacher who was known to go way past the allotted time...as if they actually needed this additional rambling about how to be saved and how others would be lost during a 15 minute invitation tacked on the end of yet another long sermon about "the family".
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
agricola wrote:klp - that is one of the best summations of the nature of a coc 'worship service' combined with a critique of the wrongheadedness of the approach....thank you.
I believe your experience with conservative NI branch is pervasive throughout the entire spectrum of coc variations. The rare congregation which can escape that approach may actually grow and be a positive in people's lives - but the kind of place you describe is a drag on the world.
Agreed, agreed - a very insightful post. The traditional evangelical conservatives, including the CofC, tend to have a great suspicion of the emotional component of religion (leaving aside the various Pentecostal/holiness denominations, which positively encourage it, for the most part). It's not just a suspicion of the emotional in a worship assembly - it's a broad suspicion of the emotional experience itself (outside of anger, or the feeling of self-righteousness, perhaps). I'm not much of a church-goer anymore, but when I do attend, I cannot help but look with distaste on overly emotive religious appeals or gross emotional manipulation in any religious setting - a combination of personal preference with early CofC upbringing.
klp wrote:This is how I came to view CofC, an effort was made to avoid any possible joyfulness because there was a fear of actual joy and actually enjoying "church". So I think people came to derive a type of Pharisee joy of being extreme rule conformists and seeing others struggle or fail at the dictated norms and behaviors. So some people would grin when we had a 5 day meeting with a preacher who was known to go way past the allotted time...as if they actually needed this additional rambling about how to be saved and how others would be lost during a 15 minute invitation tacked on the end of yet another long sermon about "the family".
LOL - any comment about the sermon or service being rather long would be met with admonitions about understanding your proper place in the assembly, and that you didn't approach the assembly with the proper attitude: "Where else do you really need to be, or want to be?" "Well, pretty much anywhere but in this freakin' church building," is the appropriate response.
Oh but being there every single service and arriving early and leaving late is HOW YOU WORSHIP GOD. It is how you SHOW YOURSELF APPROVED. It is OBEYING THE GOSPEL (by sitting still for lengthy periods, apparently).
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
