Last night I went to the Hollywood Improv theatre for a toy drive with LA County fire department and enjoyed some amazing comedy.Kevin Nealon, Nick Swardson, Anjelah Johnson, Tom Dreesen, and Daryl Wright all performed and were all very funny. The whole atmosphere of the evening was welcoming and spirited. Everyone attending seemed to be cheerful and friendly (maybe 100 people total). Perhaps it was because it was Christmas. Perhaps it was because something happens when we engage in the act of giving without any potential of receiving something back. No matter what the reasons for the spirit of the evening it was an awesome night and I was grateful to be there.
While I was there I met an older man who teaches at UCLA and he was telling me about the local church he attend in LA. He lamented that it was once the kind of place you could really get to know people. After a Sunday gathering he and his friends would go out for lunch and just talk about whatever and enjoy one another. Now, he says that the production of it (award-winning choir, book-selling pastor, big new facilities) has made it a mega-gathering of lots of people and now he mostly shows up on Sunday and then leaves without that same level of connection he once had to his fellow worshipers.
Most of the critique that I hear about my own church Kairos is that we are great at providing community for one another, in other words, we really are doing the small bits of life with one another on a daily basis. But when it comes to our worship singing (just the part done on a Sunday morning) and worship teaching (just the part done on Sunday morning) we can’t compare to the churches who’ve mastered those elements of their gathered church. At Kairos we seek to be excellent in all we do because we are serving God who’s worthy of that kind of respect. I just wonder why the first and greatest judgment for churches out there is often pointed at the singing and teaching that happens once weekly? How do we move away from this very surface judgment of our churches?
Dustin F. James 