I really don’t enjoy always being the odd-man-out who swims upstream. It just works out that way.
I mentioned Easter in an earlier post. Easter is a problem for me as a pastor. Oh, I don’t mean that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a problem, or even that celebrating that resurrection is a problem. I just mean that the pressure on churches and pastors to put on a big Easter show is a problem for me. If you are a church leader who has spent hundreds of hours rehearsing a big Easter production, you’d probably do well to stop reading now before you get angry at me. A buddy of mine, Brad Smith, once told me “What we win them with, we win them to.” He was, I think, right to a large extent. I am not a big proponent of the attractional church model. The attractional model essentially holds that if you do things really well, in a big way, you will attract the kind of people you want at your church. Kind of the spiritual equivalent of the Field of Dreams. (“If you build it, they will come.”) It’s true, of course; if you build it, they WILL come. The larger questions, however are, “Build what?” and “Come to what?” In a blog I read recently a man called church Easter Extravaganzas “bait and switch.” You get those holiday cultural Christians — those who show up at a church on Easter and Christmas — into the building and stage an impressive, well-planned, well-rehearsed cantata, pageant or play, and they enjoy it immensely. Great lighting, great sound, impressive performances… but is it church? Does it reflect who and what your congregation is on a weekly basis? If they return the Sunday after Easter, will they have a sense of let-down, and perhaps feel that they have been tricked? If you set the production/entertainment bar really high, what does normal look like? In Christ’s final instruction to his apprentices, his disciples, he told them to make disciples as they went on their way, and to teach those disciples to observe/obey all that he had taught them. I’m pretty big on that… making disciples, and actually discipling them. Imagine that. What a concept. This Sunday, April 12 is Easter. I won’t be at a Sunrise service — I am past the guilt-trips heaped on by those who get all chicken-skin at 6:00 AM. I am, to be really frank, not very spiritual at 6:00 AM. I am a night guy, and until I have a few cups of coffee I am not even very nice, much less spiritual. I have struggled through more than my share of sunrise services, feeling bad about not having warm, fuzzy spiritual feelings, while I yawned and gnawed the inside of my cheeks to stay awake. My church also won’t be having a pageant, cantata or big musical production. The kids from Childrens’ Ministry will sing, but we will have our regular time of praise and worship, and an encouraging message from the Word, followed by a challenge to commitment. Maybe Communion before the kids hunt candy-filled plastic eggs. One thing’s for sure; if we have any new faces among us, and if they return April 19, they won’t feel that they have been tricked, and they won’t experience bait and switch. What we win them with, we win them to.