A Month of Sundays Part IV
“Congratulations on your decision to commit your life to Christ! Here’s what’s next:
-Fill out this card
-Pick up your What’s Next Kit today”So, on Sunday I went directly into the belly of the beast (according to some friends) and attended a service, no an “experience,” at one of the local “.tv” versions of church.
I know. I know. I
know.
“Consumerism.” “Plastic.” “Fake.” “Watered down.” “Marketing.”
I’ve heard/read just about every bit of vitriol people have to spew against mega-churches. Luckily, since I’m not out looking for the “ideal church” and defending it, but rather out looking for new, unique experiences for myself I feel absolutely no need to join in the raging arguments.
So, with that in mind, some observations: Once again, crossing the threshold of an unfamiliar church, not knowing anyone is a little bit of a mental battle. But I walked in to a giant cavernous space which was merely the “coffee” and hawk-the-programs-and-services area. Even though I was a little early, the idea of mulling about in that area was unappealing to me so I went in and found a seat in what took the place of a “sanctuary,” feeling more like a concert hall.
As this was one of four services that day, I expected everything to run like German clockwork. Get ‘em in and out. And I was right.
After an introductory rock-out song, the place went dark and the “praise and worship” time started straight up at 10:00. I got the impression that this block of time is one of the big draws of this kind of church. Clearly lots of behind the scenes time, energy and money had to be poured in to the process of making this happen. It was loud. High energy. Lights. Smoke machine. Distorted guitar and big, busy drums. “Give it up for Jesus” was said more than once. And behind the words on the screens was some sort of digital milky white shape floating through space. So, pretty much a typical Sunday morning for yours truly! [The preceeding sentence is to be read with sarcasm.]
I listened to the music with a bit of jealousy: everyone on in-ear monitoring and live sound production on par with what you’d expect to hear at any kind of touring band’s concert—all kinds of digital delays on the voices and drum loops, etc. All very slick and polished. If anyone around me was singing along it was impossible to hear them. Musically, this was the sound of people who are paid to rehearse, not the sound of people who volunteer their time. Like I said, as a musician I was a tad jealous. That’s a pretty posh gig: being able to hear yourself on fancy equipment and play music that, let’s be honest here, doesn’t require much in the way of technique. But the really interesting thing I noticed, as I looked around at those assembled: mostly hip-looking 16-30 year olds, was that a lot of them looked just as bored and distracted as the 16-30 year olds I’m used to seeing. Amongst all the lights? The pounding subs? The smoke? Still bored? Of course, there were also the folks for whom this kind of music (or more importantly these words, I presume) really resonate. They were the “jump up and down and raise your hands”-type of folks.
So, high-energy, rock n’ roll show…check.
The only things left to do to call it church after that were deliver a message and invite people to become Christian or more Christian or Christian again or Godly or who knows what it is that people have in their heads at those invitation moments?
One other little observation-- as the official people spoke about the goings-on during the week and in the future, everything was “awesome.” As in “This concert/evangelical event is going to be ‘awesome.’” “That small group activity is ‘awesome.’”
If everything is awesome, NOTHING is truly awesome I thought to myself.
After the official videotaped “blessing” from the great Oz, we were off and running with the teaching moment. The message, delivered by a pretty young (I’m thinking late 20s to mid-30s) hip-looking guy, in jeans and designer T-shirt, was flawless as far as presentation technique is concerned. He didn’t use big, difficult words, used humor and examples from television and was an energetic speaker.
But as I listened to the topic “The Power of Prayer” I must confess I felt like I was being tricked a little bit. It seemed that in preparation, the message was put together with some general points: “Prayer is effective when it is X, Y, and Z” and then the supporting scriptures sought out. This type of teaching is one of the big criticisms I have heard of this and other mega-churches but I was more surprised by the underlying assumption of the message, namely that prayer is the method by which you get the things out of God that you need/ want for yourself: to conceive a child, a mate, etc.
True confession time. I don’t pray. Ever since I was a child I have had the assumption that if my creator is up there or out there or in here or wherever, then God knows what I need/want before I tell Him about it. And I don’t see much use in reminding myself of these needs and wants. I’ve been trying to focus on the overabundance of good in my life, not the lack of niggling things that would make it “perfect.” As I’ve always heard, “ ‘Better’ is the enemy of ‘good.” Of course, this leaves out the state of the world and others, which I’ll bet God knows about as well. But it surely wouldn’t be a bad thing if I were more mindful of the world outside of me and mine.
After the message was the requisite time of invitation to make a change and raise your hand with atmospheric, dreamy synth music playing in the background.
After that there’s nothing else left to do, apparently. We were dismissed and I checked my watch as I walked out the door. 11:00 EXACTLY.
