Cut the power ...

... and see if we can still worship.

I read this with interest. Sometimes I think we are spoiled. Too hot cannot, can you turn down the temperature and make the fan blow harder? Too cold cannot, can you switch off the air con (I think this is the most common form of distraction in a worship, more so than children.) Can you make the words larger / bolder / clearer? The chair is too hard for me. The music is too loud. I don't / only like the songs from this group.

I am reminded of what I read in Matt Redman's book. One day he decided not to sing songs in worship. What? No songs in worship? There must be a church bylaw against it. But the congregation worshipped that day.

I understand that the 300+ participants (295 registered with more walk-in participants) of Telling Your Heart to Beat Again moved to DUMC when there was a power failure. I also understand the power came back shorthly after they left.

If I have my way, I will engineered a totally unplugged worship service. No air-conditioned. No electronic music instruments. No projection. No mics. Ha. Can we still worship?

Enjoy the article.

The Thin Edge has a reflection on how much our church services rely on technology:

This past Sunday in Wales, a group of elders gathered at their church building to pray. The ancient stone chapel had been without heating since a group of construction workers shut off the gas supply to the building earlier in the week, then forgot to turn it back on for the weekend. It was judged to be too cold for the morning worship service—scheduled two hours later—so the local telephone lines began blazing with elders contacting members of the church leadership team, who contacted small group leaders, who contacted everyone within their house group. It was decided to meet at an older (and smaller, but warmer) chapel building nearby. I’m not sure if the elders got to pray or not.

Unfortunately, this change of venue caught a lot of people by surprise: especially the church’s musicians, sound engineers, computer operators and the preacher. His entire message was developed as a laptop-based, visually-oriented PowerPoint presentation. Upon arrival at the old building, it was abuzz with people frantically running wires and junction boxes and speakers and a massive sound board so that the keyboard, instruments, singers, and the preacher could be heard in a room that only measured eighteen hundred square feet.

Some of the greatest movements of God happened long before the discovery of electricity, much less the arrival of computer geniuses like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. While I certainly don’t advocate wearing camel’s hair and eating wild locusts and honey, I have to wonder how many worship gatherings this coming Sunday would fall flat if some natural disaster shut down the national grids of electric power in megawatt-hungry church buildings around the globe.

Personally, I kind of like it when things go wrong during worship services. It thrusts our fallibility to the forefront, which is always humbling.

Do you have any great “technological failures in church” stories you’d like to share? What do you think of our reliance on technology? And probably most importantly is this question from The Thin Edge: “Are we more sensitive to the loss of electricity than the presence of the Holy Spirit in our meetings?”

Other thoughts?