On Authenticity

I love my Church, in particular the service I go to which is  small, intimate and eclectic.  It's pastoral leader says he is seeking an 'authentic' worship service shorn of that which is artificial and technological in our society.  He seeks to have 90 minutes where 'everyone puts away their pods, pads and phones and relates to each other and God'.  I dig it.

But is it truly authentic?  Between the gourmet Gorgonzola cheese dip, high quality coffee, the extremely talented musical ensemble and the multiple graduate theologians ministering, the service feels more 'artisanal' than authentic, more 'free range' than first century.  

For the longest time I couldn't put my finger on what the service reminded me of, why I liked it so much.  Then it hit me:  Starbucks, Samuel Adams, Whole Foods, Trader Joes.  My service is the Church version of these brands.  What Starbucks coffee is to McDonalds , my service is to the more traditional ones.  More complex, subtle, sophisticated, trendy.

And expensive.  If someone is paying for my coffee or beer then:  "only the best" is my brand.  If I pay?  McDonalds and Free are my two two top choices.  You see 'organic', 'artisanal' and 'authentic' cost a lot of money to produce.  Paradoxically, it takes the immense productivity of a technological society to support boutique services that eschew technology.  I strongly suspect that the service is many times more expensive per congregant than the ones we hipsters (aging in my case) look down on.  I'm not even sure that it cash flows.

And that's the rub:  our rich, sophisticated Church is a major generator of excess resources to build the Kingdom around the world.  We seek to be Christ's hands in Kenya, India, Haiti, Honduras and many other places but I suspect all of those financial 'hands' come from the more pedestrian "Wal Mart" services that don't have the labor intensive, hand crafted feel but pack 6 times as many people into a service.

What would a truly 'authentic', 'organic' 100 person congregation look like?  That's easy to answer:  it's called a small church and they're all over the place:  they typically have one part time minister with a year or two of seminary, no gourmet foods or coffees, plonky music and no other paid staff.  Not particularly cool.

It appears to me that like Starbucks, organic foods, artisanal breads and boutique clothes, the boutique church is less an expression of authenticity than it is a form of conspicuous consumption - a style of the '10s just like the  Charleston, Flappers and Bathtub gin were of the 1920s.  Its expense is justified because to attract the 'hip' one must be 'hip', even if it means diverting money away from the teeming poor to the trendy rich.

But please, please don't take away the Acero gorgonzola cheese dip that I love so much.

It's so authentic.

For my ideas on how to square the circle between boutiques and authenticity please see my post Authenticity part Deux above.