Why I need a dumb phone.

    I cannot get cell reception in the office here at church, or in the fellowship hall, the sanctuary, the Sunday School rooms, or for that matter anywhere inside any of the church’s buildings. I would love to blame it on the bad cell towers, but other folks get some coverage inside. In all honesty, it’s my phone. It’s one of those new “smart-phones” that have apps for everything under the sun. It can check the weather or my email; it can find things on the internet or a map. It’s my calendar and my radio. My phone can do nearly anything but make calls. I wonder about the engineer who came up with this. I am sure at some point he said to his superiors, “yes, but it is lousy at making calls…” only to be told to make it pretty and full of gadgety-ness. We like new, shiny things. Marketers call it the “whiz-bang” effect and I have to admit that I tend to fall for it.

My wife has an old school flip phone. You know the kind that looks like the communicators off the old Star Trek shows that made the cool noise when they flipped it open. It can’t access the internet, check email, give you a GPS location, or make a cappuccino (mine can’t do that either… yet) but it sure makes great phone calls.

It seems like the church is increasingly becoming “the Smart-Church”. We can provide you with social statements, elder care, youth programming, salsa dance classes, blood pressure checks, YouTube video channels, blogs, twitter streams, Facebook pages, podcasts, audio on demand, streaming video, entertaining music, bells, bands, choirs, choir-bands, and even organ recitals. Sometimes, if you find just the right church they can even make you a decent cappuccino.

All of that, and yet from everything we read all the studies seem to indicate that our folks are failing at two things: prayer and Bible study. We have become all “whiz-bang” but can’t make a decent phone call. It seems like there is something inherently dumb about a smart-anything. Søren Kierkegaard, the great Lutheran philosopher/theologian once said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing”. His meaning was that if one wants to live a complete and fulfilling life, have a single purpose and then let that form all the things you do. Of course, Søren would have also affirmed that our devotion to God should inform that “one thing”. Maybe if our lives were a little less “smart” and a little more “wise” we would feel like we had a better connection to God, our neighbors, and ourselves. So, take a look at your life, how is your reception right now? Fuzzy? Maybe you need to ditch the smart-life for a wise one.