I hate talking to answering machines. When they first came out, I thought it was humiliating to talk to a machine; and my first attempts to leave a message often sounded confused and stupid. Now, if I must leave a message, I prepare what I am going to say. We have also learned to have some fun with them. Bob & Ruth White belonged to my last church. Their answering machine reported, “You have reached the White House.” It didn’t add, “What country would you like to invade?” as the answering machine humor list does.
For years I have toyed with putting a message on the church answering machine that says, “You have reached there Arnold Mills United Methodist Church. There is no one here now, except God. Do you want to talk to God? Leave a message and one of my people will get back to you.”
The answering machine is not always helpful. Some folks use them to screen their calls. But when I need to get a response from someone immediately; or there will be no need to leave a message, I just hang up.
Let us pray. Lord, we are grateful that you are always there when we want to talk. But I wonder if we are always here when you want to talk. This communication with you goes both ways, but we tend to want it to be just our way; our words; our style; our time. Help us to be open to all of your words and ways, so that we can be your obedient servants. Amen.
My sister-in-law came out to visit a few years ago. Sheryl and I were scheduled to sing that Sunday, and we asked if she would sing with us. We went over to the church and practiced this song a few times; trying to get a good balance between the three voices. She couldn’t understand why we were working so hard at it, because the fellow in sound booth was supposed to take care of that. Even though we were in a brand new sanctuary, we didn’t have a sound booth.
The church, to which she belonged, had a sound booth that looked like an airport control tower. They could turn up or down, any microphone or any speaker and even the lights in any part of the room. They could produce background audio at the touch of a button or show video on a drop down screen any time during the service. The quality of their technology was a great selling point to those who might be shopping for churches; depending on what you are looking for, of course.
If you want to take the idea of spiritual technology a little farther, (though this is a misuse of the word spiritual) churches have made significant gains on their finances by putting in credit-card readers. Parishioners can now swipe their cards and se¬lect an appropriate amount. The bank that in¬stalled the machine gets a 2 percent fee —rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. 1
Researcher, George Hunter reports that the mega-churches are thoroughly modern businesses; which are not only technologically sophisticated, but which employ marketing strategies to gain new members. Willow Creek, for instance had a profile of ‘Unchurched Harry,” a male, twenty-five to fifty years of age, college educated, and white collar or at least of the “blue-collar foreman type.
This is the most profitable segment of society to attract, so anything which would alienate “Unchurched Harry” or be a barrier to his attending church was eliminated from the service. I did say it was a business, didn’t I. The purpose of their worship was to attract him with his kind of music, his inter¬ests, his lifestyle and his politics or lack thereof. Judged by their ability to grow, numerically and financially, they have been the most successful churches.
Their faithfulness to the gospel is another story. In catering to the preferences, lifestyles, and felt needs of suburban, affluent consumers, their religion is little more than a pale reflection of the con¬sumer’s wants. If consumers want bigger churches, high-tech sound systems, praise bands, drama teams and lots and lots of carpet, then that is what the church must provide. If “Unchurched Harry” wants a religion that feels good, then that is what the church must offer.
The problem is that it is no longer God who sets the standards, but we who tell God what we want. We create a religion that plays to our vices, soothes our guilty consciences, and elevates self centeredness to a new level. We get resurrection without a crucifixion. [Christianity is little more than asking God to bless us as we are.] It is not about service, but about selfishness; and evangelism is not speaking good news to the poor anymore. It is just marketing. 2
The story of the tower of Babel, from the book of Genesis, tells of the people who were in the process of building the biggest and best church in the world. They all fit the profile; they were all one kind of people; they spoke the same language; they all liked the same things. And God just shook his head and said, “They’ve got it all wrong. I’ve got to put a stop to that.” So God intervened and made them all different, and because they had no practice, experience or ability to get along with people who were different, they scattered and the first megachurch failed.
Pentecost is the reverse0 of the tower of Babel. God’s spirit causes our sons and daughters to speak the mind of God. It helps our young people see the vision of the world the way God intends it to be, and our old people to dream dreams of God’s kingdom. It is a story of how people from every nation in the world, though they speak different languages, are of different races and different sexes and different ages, are all united. When that happens, we celebrate the birthday of the true church; the church as God intended it to be.
It is a church made up of people who all have different gifts, but who share the same Spirit. It is a collection of people who have gotten beyond the self centeredness of our individualistic society; beyond the requirement that people fit our expectations. The Spirit, says the apostle Paul, makes us one. Baptism removes all distinctions, and makes us all children of God. We can dress it up to appeal to the latest fads or trends; we can amplify it through the latest technology, but the technology won’t matter unless the way of Jesus is lived by the people whose love comes from the heart. Only people can sense one another’s need and respond to it. Only you can do what needs doing or not. We return to the telephone for our concluding story.
A woman telephoned a friend to ask how she was.
“Terrible,” came the reply. “My head’s splitting and my back and legs are killing me. The house is a mess, and the kids are simply driving me crazy.”
Very sympathetically the caller said, “Listen, go and lie down, I’ll come over right away and cook lunch for you, clean up the house, and take care of the children while you get some rest. By the way, how is Sam?’
“Sam?” the complaining housewife asked. “My husband isn’t named Sam.”
“My heavens,” exclaimed the first woman. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
There was a long pause and then the woman had received the call said, “Does this mean that you’re not coming over?”
1. “Oh, VISA!” Newsweek, December 21, 1998, 8.
2. Bryan P. Stone, ‘Reclaiming the “E” Word,’ Focus, Boston University School of Theology, Winter/Spring, 1999, pp. 13-14.