The coffee shop calls

I'm a big procrastinator. Lucky for you it provides you with posts.

I don't know what it is but every time I sit down to do work, I end up thinking about blogging and then sometimes blogging. I know what you're thinking: 'you don't work very often'. True.

I'm in a coffee shop though and that just brings about a sense of blog worthy thoughts.

Strange how your atmosphere can change you.

For instance, when I'm at home I'm usually in my bed. I never sit on my couch or outside on the deck. I like to eat in bed, read in bed, watch tv in bed, surf the net (is that still cool to say?) in bed, sleep excessively in bed, craft in bed... it goes on and on.

When I'm at the coffee shop I start thinking.

When I'm at the dance studio I start making plans to abandon life and join a theatre.

When I'm on pinterest I loose all track of time and want to craft my life away.

So, today, I'm at the coffee shop. I get more accomplished here. On the blogging side of life anyways as I've been here for an hour and haven't touched my work.

Ever since we learned about advertising in grade 8, I've been obsessed with pin pointing marketing schemes. Why the Mcdonalds sign is yellow, how different fonts appeal to different people, how changing the way you say something can be received one way or the other. It's fascinating to me.

All of this makes me think about Church and the environment we create for a service.

If we manipulate the visual, emotional, audio and physical surroundings of a building are we in fact manipulating people's experience?

For instance. If you want toddlers to listen to you intently, you might turn off the kiddy music, dim the lights, gather them in a circle and speak clearly and slowly with eye contact.

If you want adults to listen to you, you do the same.

Why do we play music softly in the background during an alter call? Why do we have preacher voices, prayer voices and normal voices?

What would happen if we took the pews out of church and sat on the ground with no sound system? Would we feel the same way? Would we leave the same? Would we even come?

 Don't get me wrong, I love creating space, especially for comfort. Ill be one of the first to say 'dim those lights' or 'put those chairs in a circle'. Either way we have emotions (and rightly so as they are given to us by God) I'm just trying to work out where their place is as a reaction to space.

Thoughts?