Faith Formation As A Rehearsal

A serious-looking man resembling Nathan Fielder stands with a clipboard in a church sanctuary, in front of a group of mannequin-like churchgoers seated in pews. Behind them hangs a large banner that reads, “Welcome to the Church Rehearsal.” The worshippers appear frozen mid-service, some holding communion elements, others with vacant expressions. — DALL·E image likeness of a comedian/737 pilot

Nathan Fielder’s HBO experiment exposes what happens when faith becomes a script: the church rehearses piety but forgets how to live it.

Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal is part satire, part social experiment, and part existential crisis disguised as premium cable. It’s awkward. It’s brilliant. And if you’re paying attention, it’s also a pitch-perfect metaphor for how American Christianity tries to form people of faith—through rigid control, endless scripting, and a pathological fear of unpredictability.

It’s not a show about religion. But it is very much about belief. And damn if it doesn’t expose the uncomfortable truth: much of what we call faith formation is really just performance management.

Simulated Sanctification

In the first season of The Rehearsal, Fielder builds elaborate replicas of real-life spaces so people can “rehearse” life’s hardest conversations. A trivia team member confesses a long-held lie. A woman rehearses motherhood. Another participant cycles through hypothetical confrontations like they’re in a choose-your-own-sermon simulator.

It’s absurd. It’s also familiar.

Church culture loves to script people into sanctification. Got a problem? There’s a Bible verse for that. A study guide. A purity pledge. A podcast. A laminated wallet card. It’s spiritual IKEA—you just follow the instructions and assemble yourself into a decent Christian.

Except real life doesn’t work like that. And neither does faith. At some point, the script falls apart. And when it does, a lot of people realize they were never taught how to live without one.

God as Director, Not Father

Nathan is always there. Always watching. Always nudging. He inserts himself into the simulations under the guise of “helping,” but mostly just ends up manipulating people’s choices for the sake of the show.

It’s hard not to draw the theological parallel.

A lot of folks were raised with a God who felt less like a loving parent and more like a cosmic showrunner—one who tracks your sins, sends you signs, and controls the outcomes (but only if you’re doing it right). Faith becomes less about relationship and more about surveillance. You live to please a silent director who only speaks in feelings, scripture snippets, and Christian radio.

That’s not formation. That’s stage fright.

Children of the Script

The most unsettling arc in The Rehearsal involves Fielder’s attempt to simulate fatherhood. He hires child actors (rotated out every few hours due to labor laws) to “play” his son over weeks. The deeper he goes, the blurrier the lines become. By the end, one of the child actors is mourning the loss of his fake dad. And Nathan, a man allergic to intimacy, is suddenly terrified he might have done real emotional damage through this well-meaning rehearsal.

That episode could’ve been shot in any evangelical children’s ministry.

Churches often treat kids as props in the morality play. We don’t teach them to think—we teach them to repeat. We baptize them into a theology of control, then wonder why they leave the second they taste freedom.

Child actors. Scripted roles. Emotional confusion. Sound familiar?

The Church’s Rehearsal Rooms

Think of how many church programs are essentially rehearsals: altar calls, purity rings, accountability groups, mission trips designed for selfies. We coach people on how to look faithful—how to pray out loud, how to “witness,” how to say “I’ll pray for you” with a straight face. But formation isn’t about rehearsing responses. It’s about forming a soul.

The problem? The church wants performance. Jesus wanted transformation.

Big difference.

Faith That Can’t Be Rehearsed

Here’s what The Rehearsal gets right: rehearsing life doesn’t prepare you for it. It only amplifies your anxiety and hollows out your authenticity. Nathan builds simulations to reduce uncertainty, but all he finds is more of it. That’s the punchline. That’s the pain.

And it’s the same with faith.

You can rehearse certainty all you want. But real faith—actual, lived faith—is about mystery. Movement. Trust. Not knowing. It’s about failing, learning, and being remade, not in someone else’s image but in the image of grace.