Brilliant! Love calling a spade a spade.

Wow - that was well done. It captured all the key points in 3 minutes.

On another note - how sad. Packaged and served just like fast food. That's what religion is today. And that's how people like it:

Is 30
They say to the seers,
"See no more visions!"
and to the prophets,
"Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
prophesy illusions.

Leave this way,
get off this path,
and stop confronting us
with the Holy One of Israel!"

you know, while funny, it represents a model of gathering that has existed for almost 30 years now...in one form or another...a model that for whatever it's faults has been used to draw people into a life with God.

I laughed my butt off and, at the same time, recognized that for a particular cultural setting this form/liturgy was leveraged pretty effectively.

would i want to go to a church like that?
no.

But if the only other option was my grandma's church...well...

and I remember that the model in the video was born out of a time when that was the case.

Nathan - that is a great point, I think as we critique the present models we forget what set of circumstances brought this model into being.

ultimately we spend a lot more time critiquing instead of trying to do something positive. Though I did laugh pretty hard at this video.

That hits a little too close to home. Ouch. But the point is a good one.

Every, I mean EVERY, form of church is enculturated. And at first we think it's a wonderfully refreshing alternative to the previous enculturated form that was feeling stale and rigid and artificial.

But with time, guess what, the new form begins to feel stale and rigid and artificial.

That's what leads the church to continual revitalization.

As it was watching this, a word appeared in the heavens:

Contemporelevantainment.

It set me on a quest. To find the contemporelevantainment that makes me thirst no more.

Excellent comments keeping the criticism in perspective. Yes, it's a liturgy among those who would be horrified to think they have one - rather like everyone wearing blue jeans everywhere in my era to show they were unconventional. But this also can be done well. If it is no less "packaged" than traditional or liturgical worship, neither is it more packaged. It can be shallow, but assuming that it must be shallow because it is not our preferred personal style is a weak argument.

Noel Paul Stookey - "Peace In The Valley"

So if you meet a man in a pastel suit
With an alligator Bible to match his boots
You might not like his style too much
But if he could reach a soul you could never touch
You gotta say...

Peace in the Valley
Peace on the mountain too
Before you tell a man he's got a splinter in his eye
You better pull the log out of
Pull the log out of
Pull the log out of you.

I love that it was North Point who made it –and that makes me appreciate it all the more.

The video didn’t bother me too much – as I think you could probably make a video of a house church meeting and end up coming up with repetitive routines. The silent pause of wondering who says the prayer before the meal or ends the prayer time. The time to start after a meal signals and shift to the study. Awkward singing time with 10 people time. Parodies of common personality types in a house church (the dominant talker, the long prayer-person etc.) and make a video of that.

Or a video of a liturgical church – and the routines of the pastor putting on a robe of a style from 500 years ago every Sunday, the routines and predictablity of what happens during a church gathering of that type. The organist taking his or her position to play at the strategic time. Or any type of church meeting really you could do this with.

What I find more important personally, is exploring what else does a church do in addition to Sundays? What is spiritually being formed as a result of the whole church, not just Sunday. I know at North Point they focus a ton of energy and time into smaller group meetings that happen – and heard from a staff person how Andy Stanley got up in from of 1,000 small group leaders to strongly emphasize that they are really the “pastors” who are involved in peoples lives etc. So I know their bigger Sunday meetings are simply one part of the whole life of the church. It is always easy to critique churches who use programming, but what a joy it is to know in some of these churches hundreds of people are coming to know Jesus and growing as a disciple of His.

Anyway, some thoughts as I have watched and enjoyed that video about 10 times this past week!

A good reminder that we should be mindful of the dangers of falling into mind numbing programming. Also good to see the reminder that being "contemporary" or "relevant" (whatever those mean) doesn't mean there isn't an attachment to standardized, cookie-cutter liturgy (its just with guitars and drums.)

We need a constant infusion of the Holy Spirit in our lives and corporate worship services. We need room to discern the movement of the Spirit amongst us, and not program Him out of our lives. Too much of modern worship programming removes the Holy Spirit and inputs emotionalism. There is a mighty difference.

A good video.

It's good to laugh at ourselves (as if I have a worship service that looks anything like this). But the real point, I think, is that everyone - no matter how "free" - has a liturgy.

This is like looking in a mirror. Oh, how I needed this.

I learned something: It's hard to simultaneously worship and watch yourself worship, isn't it?

When you are self-conscious, it's really hard to enter into worship without it feeling artificial, whether we "over-perform" (expressing more emotion than we feel) or "under-perform" (standing there stoic while we want to be somewhere else).

What a hard-hitting video. However, my take is not on how liturgical the modern warehouse church is becoming, but how focused on technology as an end in itself.

Here is my selfish plea. I have ADD. Please can we stop with the lighting effects where the colors change every five seconds. It's why I stopped going to concerts. Do I have to stop going to church too?

is church an event, a location, an organization, or the body of christ?

i think our answer lies in our realities revealed by our own vocabulary, not in our pre-packaged theology.

