Popkultur

Total Circus Feeling

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Ich habe gelernt, „Abrechnungen“ mit ehemaligen Gemeinden vorsichtig zu lesen. Manchmal wird ziemlich dramatisiert. Nicht alles, was als erlebter „Machmissbrauch“ deklariert wird, war Machmissbrauch. Hin und wieder fehlt der Blick für die eigenen Anteile in den Eskalationsphasen. Das ist alles nachvollziehbar. Wenn die Dinge kochen (beispielsweise in einer Ehekrise), sind wir Menschen eben selten sachorientiert.

Trotzdem können Erlebnisberichte gelegentlich helfen und aufklären. Heute möchte ich auf so einen hilfreichen Bericht hinweisen. Verfasst wurde er von Elisabeth aus Oslo (Norwegen). Sie beschreibt in einer dreiteiligen Artikelserie ihre Erfahrungen mit einer Hipster-Gemeinde, die eines Tages von Hillsong übernommen wurde. Ihre Beobachtungen sind wirklich aufschlussreich und konfrontieren uns mit den Schattenseiten der gekünstelten Popkultur, die immer machtvoller in viele Gemeinden einzieht.

I began to read and dig into the word of God in a new way. I really liked the structure and order I saw in the church in the pages of the Bible.  It seemed simple and more like a bigger scale of what family and home life should be. Church is like your extended spiritual family.

Contrasted with that, what I found in the mega type churches is that they are not conducive to older people. They talk about being a church for everyone. But I find older generations being a part of the church a total myth. They are non-existent. I remember seeing some older people come to the leadership conference and I felt they must have come because they were very loyal grandparents of some of the kids in leadership… I mean why ever else would they listen to a volume cranked up 100 times over their hearing aids!!??  I realized it was not a church my own grandfather would have felt comfortable in. The pumped up music and disco lights would have been very overwhelming for him.

Even I got exhausted with the loud concert setting music every single week! It becomes such a performance. There was no point to sing along because I couldn’t hear myself sing, much less the person beside me! Even the Christmas service was pumped up, without a single slow classic song that we associate with Christmas. I asked the band why they had cut even the one classic they had done last year and I was told because there was not time in the program. And I thought, well there would be time if they would cut all the endless advertizing for upcoming events and the tithing pep talk!!!

…

Because when you look at the church on a micro level:

1.) Nobody noticed if I came to church or not, not even to the events for my own ministry team! And to be honest, I didn’t either notice if others came or not. One didn’t get to know people well enough to ask why they hadn’t come or was everything okay in their life or simply last week!!! Norwegians are reserved to begin with so it takes forever to get to know them anyway and in a mega church they really can hide away!

2.) All the joking about Holy things seriously made me feel unwell. It depressed and stressed me.

3.) We were all organs in a great machine called “the church” But over time I began to feel that my effort on the cafe team didn’t mean that much to anyone. People had to pay for the cakes and that bothered me how things cost. Like even the Christmas dinner people had to pay for. I did not get a church family feeling at all. When it all had to be so fancy and impressive. . .it all cost. Over time the disillusionment grew.

4.) To feel a part of the church one was meant to go to the cell group they assigned to you so you could “connect” with people. For me it just felt rather artificial and those five women or so at the cell group are not really people one met at church on Sunday anyway. It just was not filling the gap of making church feel like home. . .my spiritual family.

The lighting was often so dim I could hardly read my Bible. Most people brought their phones so that they could read the text glowing in the dark.

Hier geht es weiter (am Ende des Artikels finden sich die Links auf die weiterführenden Artikel): churchwatchcentral.com.

The Grammys

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Ed Stetzer hat für CT die Verleihung der „Grammy Awards“ kommentiert. In der Tat lohnt es sich ein Blick auf die Veranstaltung, um den kulturellen Wandel, der unter anderem durch die Popkultur „erzwungen“ wird, besser zu verstehen.

Stetzer schreibt:

As Natalie Grant (a twice Grammy-nominated performer at the show) tweeted, „We left the Grammys early. I’ve many thoughts, most of which are probably better left inside my head.“ I understand and appreciate her and her comment. Yet, we will not always have the same option. Furthermore, it’s a frightening place to be if people of faith cannot live and speak about what their faith teaches and values. We can complain about how everything has changed, but people have been doing that for a long time. The fact is the Grammys don’t mirror the values of America. They are an ostentatious display that reflects (and impacts) the culture in a distorted way—yet perhaps increasingly in a way that people of faith do not.

Hier der Artikel: www.christianitytoday.com. Nachfolgend ausserdem der Mittschnitt des Auftritts von Katy Perry, dem es m.E. an Eindeutigkeit nicht fehlt. Im Text heißt es:

Also willst du mit Magie spielen?
Junge, du solltest wissen auf was du dich einlässt.
Baby kannst du es wagen, das zu tun.
Denn ich komme wie ein dunkles Pferd.
Bist du bereit für, bereit für
einen perfekten Sturm, perfekten Sturm?
Denn sobald du mir gehörst, mir gehörst
Gibt es keinen Weg zurück!

VD: WCS

»Pop« im Gottesdienst

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D.H. Williams, Professor für die Theologie der Kirchenväter an der Baylor University (USA), hat einen ausgezeichneten Artikel über die wachsende Konsumkultur in den evangelikalen Gemeinden bei CT veröffentlicht:

Our consumerist culture has co-opted many churches, creating a mall-like environment marked by splashiness and simplistic messages. When the church becomes essentially a purveyor of religious goods and services, it reinforces the believer’s own consumerist habits, allowing him to pick and choose according to taste or functionality. Inhaling from the cultural atmosphere a mania for unlimited choice, churches breathe out as many different programs as possible, looking to accommodate as many different believers as possible. Perhaps unintentionally, this approach treats personal liberty and the inalienable »right« to choose as the highest goods of life.

Ironically, the weight placed on personal experience and freedom from conventional beliefs is reminiscent of early-20th-century Protestant liberalism. Updating their theology for modern fashions, the heirs of Schleiermacher and Hegel emphasized the primacy of the individual’s experience of God, setting aside complicating issues of doctrine as divisive, latently authoritarian, or just plain irrelevant. Despite many important differences between this sort of liberalism and the contemporary evangelical megachurch, there are striking similarities in their approaches to individual experience, popular culture, and socially uncomfortable doctrines.

But the big question remains: In what direction are such churches taking their members? What kind of Christianity will emerge from an overemphasis on appealing to anyone who might attend a church service for any reason? When the apostle Paul became »all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some« (1 Cor. 9:22), he did not reinvent or re-orient the faith of which he said, »I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received« (1 Cor. 15:3, ESV). The kind of transformation Paul experienced and tried to ignite in the early church was grounded in a tradition that made Christian faith, hope, and love starting points for the believer’s growth. If our post-denominational (or post-Protestant) era continues to elevate personal freedom of choice, the stability of the church’s historical wisdom will be desperately needed.

At the very least, the mere entertainment techniques will never substitute the hard work of teaching believers to acquire the divine life of the Father by the Son through the Holy Spirit. This kind of life may well entail sacrificing certain pleasures of one’s former life or rejecting certain elements of Western culture. And the church that would foster it must have goals that eclipse inclusiveness.

Hier: www.christianitytoday.com.

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