Jamie Oliver and Plastic Religion

I first saw Jamie Oliver’s cooking shows when I was living over in Switzerland, mostly when I was running at the gym watching him cook gorgeous meals on TV for his friends. Then a few weeks ago I heard about his new show, the Food Revolution, airing here in the States and so naturally I tuned in and DVRed every week of it.

If you haven’t seen the show, here’s a quick summary. Jamie Oliver is a chef from England and his Food Revolution is a reality show trying to combat obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in the USA. It’s always a pretty interesting study of human nature when you deal with the issue of food. The show’s got a lot to say about what we eat, us Americans, and some of it is seriously unpretty. But I also think it’s got loads to point out about our church culture as well. More on that later.

In the first show of the series, Jamie’s trying to change the diets of people in Huntington, West Virginia — winner of the distinguished title of “Fattest City in the U.S.” Basically, he goes into schools and talks to teachers, parents, kids, and teens about making good choices about what they eat.

At lunchtime he’s trying to come up with a healthy meal option for the kids at the local elementary school, alongside the standard terribly unhealthy one — which consists mostly of a pizza-inspired greasy slab so highly processed that it’s practically a new form of plastic. HOWEVER. And this was my favorite part. The principal, who’s supervising his experiment and is in charge of enforcing the FDA’s guidelines for school lunches (two grains per serving, so many vegetables per serving, etc., etc.), points out that Jamie’s menu is missing one grain required to meet the standard. He’s already made fresh roasted chicken with herbs, brown rice and veggies, all homemade and real. But this doesn’t meet the guidelines. No, they can’t serve it because it’s missing a grain.

To recap. The pizza-like substance met the guidelines. The healthy food did not. The point of having these guidelines in the first place is ostensibly to make sure the children were fed nutritional meals. Obviously everyone knows pizza meets all health guidelines!

But I’m not really talking about pizza. I love pizza and have no personal vendetta against it. I’m talking about being pizza as opposed to the real thing. Because I think that in many ways our churches have become just that. We’re meeting all the guidelines, we usually sound and look spiritual or religious…we say things like “blessings” and “Praise Jesus!” and use the phrase “in the Lord” constantly, but what we’re offering our kids is becoming a cheap form of the original idea.

The church seems to have reached a point where it doesn’t matter anymore what programs we have going on. Our services might be beautiful and flashy and trendy, but if people don’t see truth in what we do and who we are, both leaders and people in the church, all our messages will fall silent. And everyone (especially youth and children) learn by example. It’s time for a new way of not “doing church,” but of being the church. Right now we have a young culture more affected by Lady GaGa than anything that’s going on in our churches. Because Lady GaGa doesn’t pretend to be something she isn’t. She’s real to them.

So this isn’t even about what happens on Sunday mornings, or Saturday evenings, or whatever else. In a sense, that’s a side issue. It’s the rest of the week that counts. All the days in between — every second of every hour. Monday morning when we’re at school or work, and Wednesday afternoon when we’re shopping, and Friday night when we’re going out with friends. When we’re texting, Facebooking, MySpacing, YourSpacing, tweeting, whatever. These are the moments that matter. It’s the stuff in between the Sundays that make or break the church.

We don’t need new programs, or better-looking facilities, or more coolness, even though some churches are admittedly pretty cool. Maybe we need to figure out what we really believe and live like we mean it.

Tune in tonight for the final episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution at 9:00 p.m. on ABC. You can sign his petition for better school lunches here.