Faith and the Ferris Wheel

I’ve always enjoyed amusement parks, so when my kids got free tickets to Lakeside amusement park in Dener as a reward for successfully completing the local library summer reading program, I was good to go.

I had never been to Lakeside, but I had read some of the history of the place, and I was looking forward to enjoying the park during this, its 100th anniversary season. And I did. With the possible exception of an attraction called “Starship 2000.” This “ride” is essentially a centrifuge sized for human beings. Its true purpose is apparently to flatten your internal organs against your spine. I’m fairly certain it may be the antichrist of amusement park rides, and I am opposed to it on entirely theological grounds.

Aside from that, I had a great time. Lakeside is a nostalgic old park of the type often imitated by the newer parks. It is a mix of Coney Island and art deco, which gives it a very retro classical appeal. And though the facilities could use an influx of capital to improve maintenance and landscaping, in many ways, Lakeside is an ideal family amusement park. Except for one thing: It’s old. It struck me that, while modern amusement parks often attempt to mimic the classical feel and nostalgia of the great old parks, as a culture, we are not predisposed to actually attend the great old parks. We have come to prefer the newer imitations of the original over the original.

I guess we like the newer parks because they feature carefully controlled guest environments. The attractions are often faster, and feature licensed characters from our favorite movies. They can accommodate larger crowds and larger events, which also means they have longer lines. They offer different attractions to appeal to different members of the family, which often means that, rather than attending together, family members split up to go and do their own age appropriate thing. I like those newer parks, but I have to say that Lakeside, smaller, older, and much more simple, was a nearly perfect place to be with my family.

The dynamic I’m describing here is the same that has frustrated me about the modern church. Anyone who wants to take an honest look knows that the church as it exists today is very different from the church of the first century. And while cultural differences are to be expected, one can easily make the case that we have fundamentally changed the definition of the church. This has not made us a more effective vehicle of the Kingdom, as far as I can tell. Even in apparently thriving Christian communities, I am hard pressed to identify, in the western world, churches as vital and fast growing as the early church. And yet, we prefer our modern imitation of the original, over the original. We enjoy a more controlled environment, with flashier, if less substantive, attractions. We can accommodate larger crowds. And we divide ourselves generationally.

A return to the original demands that we relinquish the convenience and control to which we have become accustomed. The early church was more raw, and if I may say, more real than what we have experienced. It was, in a sense, more dangerous and unpredictable, because God’s Spirit controlled the action in a much more direct fashion than we allow today.

But, honestly, given a choice between a church built by God and directed by his Spirit into miraculous things, and a church built by humanity out of foam and fiberglass to represent the miraculous, which would you choose?