The Crank Resurfaces, For A Short Harangue

So the other day i walked into the morning meeting and there was this music video thing playing while everyone was coming in. It was a "praise song," and there were all these people on a beach, kind of dancing around in slow motion, all grinning a little desperately at the camera, like they'd just been Botoxed. They were all clearly middle-class American evangelicals of one skin tone or another, covering the short distance from fashionably dark Caucasian to fashionably light African-American, but they were dressed up in a wide variety of what seemed to be painfully obvious stabs at worldwide multicultural fashion. I thought maybe it was the new Paul McCartney video, or else definitely a pharmaceutical commercial, but i was soon informed that this is the very latest thing in worship - the "iWorship @Home" series. A prepackaged series of a dozen or so songs with videos to match, this product line obviates all the hassle and inconvenience of going to church with actual people. At last, i thought. I hadn't been feeling like enough of a spectator lately in church. [click here.] Plus i was getting so tired of that part where you have to sort of half-turn to your neighbor and mutter something about the "peace of Christ." I mean, come on - just because i sat in the row behind someone doesn't mean i want to hear their life story. Besides, it's really about time Christians caught up with modern trends in convenience and style. Church in my La-Z-Boy, with a pause button. Now that's emergent worship.