Another Look at Cell Phones in Church

This morning I received an email from a friend and fellow pastor with a link to a YouTube video about cellphones in church. It's cute and is meant to be a humorous look at the way electronics can be a distraction in worship. Then I saw another pastor post the same video on Facebook.

So here's what bothers me about this video:

First of all I completely understand the frustration of having sermons, prayers and worship interrupted by ring tones and other electronic alarms. It's disrespectful. There really is no other way to put it. It is disrespectful to the preacher as well as to other worshipers. It draws our attention away from what we are doing in worship. It pulls us out of the moment even if we don't answer the call and even if it isn't meant for us.But so does a crying baby or a someone with a cough.

Right now our culture is trying to decide whether or not constant interruptions in our daily life are worth the ability to stay connected to our network of family and friends. The cultural jury is still out on this one. I personally think that there are times when we should turn off the gadgets but I grew up in a different time, before digital communication. I'm not native to this culture but I'm trying to adapt.

Part of adapting means learning how phones are becoming an extension of who we are as people. We use them as additions to our memory storage abilities. We use them to expand our knowledge base. I have at least two members of my congregation who have talked to me about how they use their smart phones in worship to remind themselves to reflect later on something said in a sermon or to look up a reference on the spot. Using their phones actually deepens the worship experience for them. And what would it be like to have people in the congregation Tweet or post to Facebook statements and ideas they received in worship?

The trade-off is that whenever we are connected to the outside world the outside world is connected to us. And that's not always a bad thing. Too often worship is understood as this "other-worldly" activity where we try to isolate ourselves away from the distractions of the world in order to focus on God. The problem with this is that God is actually trying to get us to focus on the world. Isn't that why we believe that Jesus is the embodied form of God? Isn't that why we use earthly elements (water, wine, bread) for the sacraments? Isn't that why we preach a Gospel that frees us from the power of sin and death so that we are freed to serve this distraction-filled world in the name of Jesus?

If we, as the leaders of the church, don't start to get over ourselves and meet people where they are then the important and relevant message of our faith will get lost in a cultural language that is being spoken by fewer and fewer people. The very fact that we meet them where they are is an experience of grace. Insisting that people conform to a particular pattern of behaviors (laws?) to be welcomed into the worshiping community is exactly the opposite.