Wednesday 22 August 2012

Making church boring is emotional manipulation

Chris Green has been giving the Annual Moore College lectures this year. In his talk today on preaching he pointed out that there are two ways of being emotionally manipulative.

The first is to whip people up into a frenzy, which is not motivated by the gospel but by the sheer emotional experience of the event.

But another group of people are guilty of manipulation in a different way. Chris recalls church experiences where a hugely powerful song has concluded and the service leader has failed to even note the emotional response which it has produced, saying "well done...and now the notices". This is deliberately quenching the emotional impact of the gospel, trying to make sure people don't respond as they would otherwise. It is manipulation.

I haven't thought about it this way before, but I think he's right.

I would go so far as to say that to deliberately try to pour cold water on people's whole-person-ed response to the power of God's word is manipulative.

Some examples of this kind of manipulation are
1. Choosing songs which are so bad that they take our attention away (if it were possible) from God's grace to us in Jesus Christ.

2. Planning services with no space for our response, so that no sooner have we surveyed the wondrous cross than some joker gets up and turns our attention to the location for the church picnic.

3. Being so casual that we are tempted to irreverence.

4. Being so focused on mutual edification that we conduct our entire service as if God were absent, and nobody thinks to actually do business with God.

5. Creating rules, or a culture, where common ways of responding to the emotional power of the gospel is discouraged (such as 'no raising hands in church').

Any others you can think of?

17 comments:

  1. Amen. Obviously church cannot be entirely driven by emotion, and there are dangers when emotion and passion are your primary goals. But one only has to look in the Psalms to see that there is some serious emotional engagement with God going on in musical worship. Restricting our response to an intellectual level is just as dangerous as basing faith upon a feeling.

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  2. I've noticed the "and now some announcements" thing often, but I don't think it's a conscious effort to make church boring, maybe they just need to think more about structuring the way they lead and the flow of the service.

    The problem that I find about emotional power is that it's quite different from person to person and rather fleeting.

    Oft it is also just plain old sinful nature getting in the way; I understand in my mind the power of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and how awesome the forgiveness is, but it just doesn't have the deep emotional impact all the time that it should.

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    1. Yes, hopefully not deliberate and planned, but I do think there is a discomfort with heavy emotions which makes us feel like we need to disrupt the mood. Same reason people crack jokes during wedding ceremonies - we just can't stand the fact that something beautiful and significant is consuming our attention, so we need to make a crack about the groomsmen to bring us back into the mundane and trivial.

      Yes, emotional power is personal but it isn't random. I just spoke to a marketing executive who is payed big bucks to predict how people will respond emotionally to an ad.

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  3. Could you elaborate a little on your first point? Maybe give an example of the type of songs you mean. I'm not sure what you mean. I have two possible thoughts on what you mean and they give me very different responses.

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    1. Yes thanks Stephen, 'bad' is a little bit ambiguous. I mean songs with 'true' content but that musically and poetically are so bad that the average punter cringes, or is left yawning.

      I'm not going to name names (I'm sure I've written some of them!) but I think we could all think of songs that even their writer would struggle to love.

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  4. Regarding point 2. What do you mean by allowing time for a response? How would this look like in practice? Eg, you finish singing, then you .....? .. before you proceed onto notices etc..

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    1. I mean both appropriate time between things (some service leaders think they need to have the congregation seated and examining their diaries before the last note has rung out) and flow of the service.

      The best GOOD examples would be to look at the Book of Common Prayer or An Australian Prayer Book's flow through the Communion service - the commandments give space for reflection together, prayers, hymns, readings etc all come in an appropriate order and with much thought.

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    2. Thanks for that Andy, very helpful :)

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  5. I haven't thought of it that way either. Thanks for sharing.
    In terms of 'boring' services, it's so subjective.
    Now, I doubt anyone intentionally plans to be boring, but failing to spend sufficient time preparing or praying cannot be good.
    Let's pursue an excellence that brings honour and glory to God. He deserves our best, which will look different everywhere you go

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    1. Hey Bren - I think you'd be surprised. Some people do seek deliberately to keep the emotional vibe of a service on the same trivial level. They're not aiming for 'boring', but they are afraid of feelings.

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  6. Thanks for the post, Andy. I've certainly noticed 2 & 3 in some churches I've been at. Our casual culture has much to answer for when it comes to dealing with God.

    I'd add another point (maybe controversially!): sometimes the song choice is good—great words and great tune—but the playing of it is just awkward. You end up feeling robbed of what could have been! Of course, we need to be generous to our musicians and music directors, and what will be awkward at one place won't be at another, but sometimes I feel like a bit more practice or thought about the song could have changed it from a disappointment to a great encouragement. (This is coming from me as a musician and previous music director who doesn't always follow his own advice!)

    My last thought is that I'd nuance the language on 4) a bit. I think if you're so focussed on "edification" that you ignore God, you've completely missed what edification is in the first place.

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    1. Thanks Sam - I think I'd be careful with the controversial point. My original examples are all cases where I think the manipulation is negligent or even half deliberate. I think having poor skill is just a reality of different abilities in the church, but to refuse to improve might bring that poor skill into the realm of the negligent.

      On 4) - absolutely!

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    2. Good point; that did sound a bit harsh! I was thinking more about when the musos had the ability but couldn't be bothered. I guess that's why I thought of it more in the realm of negligence …

      Totally agree that not having great skills is a different ball game altogether. Wasn't trying to put a downer on anyone trying to make a good go of church music!

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  7. I would add to example number 1: song leaders who lead so badly that they take our attention away from the words we're singing. Watching a song leader walk around a stage sporadically throwing his/her arms up in the air, throwing his/her head back on long notes and deviating from the otherwise obvious melody line etc...

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    1. Preach it brother. I think that's an attempt to stir up emotion falsely which is the opposite side of the problem.

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    2. While I agree we also have to remember the other end of the spectrum - The song leader standing completely still in one stop, not engaging with the congregation, singing without any emotion whatsoever and as such simply dragging along a very tired melody line.

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