I loved the video... I showed it to my team and we laughed ourselves silly. Laughing at ourselves... and what we could become... always teaches us a lot. It refines our sense of how we could be seen if we begin to do things from routine instead of from creativity... Or out of "hipness" instead of a desire to bring our experience with God to the world.

As individuals, we have no culture but our own... no experience outside of our personal experience. Sometimes when we deconstruct our practices and culture, we can see where it's become a "phoned in" act instead of authentic worship or teaching.

Remember, though, that even formulaic preaching CAN carry God's truth. Even worship "done by rote" from warm and willing hearts is better than none if it's the best we can do today.

This video challenged me to be creative... inside (and outside) the cultural norms of our time. I'm laughing hard... and working harder to keep both our "contemporvent" methods and God's eternal message fresh, alive and deep.

I recently heard Hugh Halter say "The quickest way to wean people off of consumerism is to remove what they consume."

Well done...makes the point, but provides no solution for those who are already taking aim at today's church.

Love it!

Reminds me of the saying, "Take God very seriously; never take ourselves seriously."

So if this is not "trendy" or "cool" now, what does the new liturgy look like?

I laughed a lot as I watched this, and cried a little inside. Jesus met people where they were at. We are called to do the same. If this is a method or liturgy that brings people to christ, use it. If it no longer does, then don't. (This sounds like the definition of relevance to me.) Traditional worship is very relevant to many people, both young and old. I feel close to God there. I also feel close to God in the garden, at bible camp, and in
"contemporelevant" worship. None is perfect but the operative question must be is it done well, and does it serve to praise God and bring people to God? Then it must be good. Whatever you call it.

So what exactly is the problem with the contemporelevant liturgy apart from the fact that it's an easy target for those of us who need to feel smart?

Is it too predictable? (although the Apostle's Creed, Lord's Prayer and the doxology don't exactly keep us guessing)

Is it too outdated? (although the myriad of churches stuck in the 80's, 70's and 50's are technically even further "behind")

Is it too commonplace? (although you could argue that churches with steeples and hymnbooks are just as common as those with spotlights on tatooed pastors)

Is it too different from what suits my tastes? (although my "ideal" church probably wouldn't suit nearly as many people's tastes)

Is it too market-driven and consumeristic? (although it's critics sound an awful lot like unsatisfied customers who would like a greater selection of specialized products to choose from)

Is it just too many people gathered together in one place? (Although heaven will be an even bigger crowd)

liturgy...the best part about the 'older' style is quite simply this: more scripture is read in an Anglican 'sunday morning' then is heard in 3 months of this 'new' 30 year old form. I do not think we are speaking but the same type of liturgy!

after further reflection, i think that this video demonstrates that we have the worship service down to an art, but after all our manipulation we still cannot make a single person move closer to christ if they don't want to.

What's wrong with packaging and liturgy if there is good content inside?

Chris, Bingo!

For its first millenium the NT Church offered a Liturgy and Eucharist that was unchanged in its basic shape and meaning from its origins in the OT understandings of liturgy and worship held by the first Jewish Christians as fulfilled in Christ. One of the key components in the development of its public worship and music forms was its studious avoidance of manipulation. Its various forms of chant were specifically designed to let the texts speak for themselves and not allow the singer's or reader's emotional emphases or that of the hearers to predominate over that meaning. The Orthodox Church continues that tradition to this day and yet the gospel, richly explained and proclaimed through the ancient prayers, hymnody and Liturgy of the Orthodox Church, is still as relevant as it has always been; it also retains a fullness that more modern forms of liturgy lack or have even repudiated. Modern Christians are the poorer for it.

Tania, in college one of the things I learned in my Communication class is that body language (not verbal content) is 90 percent (or more) of what is truly being communicated in a conversation. If you think about that for a while, it becomes intuitively obvious. I don't know if this is a helpful analogy for you in understanding the relationship of the style and shape of our religious liturgy (and even the nature of the spaces and facilities we construct for the purpose of "worship") and what these communicate of what we believe about God, what He is like, and how He can/should be approached, and what it means to be in communion with Him. It is hugely important and a big blind spot for many modern liturgists/worship leaders.

http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/05/defending_organ_1.html

Funny video. I agree with Dan. The emphasis is about making disciples in the broad context of church. A worship service has its place, but if that is all you do it will fall short.

Would like to be placed on your e-mail list to receive your research/sermons/updates/special guests' comments/latest happenings in the world of religion...many thanks...TRG

I really enjoyed the video--and appreciated that it was put together by people who work with this style of worship--shows a healthy sense of humor and ability to view the traps we all can fall in to.

I see the video is no longer posted. I'd love to use it for a worship class we teach at our university. Is there a way I can get a copy of the video?