This week I attended a seminar on technology for churches. One new concept called “Environmental Projection,” involved taking a panoramic photograph of the inside of a large cathedral, and then projecting the images on the inside walls of a mega church so that the vast expanse of bare, sheetrock walls of a mega church suddenly looks like the inside of a real church. The whole idea made me laugh and it underscores the lengths people will go to make a poor imitation look like the real deal.

Relationships and communities are like that too nowadays. How many of you have been “Friended” on Facebook by someone you didn’t even know? Or by someone you cannot stand to be around? Beneath that mountain of information that we share about ourselves is the real truth of relationships that no amount of computer software will ever replicate. Social media may help reinforce pre-existing personal relationships, but they are a poor substitute for the real deal.

Today people who don’t even know each other can be “linked into” networks of colleagues. We can tweet and chat and IM and Skype and text to all of our friends and loved ones all over this tiny planet and even into outer space, but the sense of social isolation seems to be increasing in spite of all these virtual ways to connect with one another.

I used to watch “Extreme Makeover” on TV occasionally. The concept was to find a family in distress with a house that was in terrible shape. The reality TV crew would come in, design and build a brand new house for the family while they spent a week on vacation. The show would open where the host knocks on the door early on a Saturday morning to rouse the family. After the knock they would all come to the door. “Are you ready for this adventure? For your new house?” he would ask.

One time I looked closely at the family. Here it was, 7:30 on a Saturday morning and the family all popped out of their front door wearing color coordinated, neatly pressed polo shirts. In real life, most families roused at 7:30 on a Saturday morning are not going to come out looking like the Brady Bunch. At that moment I realized how much of the show was totally scripted.

So we have big box, mega churches trying to be real, old traditional churches by displaying images of the old stuff on their walls. The mega churches are taking the reality TV strategy trying to make themselves be something that they are not. Word is on the street that the evangelical churches are now discovering (gasp), structured liturgy!

We have social network technology serving as the reality TV of personal relationships. Whether it is images of a traditional church projected on the bare walls of a mega church, or whether it is electronic devices masquerading as your “friend,” a real church and a real friend can be hard to find.

Who are you really connected to? Who can you trust? When you are lying on that hospital bed and the doctor tells you to get your affairs in order, who are you going to pray to? Do you pray to the God that made you rich because some preacher told you to say a few words of belief in a televised service? Do you pray to the God who answers all your prayers just the way you want?

Or do you have a rocky relationship with this God out there? Have you had life experiences that felt like parts of you were getting pruned away? Have you wondered why parts of your life seemed to fade while unexpected parts flourished? Do you wonder when you pray late at night whether God is even listening at all?

You may recall the Trinitarian approach to prayer. We pray to the Father through Jesus working in us with the power of the Holy Spirit. We have a complicated relationship with God. Like real human relationships, it has its ups and downs. It has its wonders, mysteries and mountain top experiences. Our relationship with God is organic, natural, and totally real. “I am the vine. You are the branches.”

You won’t find God on a Facebook page.

And then there is the church. Let’s spin the idea of “Environmental Projection” on its head for a moment. Suppose we got it all wrong. Imagine that we find a way to project bare, painted walls over all these windows. We cover up the windows telling the story of the Bible. We cover up the dedication and love of families, some still sitting here, who labored as saints in ages past. We cover up the century of liturgies from four different prayer books. Next we strip the altar rails, pews, and all that objectionable stuff out of the front and just make it look like a junior high auditorium.

We have thrown out the bedrock Nicene Creed with all of its challenges and stability. We have peeled away the idea that fixed-form prayers and structured liturgy could actually be helpful in leading you to that organic connection to others and to God. We have taken a wrecking bar to worship principles and a sense of community that has worked well for 2000 years. What did we get in return for all this effort?

We just created the big-box, shopping mall mega church where the pastor preaches absolutely anything that comes to his mind (and they are almost all male). We get a church that oddly floats free from any real, organic connection to the timeless church of the past two millennia. We get the virtual church of anything goes. We get the good time place that answers your prayers the way you want. We get the reality TV church that emphasizes only this generation with no connection to the generations of the past.

I am not suggesting that you cannot have a real, organic, complicated relationship with God in this kind of a church. I am suggesting that the process of creating these churches is just like the process of live television: It is completely absorbed in the now. In doing so you have discarded so much that can anchor you and connect you. Developing the kind of relationship we value with God, will be very difficult.

“I am the vine. You are the branches.” We are connected to, grafted on, growing out of and part of God in so many ways. We are also connected to each other right now, in the past and in the future. We do not need environmental projection to make this a real church. We are real already. Now, go out and bear good fruit.