Listening in Church

This will be about people not making the effort to listen in Church.

My attention was caught some time ago by ugly new loudspeakers being installed in the church I attend, and I found them intrusive, distracting and irritating... at first I thought it was just the poor design and the placement without regard to their visual obstrusiveness (and the sound is scratchy and metallic too), but then realized that it went deeper than that...

The real problem is that people come to church but don't want to have to put the effort into listening (and, in the case of some speakers, into speaking). What kind of attention will someone pay if they can have the sound pushed on them like a background sound? Why, if they bother to come to church at all, can't they make the effort to sit where they can hear, and pay attention? Are they really interested in what will be said?

John C. G. Sturdy

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Last modified: Sun Jun 10 22:27:50 GMT Daylight Time 2007