If the title describes your feelings after you get home from Sunday services, you are not alone. In Part 1, an introduction to the subject of Bikini Churches, small churches that cover the essentials of religion, was completed. Here, in Part 2, the Bikini Churches are explored in more detail. In a small church, commonly with services being held in a congregation member’s home, you are not overwhelmed by the press of bodies, noise, glitz, nor inattention to your personal needs. Your contacts and your interactions are limited. This is the difference that is desired. It is a difference that is denied in the larger venues. In every segment of human society, we all recognize the differences and the values evident between small, private, even elite units and the large, public, impersonal variety. Whether it is schools, shops, or other kinds of institutions, we recognize and value that difference. Attendance at UCLA where a single class might have 1,100 students in the lecture hall is intrinsically different and has a different emotional context and “feel” from a small university with class sizes under 40. What applies to colleges and universities applies in spades to churches. At school, we attend a class to learn. This can be emotionally satisfying. At church, it ought to be emotionally satisfying. The same thing is true of any experience where we expect to extract an emotional value, whether it is a hair salon, a restaurant, or a health spa. Generally, it is a difference for which we are willing, if we have the resources, to pay a premium. We value, at a deep inner level, the close, elbow to elbow, hands on contacts of the small group. We do not value, at the same emotional level, the same close, elbow to elbow, hands on contacts of a large crowd. There are just too many faces to emotionally comprehend, and to feel an attachment to each person in the group. It is overwhelming. A religious event is no place to be swallowed by the whale of anonymity. A religious event is no place to be “lost” in the crowd. We may be forced by our personal economics to get our hard goods at the super giant discount retail store, but we value the service and attention at the small Mom & Pop hardware store. As soon as we can afford it, we switch stores. That same phenomena is beginning to happen in churches. No area of our lives has more of a need for value than religion. The possible exceptions are sex and love. To appreciate the forest, we must look carefully at the trees. Personal interaction, personal stories, and personal witnessing is really personal when you can look directly into the eyes of the person next to you on the couch. There, in that moment, you can use everything that your lifetime of experiences has taught you about human veracity to judge truth in all its dimensions. This cannot happen when you are seated a hundred feet from the speaker’s podium. Do mega-churches have a place in religion? Yes. In the same way that some folks love attending a coliseum packed with a hundred thousand member throng with a rock-’em, sock-’em, professional football game with video screens, monster PA systems, canned music, clowns, and squads of scantily clad dancing cheerleaders, mega-churches have a place. People, some people, love the noise, the excitement, the colors, the diversions, and the “sense” of the crowd. All that s left at some churches is to add sales of peanuts, hot dogs, and beer to match the same crowd’s needs. A significant number of people are happier, by preference, at a smaller gathering. They enjoy that atmosphere instead.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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