The church newsletter arrived this week. I scanned through it. Seems egos are still headlining. I remember when I was working for the church, I wrote lots and lots of articles. Long ones, shorts ones. I wanted the church to know about the things that were going on. I don't know if it just came naturally, or if that's the kind of person I am, but I seldom mentioned myself and my efforts in the articles. However, it was still a potpourri of what I wanted the congregation to know. What I wanted them to know.
I would say a strong majority of the articles this month were me, me, me, look at me. I'm doing this, I did that. We did this, we did that. Amazingly enough, the pastor's little third of a page article was pretty much devoid of the me statements. There was congratulations for a great Vacation Bible School, a mention of summer ending soon and the changes to be made to the "11:00 service"--oh wait. There it is. Subtle as it may be. There's the me in this. He's wanted a contemporary service from day one, only this is about a "blended" service. Perhaps a compromise? It's hard to find decent musicians that will commit to every Sunday for free, isn't it? At any rate, sounds like he's finally gotten his way. What has it taken? Seven years? Now that's a patient man.
Blended service. What a recipe for disaster. Talk about riding the fence. Blended service is just a way to get that contemporary feel without having to pay a band. Don't even get me started on "praise" bands. Uggh. I hate blended services. No wait, I hate "praise" bands even more. These bands are usually full of soloists and prima donnas that never really quite made it any where but church. I'm smiling here because my name could easily be on that list, but I don't play in church for free and I don't have an enormous personal agenda.
These blended services always end up coming off like amateur hour. I can guarantee it will come off like a high school talent show except there won't be any high schoolers because our church doesn't support it's tiny little youth program. It will be a disaster. When a church tries to follow the world instead of the other way around, it's wrong, wrong, wrong.
So my thought here that the newsletter was predominantly about egos holds truer than I had planned. I'd actually planned on pointing out that the pastor had actually managed to not talk about himself. But, in a convolluted way, he still did.
Take a look at your newsletter. See how much of it is actually news and how much of it is egos spouting off all the wonderful things "I" and "we" did and are going to do. Look at how relevent it is. I dispassionately read mine this week and for the first time realized that it has got to be one of the biggest wastes of time and money the church has. You guys want to save some money? Cut the budget? Cut out the newsletter. I guarantee you that anyone that actually reads it already knows the information because the only people that read it are the ones that submitted the articles.
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