Some thoughts on the modern church....

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
How do you know? Maybe food is really expensive in your countries. And everyone needs to eat, you can't eat money.

Eating at a restaurant is more expensive than eating at home, unless it's Mc Donalds. And most eat at a sit down restaurant. Again, God loves a cheerful giver, and He provides when we do give.
 
I don't go to restaurants after church every week who can afford that? lol
 
Great response. It's a complicated issue but
I believe the church errored in allowing government to assume charity.

Look up how Davie Crockett addressed this issue with a farmer who challenged him. I'll see if I can post a link.
Well thing is in some countries there's separation between church and state (like the US) and in other countries there's not.
UK for example, everyone used to be COE (church of England) as the state church.
Ireland was Catholic. It meant nearly everyone went to church as a way of life. All ceremonies were church run. You may or may not believe but you got baptised, confirmed and married in church and when you died your funeral was at church and you were buried in the church graveyard. Your tithe was basically your tax and the church distributed to it where it saw fit. Church was the centre of village life and Cathedrals were in the cities.
All schools, universities were church institutions.

In the UK there's this thing royals, aristocrats and nobles have which is noblesse oblige. It's originally a French term. It means those high born, priveliged and wealthy have an obligation to be kind, generous and charitable to the poor. After all the peasants and tenants are the ones paying them rent! The wealthy don't have to pay anything (except bills) they already own the land.

In NZ we don't have aristocrats and nobles, and not many rich people so the Govt acted as the one with power and privelige - they didn't HAVE to, they could have been self-interested career politicians but we were lucky enough to have several Christian Prime Ministers who cared about the ones less fortunate. I mean genuine ones not ones in name only. This is how the Welfare State came about. Also after the wars, everyone was devastated.
 
I'd love if I was ever invited to a restaurant after church. but that's never happened. I can't remember if that ever happened. I went to the community meals where we cooked leftover donated food from the supermarkets/fruit and veges and shared the meals.

No restaurants. We only had potlucks where we bought food in and shared. Or church picnics.

I think maybe once a year, when I worked, the boss or the higher ups took staff to a restaurant, some companies did that annually for Christmas but in the public service, you had to pay yourself for the food -- they'd only subsidise part of the meal.

I'd take the leftover communion bread to feed the chickens.
 
I'd get home after the service and have whatever left overs for lunch, something easy so wouldn't have to cook much. If you are wealthy enough to afford a restaurant meal and shout everyone in church or your entire family, and make others work on Sunday preparing the meal and serving you while you have a day off, every single week I don't know what to say.

Maybe...what kind of job do you have??
 
In NZ it used to be nobody was even allowed to trade on Sunday. All shops and businesses were closed. No advertising was allowed on TV/radio. It was meant to be a day of rest.
 
In NZ it used to be nobody was even allowed to trade on Sunday. All shops and businesses were closed. No advertising was allowed on TV/radio. It was meant to be a day of rest.
The implications of that are staggering...

TV shows are built with the assumption of a certain amount of commercials per hour. If Sunday has no commercials then you have to reformat your entire schedule. Do you have different shows that actually run a full hour instead of the 40 something minutes that would allow for commercials? Or do shows just run for 40 something minutes, and then you start the next show at an offset from the hour mark?
 
The implications of that are staggering...

TV shows are built with the assumption of a certain amount of commercials per hour. If Sunday has no commercials then you have to reformat your entire schedule. Do you have different shows that actually run a full hour instead of the 40 something minutes that would allow for commercials? Or do shows just run for 40 something minutes, and then you start the next show at an offset from the hour mark?

Growing up in the US, shops, stores were all closed on Sunday
 
  • Like
Reactions: Billyd
Yes, so did i, and I remember it well.

But no commercials on sunday, specifically... How would you even make a lineup for your TV channel on sunday?
The programmes just ran to their time without full breaks of ads, just promos for the channel, like what shows were coming up next. So if you were watching a movie, maybe every 10 minutes would be a very short break, instead of a 2 or 3 minute break with 3-4 ads. I think the run time would have been much shorter than usual without ads, so maybe there were extra programmes, but a Sunday programme would be different from the usual weekday fare.

I remember 60 minutes (which only showed on Sundays) would run to a full 60 minutes, the only break would be between different segments, but no ads in between, just a short break to tell you what shows were coming up next.

Its been a while since I watched an entire evening of public tv. We used to have just 2 channels when was growing up, and the channels closed down at midnight, after that a test screen would come up, then programmes would start from 6am again. Also at 8;30pm I think it was, the tv would remind you that it was time for children to go to bed, so only adults shows (NOT porn) would play after that.

On Sunday mornings there would be a full hour of a programme called Praise Be. It was a church hymn service. It wasn't televangelism. We never had american style televangelism at least I don't remember it.NZ was a former British colony so most of our programmes came from the BBC, or ITV. But we did make our own news, game shows, childrens programmes, current affairs. I recall the very first homegrown soap opera - it's called Shortland Street and ran 5 days a week. It's been going for what, over 30 years now. It doesn't beat Coronation Street though or Eastenders. Our national broadcasting was called TVNZ and was partly funded by the govt, called NZ on air. We used to pay a small fee I don't know how, maybe it included as part of our taxes or something.

