within and cannot relax

Out of town this weekend visiting friends. Sunday morning, went to their newly-chosen home church. It's been quite a while since I've visited another service (outside of occasional visits to one of my faves, natch). A man went up on stage wearing jeans and a casual shirt to give announcements. He then stayed up on stage and began teaching. When I asked my friend who that was, he responded by telling me that was the senior pastor. Casual it is, I thought to myself. Less than an hour later, service was finished and we were done.

[Less than an hour? At my old church in NJ, an hour was the minimum length of the sermon, not the length of the service. But that's altogether another rant. I'm also not going to discuss a senior pastor wearing jeans on stage.]

There are two viewpoints on how extremely laid-back this service was. On the one hand, from their perspective, they want people to be comfortable at church. For too long, Sunday morning church meant starchy clothes and neckties and formalities -- a life altogether different from the rest of the week. Making a church service feel more casual allows unbelievers and newcomers to feel welcome. People can come as they are. Casual churches also allow people to feel like faith is not some disconnected, separate experience. Faith is as casual as the rest of their lives, allowing faith to dwell throughout the rest of the week and not just compartmentalized to a Sunday morning.

But this is also the con. Casual faith that dwells with the rest of their casual week means that believers can treat their faith as casually as they do the rest of the things in their lives: they can take it or leave it. They don't need to take it seriously. Why, faith is no different than ordering pizza for dinner. If you don't feel like it, don't do it. That relationship with Christ? No different than your relationship with your coworkers at work; you're casual acquaintances, nothing too serious. The problem with faith is not that it's taken too seriously; when you're discussing a relationship with the Creator of the universe, frankly, you can't take faith seriously enough.

There's always a fine line between meeting the needs of the people, and catering to them in a way that diminishes what you are seeking to provide the people. Methinks the casual approach is more the latter than the former. But I'm willing to be thought wrong on this. I'm actually not wrong, but you can think what you want.