Do contemporary church movements contribute to emotionally dependent Christians?
Yes.
I was pondering some questions recently like:
Why are worship services so much more popular than prayer meetings?
Why do churches today seem so much more consumeristic than Christ centered?
Why is it that Christians seem more and more high maintenance in their spiritual needs?
I think for a long time there has been a chasm forming in the mind of western Christians that separates spiritual activities and aspiritual activities. In this dichotomy Christians evaluate the former from the ladder on an emotional relevancy basis. Hymns, for example which not often sung emotionally, retain very little spiritual benefit. You will hear people say, 'that song just didn't do it for me' or 'i just couldn't get into the worship today.' Worship services have thus evolved to fit this new generation of consumeristic high maintenance Christian with dimmed light and loud music to simulate a elevated emotional worship experience. Charismatic preaching, intense visual media, and dramatic altar calls, have similar affects on the Christian church experience. I do not think any of these things are heretical or bad but the danger remain when Christians closely associate the spiritual aspects of their lives with highly emotional atmospheres of worship. The danger is when Christians have trouble being alone with God, when their Christianity is fighting for it's life in the lows between conferences or retreats, when Christians leave churches because of the music. The alternative is a holistically spiritual Christian. A Christian who is always interacting with God. A Christians who sees the need for God in every aspect of life, that is a Christian who can worship God free from the dependency on emotionalism.
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