Thoughts from a Faith-Based Summit

I had the opportunity to attend Variety's Family Entertainment and Faith-Based Summit. A few thoughts:

There was a heated discussion about appropriate children's entertainment. View #1: kids need pure escapism – singing, dancing, carefree gumdrops and rainbows. View #2: it is imperative to show children that good triumphs over evil.

Escapism is nice. After a day of stress and struggles, we all need a little bit of that sort of entertainment. And singing and dancing can be good for the soul, especially for the young 'uns.

Still, a quote attributed to the GK Chesterton resonated like church bells signaling noontime. "Fairy tales don't tell children dragons exist. Children know dragons exist. Fairy tales children dragons can be beaten."

Next came the horrific truth that there are young children whose dragons crawl into their beds at night.

They need to see good guys win, and evil vanquished. They need something to hope for. They need to know the devil's already defeated.

 ***

A man asked whether mega churches are having an adverse affect on faith-based media, with parishioners choosing the church for entertainment instead of a movie theatre.

A panelist rightly noted that mega churches help Christian-based media by steering congregants to movie openings, etc. After all, one can go to the movies Saturday night and still make it on time for church Sunday morning. That's what 11am service is for, right?

More bothersome is the idea of mega church as entertainment. No doubt it is for many, but it shouldn't be. I hope most do not intend to be.

Unfortunately, I've seen smaller churches under the delusion that becoming a mega church will "take them to the next level in Christ." They try to buy the trappings, using suspect membership counts get a bigger loan to buy more expensive marble for the new foyer.

And then there are some who use Christ as a pretense. He's a 4pt font footnote compared to the hillside they've emblazoned with their name.

Is this you? Is this your church? Your pastor? You know God doesn't look at outer appearances, right? Seriously, stop quoting I Samuel 16:7 and start living it. You're hurting the people.

***

This same man also felt most people his age (30s-40s) see themselves as spiritual, not necessarily Christian. He basically said we prefer to be called spiritual.

Of course, there are some who think of themselves as spiritual, but not Christian. Spiritual in both a general and an (often somewhat vague) specific sense.

Others believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Savior; that when he died, he reconciled us to God, and when he came back to life, he granted us the opportunity to live forever. Spiritual in a general sense, but Christian in a specific sense.

Still others are Buddhists, or practice Kabbalah, or are Tao. They are generally spiritual but specifically Buddhist or Kabbalah or Tao.

In other words, he didn't speak for me.