Thursday, August 06, 2015
Cars and Church
David T. Koyzis writes on how the car, enabling people to travel distances to church, has changed everything:
If people in the church simply worked on being more attractive instead of WHAT would attract more people I think things would change very rapidly.
attraction cars church
The most important consequence of this trend is that the gathered church—as distinct from the church as corpus Christi, which is all-encompassing—has been reduced to a mere voluntary association of like-minded individuals who can join and quit, or come and go at their discretion. The church, like any other commodity in the marketplace, exists only to serve the needs of its individual members. In this respect John Locke’s definition, scarcely deemed orthodox in seventeenth-century England, seems uncontroversial today: “A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls” (emphases mine). Note the contrast to the scriptural definition of Church as the covenant community of those called by God into a living relationship with him.I am not sure all the blame belongs to the automobile, but it is certainly a heavy contributor to a phenomena rightly noted. Koyis posits one solution:
We cannot, of course, return to a pre-automotive past. That option is closed to us. However, what if every new church building were to forgo the ubiquitous parking lot in the interest of restoring a normative ecclesiology? Might it force the churches to reach out to their own neighborhoods? Might it compel people to re-embrace the parish model, attending the church to which they can most easily walk? Or have the corroding powers of consumerism eliminated this as a viable possibility once and for all? Giving up our motorized vehicles will not happen any time soon, short of our oil wells finally running dry. In the meantime, we should do what we can to advance and support an ecclesiology less obviously dependent on the consumer model and more dependent on the grace of God in Christ.Couldn't hurt, but I think the problem runs deeper. I don't think cars would make that much of a difference if we were doing other things better. Th same thing pretty much holds true for all the externalities that we rely on these days to build church, music, child services, etc.
If people in the church simply worked on being more attractive instead of WHAT would attract more people I think things would change very rapidly.
attraction cars church