We did have American sitcoms - the usual, and the soaps like Days of our Lives (during the day) . Saturday had the Premiere movie with no ads, and it was like going to the cinema, and I do remember when cinemas had an interval which was like you went to the theatre and had a break between acts. They don't do that anymore all the ads maybe 5-10 minutes of trailers at the beginning. it was great to watch tv with no interruptions.

sorry for being long winded. I am used to Netflix now, but the ad-free will probably not last for too long. It might end up like you-tube which has ads at the beginning unless you block them. It has little NZ content but I like it for the ad free movies and binging on tv series to watch at leisure.
 
Also I remember the swear words would be bleeped out.
It's still a shock to hear people swear (or curse/cuss) on tv. You might expect some in films/movies, but it was not common in regular tv shows. like it is now

It was a big deal if someone did that. like in the movie Gone with the Wind, they had to pay a fine for the word Rhett told Scarlett at the end.
 
I have watched TV in decades -- do not even own one
you mean haven't
There's only one tv in the house and not a very big one - some giants these days
Everyone has a PC, either a laptop or a smartphone now.
TVNZ now has streaming so its better for watching now with no ads in between. You might just pay for it by data usage. We now have broadband, wifi and bluetooth so much faster downloads/streams. All our tvs are digital now.

You still pay for some tv like Sky TV (cable in US) or satellite tv, which has sports coverage and channels of just movies, childrens shows, christian etc.
Our Christian tv is Shine tv, and our Christian radio broadcasting is Rhema.

I haven't really got into it. not sure why. but its just maybe I can't take hours of Hillsong or CCM.
 
Also, who could watch hours of news 24/7?? Or parliament tv? I can understand sports coverage or 2 hour movies, but just endless tv is still strange to me. Good for insomniacs maybe. Infomercials are also weird why would you buy something you only saw on tv and had a 3 minute or more add that constantly said 'wait, there's more' and pay by installments??
 
We also had American talks shows during the week day during the day. I think it was for bored housewives. Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphael, Donahue, etc
We didn't have SNL, but we did have some live tv and it was exciting to watch a live tv show not one thats been pre-recorded or news. I think the most watched were things like Royal Weddings, Olympic Games, etc. Anyway, before Internet we had tv and concerns about too much screen time for children even then. A lot of (religious) people thought TV was evil. too worldly and rotted your brain. I mean they have a point, but TV watching was a popular past time.
Before tv , people listened to the radio, or read books. Or went to the cinema which was cheap and didn't break the bank, like it does now.
 
you mean haven't
There's only one tv in the house and not a very big one - some giants these days
Everyone has a PC, either a laptop or a smartphone now.
TVNZ now has streaming so its better for watching now with no ads in between. You might just pay for it by data usage. We now have broadband, wifi and bluetooth so much faster downloads/streams. All our tvs are digital now.

You still pay for some tv like Sky TV (cable in US) or satellite tv, which has sports coverage and channels of just movies, childrens shows, christian etc.
Our Christian tv is Shine tv, and our Christian radio broadcasting is Rhema.

I haven't really got into it. not sure why. but its just maybe I can't take hours of Hillsong or CCM.

In my old age,, it is getting harder to be precise or even marginally correct, and by the day.
 
Neither do i. There are so many other things to do.

But the logistics of showing episodes without the expected commercial breaks is fascinating to me.
huh never really thought that much about it - do you work in advertising or something
Ad-free tv is the best, I can't stand ads. They loud, annoying, and manipulative
If you watch at tv series on Netflix or dvd or just a normal movie it doesn't have ads every 5 minutes.

My sister works in tv, but its subscription based, mostly sports coverage, and if they don't want interruptions they just feature the sponsor on the field, I mean ever watch a game of cricket, they've spray painted the sponsor on the grass so that it's on the screen when you watch it on tv. And all the players are wearing t-shirts with sponsors logos on it.

You can slot in advertising between episodes you know, it doesn't have to be in the middle, if there's extra time. Prime time means its the most expensive time for commercials as they estimate the most people would be watching.

I've been on community radio that has no ads, just promos, and if we have extra time they just play music for a break, which is kind of the opposite of commercial radio lol. If it was in between, I'd get to pick the song. Also the outro can be cut short or played to the end, I mean, in movies or epsodic tv not many people stick around to watch the credits, and that adds to the run time.

If you are that fascinated with logistics why not drop a line to Nielsens. https://www.nielsen.com/data-center/top-ten/
 
huh never really thought that much about it - do you work in advertising or something
Ad-free tv is the best, I can't stand ads. They loud, annoying, and manipulative
If you watch at tv series on Netflix or dvd or just a normal movie it doesn't have ads every 5 minutes.

My sister works in tv, but its subscription based, mostly sports coverage, and if they don't want interruptions they just feature the sponsor on the field, I mean ever watch a game of cricket, they've spray painted the sponsor on the grass so that it's on the screen when you watch it on tv. And all the players are wearing t-shirts with sponsors logos on it.

You can slot in advertising between episodes you know, it doesn't have to be in the middle, if there's extra time. Prime time means its the most expensive time for commercials as they estimate the most people would be watching.

I've been on community radio that has no ads, just promos, and if we have extra time they just play music for a break, which is kind of the opposite of commercial radio lol. If it was in between, I'd get to pick the song. Also the outro can be cut short or played to the end, I mean, in movies or epsodic tv not many people stick around to watch the credits, and that adds to the run time.

If you are that fascinated with logistics why not drop a line to Nielsens. https://www.nielsen.com/data-center/top-ten/
Well... I never said it was fascinating enough to actually do any WORK for it. =^.^=