On Churches, Game Shows, and Presidential Debates

Yesterday I listened to a QnA with a presidential candidate (we'll call this person "Pat"), in which "Pat" made some comments about a recent presidential debate. Pat said what I wish I could believe most viewers were thinking at the time. Pat said what I suspect might have been a defining moment in Pat's campaign, had Pat been sensible enough to offer this answer in the heat of the moment. So here's what Pat said:

I thought when the CNN moderator was asking us questions like, "Do you prefer 'Dancing with the Stars' or 'American Idol'?", I really think in retrospect the correct answer was to say, "It's pathetic that with 14 million unemployed and a $2 trillion deficit and three wars underway you would waste our time with this." Because what it does is it trivializes the choice of the leader of the United States into a game show.

The naïvety of the American public in our presidential selection process is disheartening, to say the least, and the public debate of recent weeks has only advanced that trajectory. The notion advanced by the media (assuming it's true, silly me) that the public just wanted a compromise—as if compromise a) is equivalent to a long-term solution, and b) is not the methodology that got us where we are—is an omen of our future.

But let me just ask a simple question: How might we trivialize the mission and message of our churches by the content of our children's ministry, the strategy of our youth ministry, the commitment of membership, the smorgasbord of our programs, the frivolity of our off-hand, casual comments, the mood and form of our music, the structure of our service, the gravity of our preaching, and the priorities revealed by the sheer number of man-hours we devote to these components.

Just askin'.