From Church Marketing Sucks:
If the electricity went out, and your walls fell down, and your biggest givers died, what would you have left? Would you have a community of people still seeking after the heart of God? Would you still worship even without a band? Would you still be able to learn about God even though you can't show a video or a PowerPoint slide? In other words, what you have when everything else goes away is what your church is really all about.
That one is an absolute killer...
A puzzling question you post. I have been to many churches and i can say yes and no. I have seen churches who rely so much on that kind of stuff that if one of those things happened they would think the world had ended. But then again i have attended and currently attend a church in which everything is simple. I think we need to get back to the simplistic ways that allowed church growth. I guess i should say our church isnt what you would call a church. we are in a building. If you would look at our church you would say it is a building. But its our church. Our Church Body meets there. Our service begins with a few worship songs and then dive right into the word. Their is no fancy movie playing to hook the audience into the sermon. In fact we dont even have a TV or a DVD player or computer. just some stereo equipment and audio equipment for the microphones. We are basic. We begin with a word of prayer and then read from the Bible. Our pastor studies that section of passage that we will read from and teach us from that. We are just cruising through the Bible. So i believe that if our walls fell down and the electricity went out and our biggest givers died we would still have church service. We depend on God for our needs. He will provide.
Its a great quote and I have linked to it as well, but I think herein lies the problem of our scattered definitions of church. The service that is totally reliant on technology and the mega churches are moreover a weekly conference rather than church. In fact you don't have to be big and techno-savvy to fall into what I would understand as a weekly conference. Sitting looking at the back of peoples heads, with monologue from the front is not the NT idea of curch. These are events that are practised for and heavily reliant on attractional marketing.
There is ample room in the breadth of Christian experience for these to happen though, in fact in todays world the prevalence of them suggests their need...but it is we that 'need' them for we created them.
So I guess you couldn't expect a conference to suddenly become church, because its structure doesn't allow it....electricity or not. Church is not something we do on Sunday, its defined by something we are.