Glide Memorial

Whenever we travel, we always try to attend a church that is doing things differently than we do.  I hope the experience will stretch me and open me to a new way of doing what we do at Cambridge Drive.

Last weekend was our anniversary.  We didn't have time or money to do a real vacation so we drove north to O'town and visited our daughter and son-in-law for a few days.  We decided to cross the bridge and attend Glide Memorial Church on Sunday morning.  It was a unique experience.  I've never been to a church before where the website advised you to arrive at least 1/2 hour early to ensure getting a seat.  Sure enough, the line was over a block long before the doors opened to allow us in.  During the service, the pastor asked the members of the congregation to stand.  Less than 1/3 of the people attending stood.  The group standing were significantly more diverse - all colors, sexual orientations, economic settings, ages - than the mostly white tourists attending.

The service itself was very much a performance.  The band and the choir were killer but rock concert loud in a room with typical lousy church acoustics - making the sound pretty muddy.  Still, the excitement was infectious and much of the time everyone was on their feet clapping along.  There was only one song that was clearly meant for the congregation to join in singing so it felt more like a performance than a worship service.   A group who had recently returned from a work trip to Kenya spoke during the sermon time... they did a very good job, clear, succinct, and meaningful.   There was little prayer, no time of silence, and I don't recall anyone mentioning Jesus.  My daughter Alexis found the experience way too intense and blogged about it here.

I was struck by the difficulties of doing worship in a congregation comprised of folk without shared history or even commitments.  I was reminded of the difficulty of doing ministry in urban areas and the resources that work requires.  I was thrilled with an obvious welcome that was there for all without question or hesitation.  I'm glad that Glide is there.  They provide a version of the gospel that is rarely seen and open doors to folk very few churches would welcome.  Still, it isn't for me... but it doesn't need to be.

So, what did I learn?  There is room for a progressive gospel and a style that is culturally relevant.  Indeed, even tourists want to experience it.  I would expect that at least some of the folk there left with a new hunger to find a church that would actually accept them as they are and speak to them in ways that touched their lives when they returned home.   I learned that I can never take the need for balance in worship for granted.  I learned that I feel pretty good about who we are, what we are doing, and the journey we are on at Cambridge Drive.

worship songs - again

Last November I posted a piece about my struggle with theology in worship songs... that often I cringe at the theological implications or statements in a song but the music or another part of the song really works for me.  I'm facing it again.  In that post, I shared my fear that people get more of their theology from the songs they sing than anywhere else, so my song choices are doubly important.

Next week we're having a missionary - Corenne Smith -  visit us and share her work.  (She and her husband Philip have a wonderful ministry in Brazil. Check it out in the link on her name and the video below.)  So, I asked her for suggestions for songs and she gave me one - God of This City.  I really like the general message of the song - that God is at work and has a vision for what we will become in this local.  Except the first verse really grates on me.  "You're the God in this city."  I don't know what city they're talking about but I've never been in a city without multiple "gods" and certainly have never experienced one where God is truly seen as God.  Still, I could almost let that line slide.  "You're the King of these people."  Same argument, but much stronger.  Again, I might let it slide, thinking that it is referring to the people singing the song.   "You're the Lord of this nation."  That one is just untrue... and as a true believer in separation of church and state, really makes me squirm.  I don't want it to be true.  For a slew of reasons, I just can't sing that or have the members of Cambridge Drive sing that.

On the other hand, I love verse 2

You're the Light in this darkness 
You're the Hope to the hopeless 
You're the Peace to the restless

And I love the chorus...

For greater things have yet to come And greater things are still to be done in this city Greater thing have yet to comeAnd greater things are still to be done in this city  

So... what do I do?  Just delete the first verse?  Maybe.  Or change the words a bit... it is tricky to make them fit but work for my theology.  "You're the God who loves this city" for example...  Still, it feels a bit parochial and requires a few more syllables to get squeezed in...  Maybe, "God is in this city... God loves these people... God loves this nation..." or do I just skip the song?  What do you think?

here's a video, sharing Corenne & Philip's work.

a vacation report

The longest portion of our vacation was in Pennsylvania and the setting was as different as possible from the first days of our trip. We went from the heat, unrelenting sun, and barren landscapes of Phoenix to the hills and bridges of Pittsburgh and the fecundity of central PA. Christian got to see lightening bugs for the first time and we enjoyed the lush greenery of that part of the world - walking in the woods, enjoying the lakes and rivers, and even driving down country roads and across bridges in Pittsburgh. We stayed in a wonderful little B&B in central PA called Crampton Manor, that I would highly recommend to anyone visiting that part of Pennsylvania. My in-laws live near there and we will certainly be staying there again. We had great visits with family and friends and truly enjoyed being away. Two weeks allowed both Cheryl and me to disengage and it was good.

