Go; Let it be Done for You According to Your Faith

God's Call Comes by Cellphone
Among them was Terry Vallandingham, who gathered his wife and their three kids, still in their pajamas, to worship in front of a flat-screen computer monitor in their home in Shawnee, Okla.

When Groeschel asked questions, the Vallandinghams responded by clicking an icon. When the band struck up, they all sang aloud, right there in their study, sprawled out on the leather couch. After the last "Amen," they surfed into the online "lobby chat" to wish the pastor a good holiday...

"It was amazing," Vallandingham said. "My wife even said, 'Church doesn't get better than this.' "

LA Times

I'm all for broadening our ideas of how we say we can know and worship God. Yet...

The thing is, the Vallandinghams, are right. Church doesn't get any better than "this." And they'll continue to be right unless they realize they aren't.

Many years ago, Cyndi asked why Catholics give their churches such weird names, Holy Name of this, Our Lady of That, Saint So-and-So the Something or Other. Thank you Skypilot Temple, Celebration Fellowship, Lighthouse Chapel, Powerpoint Church, The Rock, and others for ending that discussion.

Trading one bit of nothing for another isn't much. And then sometimes we discover there was something where we saw nothing.

I used to blame others for the shallowness, difficulties, or strangeness of my experiences in any number of things. As a parallel- what was wrong with women that so many of them I dated were crazy? (Hint: I was the common factor of all these crazy girls and bad relationships).

Things are better now, but I don't think I needed those bad relationships to know good relationships are possible. I don't think being shallow is necessary to know depth is possible. And as one grows, you may not be ready at 5 for what you will know at 15, at 20, at 30. Still, what was fine at 5 isn't at 15, 20, 30, ad infinitum.

So Mrs. Vallandingham, welcome to TV church. I hope your stay is a blessed and temporary one.