{"id":913,"date":"2008-11-24T10:50:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T14:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/?p=913"},"modified":"2008-11-24T10:50:26","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T14:50:26","slug":"are-you-in-the-audience-or-the-congregation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/are-you-in-the-audience-or-the-congregation","title":{"rendered":"Are you in the audience or the congregation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/onthesquare\/?p=1227\" target=\"_blank\">Richard John Neuhaus essay<\/a> cited in the previous post comes this much needed clarification on the difference between an audience and a congregation and how developing one and not the other results in two very different kinds of churches:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The religion of solitude can be practiced in a five-thousand-seat auditorium of a megachurch. In their comfortable seats, each is a member of the audience, with membership consisting chiefly in showing up. An audience is very different from a congregation, never mind the\u00a0<em>communio\u00a0<\/em>with God through Christ for which we were created, and for which, if we rightly read our restless hearts, we long.<\/p>\n<p>. . . . . .\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Church is not merely a voluntary association of the spiritually like-minded catering to the indulgence of private sensibilities in one of Babylon\u2019s many enclaves of choice. The Church is the Body of Christ through time proposing to the world the new creation inaugurated in his cross and resurrection and promised return.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Richard John Neuhaus essay cited in the previous post comes this much needed clarification on the difference between an audience and a congregation and how developing one and not the other results in two very different kinds of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/are-you-in-the-audience-or-the-congregation\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}