"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.
This is downright hilarious. Seriously. The sad part is, it's also very true. Maybe that's what makes it hilarious? Possibly. Can you imagine the stress exerted on your mental and physical well-being if you were in position of being "Activity Organizer" or "Service Coordinator" at an Evangelical Church of this sort? Jeez-Louise. I can't help but feel a tinge of melancholy when I ponder in bewilderment the state of Evangelical/Protestant "worship" in our day. I think even old Uncle Marty might be surprised at how far his championing of no authority has come. How much further away from a Christ-centered liturgy (i.e. worship for those not familiar with the traditional term) can we humans possibly want to go? I'm not sure we could focus the spotlight more on us than this. Pope Benedict XVI said it well: "Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment."
Mark Shea, the Dark Lord Himself, also put it this way: Cradle Catholics and Emergents have an almost impenetrably different understanding of what "worship" means. For Emergents (following their Evangelical parents) worship is profoundly bound up with music (the most disincarnational of the arts, unless you happen to be the one playing it). Evangelicalism, being leery of the Incarnation whenever you encounter it today, tends to focus a lot on the verbal and auditory as distinct from the physical and tangible. So the Eucharist is "magic", but worship in which the believer moves himself into a "state of worship" is, well, worship."
I couldn't have said it better myself. I guess we should be thankful that the Catholic Church provided these "worship entrepenuers" with at least the backbone structure of the liturgical service with which to frame their own house of cards; God only knows what it would look and sound like if she hadn't, or for that matter, what it will look and sound like after another 500 years of Protestant Authority-phelia and un-biblical-bible-only-ology.
Pax Christi.
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