Almost A Rock Concert
Brett: "We've got drinks and dinner tonight."
Me: "I can't go. I've got other plans."
Brett: "What's more important than me??"
Me: "Um... God??"
And so, I was on a train headed for the Olympic Stadium built for the 2000 Games to attend this Christian conference, likened to a rock concert (except they sang Christian songs/hymns of course). That was the hook for me since the last time I attended one of these mass-scale evangelistic event was in the national stadium at home with Billy Graham when I was 16. The experience was enough to stop me from going to anymore of these for the next 20 years. But I was promised a rock concert, an uplifting and encouraging sermon and basically, tacitly, a good time. They also promised me I didn't have to hug any strangers/brother/sister seated next to me.
From the word go, the entire audience was on their feet, jumping up and down in time to the heavy beats of the band, the thunderous vibrations made me a little worried if the platforms could take our weight. It was a rock concert where everyone knew all the words to the songs and sang along (and if they forgot the words, they were projected on the HUGE screens). The audience didn't even need warming up, unlike some concerts where the performers had to seduce the audience and cajole them to (please, pretty please) get on their feet and into the mood. This audience waved their arms, they chanted in between beats. The bands were good, the rhythm was catchy. The pastors threw merchandise such as tee shirts, jackets, books, CDs into the crowd which held out their arms eagerly, hoping to be the lucky one to catch one of the freebies.
The songs were really fantastic, it was gospel modernised to suit today's world, today's youth, today's pace of life. If one didn't understand English, one would have thought one was in a rock concert. Truly.
But then the intermittent plugging of conference merchandise such as tee shirts and jackets, other books and CDs produced by the pastors, even a box-kit (which reminded me of the trival pursuit box set) and a 8-film series of video tapes was really overwhelming. They instructed the crowd on which booths outside the hall, to go visit to buy the stuff, they peeled off tee-shirt by tee-shirt tightly stretced on a fat guy's body, and threw them into the audience, to whip up their retail appetite. They teased the audience. The commercial aspect just superseded the whole spiritual aspect in my opinion. The fact that the pastor's opening statement after the first 3 arms-waving, audience jumping up and down songs, was to ask for everyone's generosity in donating, also smacked of this commercialism. Granted that the church needs money to operate, but surely he could have waited 30 minutes into the 3-hour event?
This just left a whole strange aftertaste. I was not able to shake it off. Even the strobe lighting, the professional-sounding bands, the one-people-one-voice-giving-praise mode couldn't overturn what I had felt about the commercialism. Maybe I had come with a closed mind, waiting to catch an inperfection such as this? I don't know, I think not. But I was just not ready to be part of this crowd.
Me: "I can't go. I've got other plans."
Brett: "What's more important than me??"
Me: "Um... God??"
And so, I was on a train headed for the Olympic Stadium built for the 2000 Games to attend this Christian conference, likened to a rock concert (except they sang Christian songs/hymns of course). That was the hook for me since the last time I attended one of these mass-scale evangelistic event was in the national stadium at home with Billy Graham when I was 16. The experience was enough to stop me from going to anymore of these for the next 20 years. But I was promised a rock concert, an uplifting and encouraging sermon and basically, tacitly, a good time. They also promised me I didn't have to hug any strangers/brother/sister seated next to me.
From the word go, the entire audience was on their feet, jumping up and down in time to the heavy beats of the band, the thunderous vibrations made me a little worried if the platforms could take our weight. It was a rock concert where everyone knew all the words to the songs and sang along (and if they forgot the words, they were projected on the HUGE screens). The audience didn't even need warming up, unlike some concerts where the performers had to seduce the audience and cajole them to (please, pretty please) get on their feet and into the mood. This audience waved their arms, they chanted in between beats. The bands were good, the rhythm was catchy. The pastors threw merchandise such as tee shirts, jackets, books, CDs into the crowd which held out their arms eagerly, hoping to be the lucky one to catch one of the freebies.
The songs were really fantastic, it was gospel modernised to suit today's world, today's youth, today's pace of life. If one didn't understand English, one would have thought one was in a rock concert. Truly.
But then the intermittent plugging of conference merchandise such as tee shirts and jackets, other books and CDs produced by the pastors, even a box-kit (which reminded me of the trival pursuit box set) and a 8-film series of video tapes was really overwhelming. They instructed the crowd on which booths outside the hall, to go visit to buy the stuff, they peeled off tee-shirt by tee-shirt tightly stretced on a fat guy's body, and threw them into the audience, to whip up their retail appetite. They teased the audience. The commercial aspect just superseded the whole spiritual aspect in my opinion. The fact that the pastor's opening statement after the first 3 arms-waving, audience jumping up and down songs, was to ask for everyone's generosity in donating, also smacked of this commercialism. Granted that the church needs money to operate, but surely he could have waited 30 minutes into the 3-hour event?
This just left a whole strange aftertaste. I was not able to shake it off. Even the strobe lighting, the professional-sounding bands, the one-people-one-voice-giving-praise mode couldn't overturn what I had felt about the commercialism. Maybe I had come with a closed mind, waiting to catch an inperfection such as this? I don't know, I think not. But I was just not ready to be part of this crowd.
posted by Bo-Bo Gal at 10:49 pm
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