Reflections in a MegaChurch Coffeehouse

Here I am, sitting at my 3-day church conference in Alabama.

One of the many realizations that I've made this trip is that I have a love/hate relationship with the church.

On one hand... to be quite honest, there can be such a hokeyness to it all. Take the conferences: the idea swapping with overly nice 40-something dudes in polo shirts and khakis. The strategic planning that won't make it any further than the car ride home. The incessant head nodders taking notes to help make their church too into a golf-cart shuttling, TV-station hosting, bookstore-sporting MegaChurch. Top this off with the look-at-me presenters who, while probably meaning well, have a look-at-what-I've-done air about them.

Then there's the contemporary worship, with its dramas and stage lights and bad music. Its silly pop culture rip-offs and poorly produced videos.

There's also doctrine and theology, which opens such a bag of worms that I won't even begin to go into.

And on the other hand? It's beautiful. It meets the needs - real or imagined - for many people. It invites me to be less judgemental, seeing everything and every seemingly un-hip person and procedure as exactly what it is and should be. It kicks me in the ass when I realize that everything that drives me nuts about it is less a reflection of the church than it is of myself.

It's a place that opens people to service and giving and community and God. It gives ordinary people like me the opportunity to use their gifts and creativity to work in a Mini-Hollywood with sets and props and rockstars and production. It downplays separation by connecting people together and then inspiring them to just be better people when they're interacting in their workplace. When it's done correctly it shuts out no one and is the great equalizer - giving love and meaning to the ones the world pisses on. It is what it is - and it doesn't deserve my negative criticism; it reminds me that all things are positively perfect.

So, now, as my eyes roll up in my head at the guy with the FBI Jesus ("Firmly Believe In...") who just walked into the church's in-house Bookstore to purchase a book that I would probably consider spiritually and theologically premodern/barberic, I'm gently reminded of the love and order that undercurrents all that is and my own need to be more accepting. And while most of the world - and myself, much of the time - sees the church as either silly, outdated or misguided, I'm enamored with it and I freakin' love it.
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//Sent via T-Mobile Sidekick 3//

"I'll be there."

I have never actually watched the classic movie "Grapes of Wrath," but our Pastor showed this clip at church on Sunday morning and the mystical dialog is just amazing.

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Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? They could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom: Maybe it's like Casey says: A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then -

Ma: Then what, Tom?

Tom: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready and where people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build. I'll be there, too.

A Challenge to "Big Productions"

As part of the Worship Team at our church, I'm constantly planning and working on the services for Sundays. The funny thing is how big of a "production" it's all become ("contemporary" worship, anyway). Today I got my "Technologies for Worship" magazine with page after page of articles on lighting and sound with complimentary glossy ads showing "Worship Leaders" proudly singing with their new Sure In-Ear Monitor system.

While glancing through the magazine, I was reminded of a chapter in a book called "Sabbath" by Wayne Muller (one of my favorite books). Here are a few excerpts:

• Liturgical ritual is meant to be repeated. We are not supposed to do it right the first time, and then be done with it. This year's Easter does not have to be new and improved, more dramatic and moving than last year's. The perfection is in the repetition, the sheer ordinariness, the intimate familiarity of a place known because we have visited it again and again, in so many different moments...
• This is not about progress, it is about circles, cycles, and seasons, and the way time moves, and things we must remember, because with ever-faster turnings of the wheel it can become easier to forget...
• When liturgy is ensnared by progress, all these quiet, mystical qualities are replaced by responsibility and obligation. I have been part of so many little churches paralyzed by the assumption that we must make this year's Christmas pageant better, more dramatic, more impressive, more spectacular than the last. I have seen parents, children, and youth ministers frantic, desperate, frusterated, and overwhelmed as they try to make the "perfect" representation of an event that was, at its origins, quiet, unassuming, unpredictable, sloppy, and invisible.