On July 4, we visited a United Methodist church in McConnelsburg, PA. The worship space was full and seemed representative of the small town and surrounding rural areas. The service came straight out of the 50's with very traditional music and an electronic organ. Much of the language was reflective of a conservative church from that same era with one huge exception - the pastor's sermon. While it certainly reflected that same theology and worldview, it diverged in a very significant way. His text was from the book of Jonah. The title was Praying for Osama Bin Laden.

The service was full of nods to patriotism and American civil religion and I was more than a little apprehensive about the sermon. I was afraid it would be some call to arms and revenge. Instead, the pastor called the congregation to pray for Osama Bin Laden... not that he be killed or even captured (although the pastor did say that Bin Laden needed to be held accountable for his actions), but that he would know grace. The service ended with a hymn This Is My Song, with which I was unfamiliar but I found deeply moving. The tune is Finlandia - one of my favorite hymn tunes - and the words both acknowledged patriotism and pride in our own country while seeing the humanity, pride, hopes, and dreams of others and praying for their peace as well.

It was a church that I'm sure I would not attend if I lived there but I was deeply touched by the courage of the pastor to call for actions that are clearly counter-cultural, especially in his setting, and also clearly based both in the text he was using and in the message of Jesus.

experience?

On May 8 I posted a piece regarding planning a worship service that I called Constructing an Experience. As I've been listening to the Stephen Prothero book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn't, I've been thinking a bit about that blog entry. Is constructing an experience what I'm really doing each week... or should it be?


Prothero goes through the history of religious literacy in the United States and presents a model with a clear shift from head to heart over the years. He says that in the early days of the United States, sermons were doctrinal, almost like theological lectures. Faith included a serious helping of knowledge. Almost all early colleges/universities in the US were founded as training schools for clergy and the common schools and Sundays schools of the time, both aimed at educating the population, all taught religious doctrine. Being a Christian meant knowing a significant amount of material. Prothero says that there was a growing anti-intellectualism that really took hold during the 2nd Great Awakening in the early 1800's where illiterate preachers moved to the forefront and many leading evangelists bragged at their lack of education. Christianity moved from the head to the heart and sermons became more story based, aimed at getting an emotional response.

I don't know enough about the history of that period to know how accurate Prothero's take on it is, but I suspect there is a lot of truth in it. For me, it raises the question, what are we doing on Sunday morning? Is it an event aimed at encouraging a mystical experience? Are we trying to get an emotional response? change the way people live their lives? increase their knowledge? Is it a cultic event where we re-enact rituals? a private communion between individuals and God? And finally is there something that only can happen in this communal gathering or is it just an appendage to a private spiritual life? What exactly are we doing and what is the role of the pastor/leader in planning and facilitating that time together?

What do you think?

constructing an experience

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

My friend Jon posted this on his blog the other day and I had to put it here for all of you as well... I laughed... but as Jon's wife said, "it is too close." BTW, Jon's blog is great! Do check it out.

First, I'll confess. My church doesn't look like this, but if we could, we likely would. We don't have the staff, expertise, equipment, etc. to pull this kind of a production off but if we did, we likely would head in more or less that direction (albeit with a different theology than most such churches).

As a pastor, every week I am charged with constructing an experience. In the best of weeks, the folk in the congregation have an encounter with the very presence of God. The problem is, I have no control over that. It depends upon the openness of their hearts and most of all, it depends upon God. I can do some things in the service that hopefully contribute a bit to their openness. I can do my best to put together a service that is consistent, centered, and has positive movement and a theme that is relevant to the lives of the members but beyond that I have no power. Some people will experience the presence of God and some will not and that will happen regardless of how well I have done my part. Hopefully, I can construct an experience that will help more people to find that experience than not... or I can manipulate their emotions into something that isn't quite right but sure feels good. and there is the problem. What is the line between manipulating folk and opening a door for them to enter through?

So what the video satirizes is just doing what we can, trying to construct an experience... but the more resources a church has, the more effective it can be at manipulation, at pushing people in a direction that may in fact, impede any real experience of God's presence by forcing an emotional experience on them. If we have the resources, that is actually the easy route. We know how to do that as per the video. Worse yet, in a consumer culture so centered around entertainment, it is all too easy to confuse the slickly produced mega-church worship service with a genuine experience of the presence of God. So for me, the video is a serious warning. We won't ever have a service like that one, but I still need to beware of manipulating my congregation and taking the easy way out - a slick experience vs. the very presence of God.

church

I have been a pastor since 1978 in three very different churches in radically different settings. I have a Master of Divinity from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry from Drew University Theological School. I have done a reasonable job of keeping up with my continuing education and with reading. I know much of the latest church research and I know what the theorists say about churches and the people in churches. All that said... I don't understand why some churches grow and others do not.

