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Moonlight
25 January 2012, 11:02 AM
I have no idea if this is fake or not but I found it quite amusing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13jjz4D7oBo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

sm78
25 January 2012, 11:16 AM
looks like real, church will do anything to attract and keep people.

Eastern Mind
25 January 2012, 11:57 AM
Vannakkam: When there is no real attractable truth in a religion, and everyone is bored out of their minds, the church will stoop to anything. This is not unlike bribery, but will it work?

Obviously this guy thinks it will, but I'm guessing it won't actually convert or retain anyone. Once the raves stop, and someone has to get down to the philosophy, well... who knows.

When I was a kid, churches in town had youth groups, and they's do things like hayrides, and invite anyone and everyone. Lots of people would go on the hayride, because it was fun, but church the next day? No way.

Aum Namasivaya

Jainarayan
25 January 2012, 12:05 PM
Oh, it's real all right. It's called "worshiptainment" (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22worshiptainment%22&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images). It's mostly used in "born again" (aren't we all :D) and evangelical congregations. Usually they have a "worship band" which is nothing more than a rock or rockabilly band... bass guitar, rhythm and lead guitars, drums, and vocalist. Some of them are downright laughable.

Arjuni
25 January 2012, 12:38 PM
Namasté,

This is very likely real and isn't the first effort by the church to incorporate youth lifestyles in order to attract young people to services; other examples are the Goth Eucharist (http://www.thegotheucharist.org.uk/) and even Goth online church (http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2008/05/22/ulfilas_goth_church_feature.shtml).

Christian church is not only dull because of a lack of compelling truth - good thoughts, EM - but because there's so little to engage the senses, and no meditative tradition to teach sense-control. Christian music is often plain and slow with obviously-rhyming words, "beauty" is confused with "vanity" and therefore shunned by many denominations, and many of the stories describe pastoral people and issues that seem remote. Church services can indeed be boring, and a restless worshipper who drifts off and starts making a mental grocery list mid-service will only feel worse. (Hindu temples have the right idea, I think, in offering both solitary and communal worship in which an attendee may come at any time and find whatever meaning there s/he wishes.)

Moreover, Sanātana Dharma encourages questions and therefore fosters a rich folk tradition, in which people gladly continue to write, compose, and re-invent, finding endless meaning in the same stories. But Christianity discourages questioning, re-interpretation, and updating. There's one main Book, that tells things one way, and that's how it must be for a good Christian.

So I can't blame these pastors that are trying to cross a huge gulf between their religion - which has not stood the test of time well - and alienated young people that they want to help. And it saddens me to see creative, faithful people having to pull from popular culture, to express and interpret what their own liturgies cannot.

Indraneela
===
Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.

Moonlight
25 January 2012, 04:05 PM
Hi all thanks for the replys ^^

But isn't that a form of Brainwashing mind control thingy which plants techno trance hymns into the subjects mind? Isn't that ilegal?
 

Sahasranama
25 January 2012, 04:36 PM
Hindu organisations are also starting to use these techniques. Just look at most dipavali celebrations which have become a far cry from worshipping Lakshmi devi. Hindu organisations are already concerned about altering religious services to attract the youth. Poojas are now accomplished with bollywood dance perfomances. Pundits are given less time to perform the pooja. People don't have the patience to sit for elaborate and old fashioned rituals anymore, but want pundits to give a sermon like a Christian pastor and act more like a social worker. I don't care much about Christians ruining their religion, there wasn't much to ruin anyway. But we should guard that Hindus do not start copying the Christians, because the idealisation of western standards.

Eastern Mind
25 January 2012, 04:42 PM
Hindu organisations are also starting to use these techniques. Just look at most dipavali celebrations which have become a far cry from worshipping Lakshmi devi. Sooner or later Hindu mandirs will use the same techniques as Christian churches.

Vannakkam: That may be true for some Hindu Mandirs, but it'll be a very long time for some others. There is a wide range now on what goes. Certainly something like that would end my days of temple worship. :)

Aum Namasivaya

Sahasranama
25 January 2012, 04:54 PM
I know, it is happening in some places, not everywhere. We also can't also generalise these things for Christianity, but Hinduism is not immune to it either.

Jainarayan
25 January 2012, 06:35 PM
It's not a new phenomenon in Christianity. It started back in the 1970s with Catholic "folk Masses", one Mass each weekend that was accompanied by acoustic guitars and singers. It was the RCC's answer to Peter, Paul and Mary (pun intended) to draw the younger people.

One of the most butchered I remember was the playing of My Sweet Lord minus the chorus of the Mahamantra and the Guru Brahma mantra. If you're not going to be true to the song, don't effing play it! I will never forget that abomination (and I was about 14 years old). :mad:

Friend from the West
25 January 2012, 07:16 PM
Hari Om,

Namaste,

With the exception of Touched By The Lord's, first paragraph "It was the RCC's answer to Peter, Paul and Mary (pun intended) to draw the younger people.", all so disconcerting.


With Indraneela's "And it saddens me to see creative, faithful people having to pull from popular culture, to express and interpret what their own liturgies cannot."

and what Sahasranama reports, only worse. I think we are all on same path, looooooooong term, and this dynamic seems to me, to not only impact those who participate, but others as well, in their path, in what could be adverse manner.

Om Shanti Om

FFTW

sm78
25 January 2012, 10:52 PM
Hindu organisations are also starting to use these techniques. Just look at most dipavali celebrations which have become a far cry from worshipping Lakshmi devi.

Only one problem with your statement - these are not Hindu "Organizations". Hindus have no Organizations, zero. Ok, there are some, but they are nothing like church and mostly centered around their own sectarian greedy/fake leaders.

Hindus do these festivals on their own accord sometimes at local community level by gathering community resources. It is not a church like organization trying to attract or retain believers, but people deciding to celebrate their cultural festivals in less and less traditional way.

I think the two are slightly different things, at least for me since for me the main issue is not about tradition, but about societal and organizational.

sm78
25 January 2012, 11:04 PM
I think we are all on same path, looooooooong term

No we are not on the same path. But we are same - we are human. On contrary to what you say the human unity is not in these paths (or their destination) we curve for ourselves conditioned by culture, space & time from birth to our death - but what we could have been (what we actually are) outside the confines of these so called paths.

Sorry for digressing. I know it sounds like Liberal Humanism, but can't help, it is what it is.

Sahasranama
26 January 2012, 03:57 AM
Only one problem with your statement - these are not Hindu "Organizations". Hindus have no Organizations, zero. Ok, there are some, but they are nothing like church and mostly centered around their own sectarian greedy/fake leaders.

Hindus do these festivals on their own accord sometimes at local community level by gathering community resources. It is not a church like organization trying to attract or retain believers, but people deciding to celebrate their cultural festivals in less and less traditional way.

I think the two are slightly different things, at least for me since for me the main issue is not about tradition, but about societal and organizational.

In the west there are a lot of small Hindu organisations. They are not like the organisations in India which are centered around certain guru figures, but more like HAF type of organisations. Mostly, these small scale organisations are not concerned about converting new members, but they are trying hard to attract Hindu youth to religious celebrations and they are using pop culture in a similar way as in Chrisitanity. It's not on the same scale as in Christianity, but I think it's going to catch on. Like EM's story about the church offering hayrides to attract people, I have seen Hindu organisations offering disco parties after the pooja.

PARAM
26 January 2012, 10:39 AM
This is true by even Hindu political parties like Shiv Sena and BJP, but these are the only options left for Hindu hearts to do something for Dharma. Some sects are still involved in the great way of Dharma Prasar and their call is more near to Dharma.