Collide Magazine

Church and Hell's Kitchen

Aaron Alexander - Originally posted Thursday, June 26, 2008 -

When the show Hell’s Kitchen first came on, I loved it. It was wild, unpredictable, full of emotion, and just plain fun to watch. I thought it was straight real—authentic. But then, I found out that most of it was staged. Dang.

Now, instead of loving this show, I absolutely hate it. Why is that? I mean, it’s still the same show—the same stuff happens this season as it did the first season. What has changed? The show lost its authenticity. It’s was no longer “real.” No matter how entertaining it was, the mystique of authenticity was gone. And so was I.

That made me think about churches and Christianity. Too many people, when they first visit a church or start to follow Christ, it’s exciting, fun, different, wild, full of emotion—authentic. But, for many, something changes.

I hate it when churches are fake—unauthentic. They become or try to be something they truly aren’t. We do the whole “how you keep them is how you got them” mentality, which is good, but when we get them to start coming to our church with an event that isn’t truly representative of us or just a one-time production that is hard to duplicate over and over again, we begin to lose our authenticity. We think we have to be something we’re not, produce something every week that isn’t representative of our community, and try to live on a bubble of fake relationships, fake productions, and fake people.

But, just like Hell’s Kitchen (see also Man vs. Wild), when we’re fake, it can only last for so long. People catch on—they see us for what we really are—and if that is different than what we are showing them on a weekly basis, they’ll leave. Not only will they leave the church, but also they may leave the faith altogether.

I know I would.

So be real. Be yourself. Be who you are—small church, big church, traditional church, emergent church, poor church, rich church, charismatic church, stuffy church. Whatever it is, be you. That authenticity is what makes all the media and technology in our services worth doing. The moment we (the Church) lose our authenticity, nothing else matters.

Aaron Alexander is the Student Ministries Pastor and less-than-part-time Creative Arts guy at Hope Fellowship in Frisco, Texas.