This past Sunday, I took the Sunday off and we visited "The Big Church" in town. They have three services on Sunday for a total of 2 or 3 thousand people a week. When I ask the folk I meet whether they are part of a faith community, of those who say "yes," probably 50% say "The Big Church." So I thought there must be something great going on there. I went hoping to learn something about doing effective and engaging ministry in this community.

As I said, I don't understand. We arrived about 15 minutes early and easily found a parking space. We walked to the entrance... and didn't know where to go. There was no signage and nobody spoke a word to us. We followed some people and found the door to the worship space - a big old warehouse. It was dark with lots of pillars and the seating was benches like might be used as outdoor furniture with pads. Very uncomfortable. There was a loop of information, projected onto two places on the wall. From any place in the room, the image was partially blocked either by pillars or beams. On the platform, there was a piano, a drum set, a few microphones, a number of large potted plants, and a pulpit. The backdrop reflected the craftsman style architecture that is found in this area. There were no obviously Christian symbols anywhere.

An acoustic guitarist, pianist, bass player, and drummer came out. The guitarist talked for a while... kind of rambling... and they began a set of music. The first three songs were very difficult to sing (and I didn't know them). It seemed that a few people in the congregation (which was slowly growing) were singing along but most were not. Those who were seemed to be in their own little worlds. The sound was OK but nothing special. The musicians were adequate but only the bass player impressed me (he was GOOD). They then led a few songs that I knew and I sang along. Still, the majority of the congregation seemed to be unengaged. Even the musicians seemed to be doing their own thing...

One of the pastors came up and explained their new online giving opportunities, made announcements including two fundraisers being held to support church programs, and called for the offering. Two of the musicians did a song to canned background. By this time the space was pretty full.

Then the senior pastor came to the pulpit. His text was James 3:13-18. His sermon wasn't offensive, but it also didn't excite me, inspire me, or challenge me. It was merely there... and it seemed long. He was personable enough but there wasn't anything there. Then it ended, he called the prayer team forward, the band did another song and people began to leave.

As we drove home, Cheryl and I talked and neither of us could understand why anyone would go back. I never experienced a sense of corporateness about their worship. When people were worshiping, they seemed to be withdrawn into themselves. There was nothing outstanding and nothing that made the experience easily accessible. I have heard better music in many other churches in the area. I have heard better preaching just about everywhere. I have heard that they have great youth programs but there was nothing that indicated that from where we sat. There were very few children present - presumably they were someplace else, and very few teens - maybe they were someplace else too.

Again, I don't understand why anyone would go back a second Sunday. Some may appreciate the anonymity that it offered but that could easily be found elsewhere. The pieces are all done better elsewhere. The only piece that it seems to have that others don't is sheer size and the Walmart like "something for everyone" programing. Still, like Walmart, it struck me that nothing was quite what it could have been.

Ouch

Churches walk a very fine line between being relevant to the culture and embracing it whole hog. Incarnation requires us to be relevant in the context we find ourselves but many of the values of the dominant culture are antithetical to the call of Jesus. If we do not speak the language of the culture and understand it, then we have nothing to say. At the same time, if we fail to be authentic to the values of Jesus in our context, we lose our credibility and damage the ministry of the church.

Sometimes, the line is really difficult to walk. I wonder when worship treads too close to entertainment or when church leaders become celebrities. At CDCC, we try to use media well, present music with quality, and I work hard to make my sermons engaging. I want to keep people's attention in a world where they are inundated with high production value entertainment. Running a church that speaks to this culture isn't cheap, especially in Santa Barbara. Money is an issue we cannot ignore but we must always be good stewards of the money we receive. And it is difficult to measure "success" outside of its cultural trappings.

Add to that a culture that has high expectations of the Church even as they ignore it. Folk in the broader culture expect churches of all institutions, to be authentic to the values we espouse. We become an easy target if we slip over the line even a little.

A friend shared this link to a youtube video that evidently came from an Australian television show called Chaser's War on Everything. It is a parody of a very large church in Australia with huge numbers of people, incredibly high production values, and more resources than many small countries in the developing world. I have no idea how fairly the parody reflects Hillsong, but it certainly hurts any of us in the institutional church who struggle with those lines. Evidently the perception of some in Australia is that Hillsong has crossed the line.



I have to say that I wrestled with whether or not I should post the video. I did laugh... and cringe as I watched it. Most of all though, I prayed... May God keep the Church of Jesus from becoming like this parody. I posted it as a reminder to myself...