Curing Sunday Spectatoritis: From Passivity to Participation in Church

by Larry Peabody

The sit-watch-and-listen format for church meetings isn’t cutting it. “Jesus seldom, if ever, monologued. He interacted,” says Charles H. Kraft, Fuller Seminary professor. This book calls for making church services participatory. It also offers stories in which 25 church leaders explain how they are doing so. Because most church services spotlight performance by professionals, they encourage passivity rather than participation among the people. The typical meeting format treats the church as an audience rather than as the body of Christ and family of God. As a result what has been called the “discipleship deficit” continues. The term “spectatoritis” in the title speaks for itself. No dictionary needed. Like arthritis, bronchitis, and appendicitis, spectatoritis brings on a measure of disability. But unlike those and other inflammatory “-itis” conditions that ache and throb, Sunday spectatoritis typically leaves its victims quite pain-free, even comfortable. And who among us, including church people, will seek a cure if unaware of any disabling symptoms? But as this book explains, spectatoritis can be cured. This book is for all who love the Body of Christ and work for its well-being. It is for pastors, church leaders, and church planters in all kinds of communities—in urban, suburban, exurban, and rural congregations. It is for Christians who seek to encourage increased congregational participation and to support leaders as they pursue that objective.

244 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2016

Reviews

[David Andrianoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peabody’s Curing Sunday Spectatoritis explains some of my disillusionment with the contemporary church. Our churches have become theaters. We sit in rows facing an elevated stage, observing the “stars” up front. Kathleen Ward asks (p. 54): “How can we focus on one-anothering if we are seated in rows, gazing on the backs of one another’s heads? How will we confess our sins to one another, pray for one another, encourage and build one another up if we sit silently facing a stage?” For me the theater atmosphere pushes the limits when the “worship team” takes the stage. Peabody (p. 128) quotes Peter Holmes of Christ Church Deal, Kent, UK: “Another change in our own community was when we moved the worship band to the back of the congregation, requiring each person to proactively visualize worshipping Christ in relationship rather than continue to be passively ‘led’ in worship by the singers and musicians.” That appeals to me, as I find myself totally turned off by worship teams prancing around inviting the congregation to worship God, while visually proclaiming “Look at us!”

Most churches have pushed aside corporate praying. As Peabody points out (p. 105), “Praying for one another in the presence of one another does involve laying down our lives for one another, moving us out of our individual comfort zones.” How have we let something as important as praying together slip into oblivion?

I have grown tired of trying to encourage churches to get people OUT of the church and into the community, not to bring people IN to the church. So I liked Peabody’s emphasizing (p. 220) “the thrust of gathered church meetings should be centrifugal, ‘acting in a direction away from a center.’” Curing Sunday Spectatoritis appealingly gives hope for the contemporary church.