How To Manufacture Authenticity

Authenticity. It is the buzzword of new and emerging churches. Even more established churches have caught on to it and are tossing it about at leadership meetings and in sermons. And the big question on everyone's mind seems to be this:

How do you manufacture authenticity?

How can we contrive an experience that feels raw and real and transparent?

Here's the answer. First you need a high end power point projector and a well paid worship leader.

Kidding. The fact is, you can't manufacture authenticity any more than you can script reality. All attempts to script reality have been met by discerning folks with scorn. We might like "The Real World", but don't try and tell us it IS the real world.

All attempts to manufacture authenticity ought to be met in a similar fashion. If you're trying to "keep it real" without being real, it isn't going to work. You can't sustain it. It might be as entertaining as "The Real World", but it won't be any less fake.

Real is hard. Authentic is hard. It's hard to simply open up and be honest about your thoughts and feelings and sins and struggles.

But that's the only way to be an authentic church. Simply by being one. Somebody has to go first and say, "my marriage is in trouble" or "I'm a bad father" or "I don't believe in God anymore." Not all admissions and insights will be that profound or dramatic and we shouldn't force them to be. But they should always be that real.

Church needs to be the place where I can encounter Christ and His followers as my real self, warts and all. Christ is ready for that. I'm not sure His followers are. I'm not sure I am.

Are you?

Or are we all just playing at being real?