The Sunday “God Show” at Your Friendly Podium Church

July 19, 2009 By in Church, Community, Ministry, New Wine, Repentance, Tears 4 Comments

When did “church” become a podium-focused “God Show” watched by passive spectators for an hour or so each Sunday morning?

Where do we even find that in Scripture?

I believe that the days of the “podium church” and the Sunday “God show”are passing — where we gaze each Sunday past the back of the head in front of us to passively watch carefully scripted ministry delivered from a front podium through a tightly controlled microphone.

Instead, God is bringing forth authentic engagement and fellowship among believers, where we are the church — as opposed to merely going to church. This new move is rooted in real repentance (which, in the original language of the Greek New Testament, means to change the way we act by changing the way we think) and a restoration of ministry one to another as per Acts 2:42 and 1 Cor. 14:26.

My heart breaks and sometimes I weep as I hear God call us to repentance over what my generation has allowed the “church” to become, but my spirit soars as God is restoring authentic fellowship among an emerging new spiritual generation.

~ Jim Wright

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4 responses

  3. Oh, if only! I’ve been working at transforming the Church for over 20 years. In a nutshell, you can’ pour new wine in old wine skins. The Reformation of the 1500’s didn’t reform the Roman Catholic Church, it began Protestantism. Now Protestantism needs reformation, but it won’t any more the the Catholic Church would reform.

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  4. ‘I believe that the days of the “podium church” and the Sunday “God show”are passing’

    I’m curious what makes you think this outside of your own experience outside of such churches. I’m maybe being too cynical, but it almost seems like there is more of a consolidation of this mindset of entertainment church. Perhaps we are just hitting the peak of the upswing before the pendulum swings the other way.

    I only ask because the encouraging signs I see seem to come through individuals, and the occasional little cluster of like minded people.

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