How do you manufacture authenticity?
How can we create and contrive an experience that feels real and raw and transparent?
Here's the answer. First, you need a high end power point projector and a well paid worship leader.
I'm 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'm not sure I believe in God anymore." Not all our insights will be that dramatic and we shouldn't try and force them to be.
Church needs to be the place where I can encounter Christ as my real self. And I think Christ is ready for that. But I'm not sure the church is. I'm not sure I am.
Are you?
Or are we all just playing at being real?
4 comments:
I agree with you - authenticity is very difficult. But so very valuable. It is often easier to be real and authentic with people you don't know and won't see again than someone that you see day in day out.
I've found recently that the more real and transparent I am, the more real and transparent others are with me. And all are generally blessed by that authenticity. The exaggerated fears of ostracism are rarely realized (thank God!).
Though I do also think we are still careful to share our "safe" sins and issues - I think there are few people that are able to just lay it all on the line.
great, great post kester
I have been struggling with this very thing. Our new faith community is great at it, they easily confess with one another about their struggles, doubts, etc. I love to hear these stories and I feel their struggles, but I have a hard time being so transparent. Part of me says its because things are going so great right now (I know that will change), but part of me thinks I'm scared to let people close to me.
I think we can create opportunities for authenticity to take place. I do not think it can be manufactured. It is like the difference between building a car and planting corn. You can mine the metal and bolt a car together and manufacture a car. You can drop seed on the ground but all you really do is create an opportunity for a harvest as it takes rain and plenty of sunshine - things you cannot control or predict.
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