Discussions on the Way

‘WOW’ was a great time, as usual, at Southwest this year. But it leaves me, as usual, wrestling with the same question. Namely, is it part of our discipleship to “not take ourselves too seriously”?

There has been some criticism that the drama at the end has gone beyond the functional in any sense, and reached a point of pure entertainment. Now, I wrestle with the value of WOW myself. But to this particular criticism, I say “Is there a law against the people of God coming together and having fun?” But my own response here begs another question of me… “If ‘WOW’ is merely the people of God coming together to have some fun, shouldn’t we name it what it is… fun?”

The confusion comes to me in the what we ‘name’ WOW as an event – namely, do we construct the WOW event as ‘evangelism’ or outreach? If so, why? If we do this as a way for the community church shoppers to come and see what we are all about, I hope what they “see” at WOW is not what they “get”! I mean, my hope would be that in a world gone mad with consumption, that we wouldn’t market ourselves and endear people with marketing methods and then bait-and-switch them with the truth of the gospel (the same gospel that flies in the face of consumer-driven social structures).

So, my struggle is both private and communal. Am I taking myself too seriously? Does that hinder my own discipleship? And is my communal life at Southwest shaping us into a people that knows how to have fun and be full of life, or is it shaping us into a people that employs consumerism as a means to an end?

Wrestled with this for years now! Perhaps, if I didn’t take myself so seriously…