Another realization I had during this time was that I’m afraid this project of mine is going to prove useless. What can you really know about a group of people by how they worship God for an hour or two on a Sunday morning? In that room were probably three hundred people. Three hundred stories, three hundred collections of successes and failures, cruelties and compassions. THOSE stories are the identity of the people of God for me. The rest-- musical choices, choir robes or lack thereof, preaching, prayers—those are just window dressing.
Right now I know this much. I’m not looking for an “awesome” hour of holy goose bumps or an hour of intelligent, Biblically-correct interpretations of reality or an hour to “recharge the batteries.” I’m starting to think that the things I want from a church are generally what EVERYONE (who isn’t a psychopath) wants from life, regardless of God talk: to love and to be loved. [Which, yes, I have largely known for the last 13 years…]
So, a big question I now ask myself is--"What place does a worship service have with respect to this perceived need?"
After church #3 it appears I’m still no further along than when I started!
I Love You, Beth Cooper by
Larry Doyle My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
As I was reading this humorous, sometimes clever take on high school life, I often thought: "why isn't this a movie?" especially as it bears a striking resemblance in form to the movie "Superbad." And then today I read that it is coming out as a motion picture in a couple months.
It's a fast read, a story of one incredible night in the life of a couple geek-ish senior boys and their unbelievable penetration of cool high school elite society.
Although the author unapologetically deals with cliche characters: the jock, cheerleader, nerd, etc. it is apparent which world was most familiar to Him when he suffered through those years.
A very funny, quick read.
View all my reviews.
A Working Class Hero is Something to Be
Nancy Gibbs has a great essay in this week's
Time magazine called "Do-It-Yourself Heroes" where she discusses three regular people who have been catapulted to hero status in the media as of late: Captain (Sully) Sullenberger, Captain Richard Phillips (the guy who offered himself up to pirates), and Susan Boyle, the English Youtube singer-lady.
Best passage:
"It's so much better to discover that Superman could be anyone; that everywhere you look,
there are hidden reserves of majesty and honor and genius and luck. [emphasis mine.] The stories wouldn't have worked if Susan Boyle had been a yuppie barrister or Phillips a SEAL himself. Their normality gives them wings."
Happy Friday, everyone!
A Month of Sundays Part III
The tour amongst the devout continued yesterday morning. Once again I marveled at how late church starts for a visiting person. (Granted, as of now, I have no plans to attempt Sunday School at these places, which would admittedly push the start times up an hour or so), but a relatively leisurely morning has been the best benefit of these experiments thus far. I went to the city’s most notoriously political, liberal Congregational United Church of Christ (whatever that means) service on Mother’s Day and it was quite an eye opener, intellectually-speaking.
Size: I’d say probably in the 300-400 range? [Caveat: I am horrible at judging numbers of people. My markers are my living room, which can contain about 8 people and Owen Stadium, which can hold 75,000. Any groups larger or smaller than that and I get overwhelmed by estimates.]
Service style: Kinda old-school—featuring hymns, a little bit of the “written out prayer” and “responsive reading,” sermon, end. The highlight for me was a focusing device which I had never heard of: the singing bowl. It’s basically a handheld, resonating bell that was struck with a mallet a few times and was VERY effective for yours truly to slow down his mind and adopt a less critical, analytical mindset and enter into a more trancelike, prayerful, reflective, reverent state. Listening to the oscillating overtones slowly devolve to silence was a beautiful, sparse moment for me. It turns out that I’m the kind of guy who craves silence. I could go on and on about how much our culture fears silence and blah blah blah. I won’t.
The People: this group of folks trended about 10-20 years older than the gathering at the last church I visited. Still, well-dressed and pasty white.
Unlike last time, I did have one exchange with another human. I present the drama in its entirety for you right now:
Me: "Is this seat saved?"
Guy about my age, with two kids: "Nah. No, of course not....saved it for you!"
Me: "Well, all right!" -THE END-
The Sermon: I don’t imagine anyone goes to this church’s services and leaves unaffected by the sermon in some way, based on anecdotes I have heard in the past. This is definitely a pastor who harps on social justice issues and is unafraid to talk of politics and government from the pulpit. While the idea of the people of God working for social justice is nothing new to me, this type of presentation, without talk of Jesus and salvation WAS new. Granted, this is a rather sweeping generalization to make upon just a single listen to a sermon.
Here’s what I was really thinking while the preacher talked about Mother’s Day’s origins as a radically anti-war American observance: “What if I were sitting in this very same pew listening to a preacher deliver an equally persuasive polemic from a conservative standpoint?” Well, I would have been ready to burn down the building of that bizarro church! “How dare they fire up the base by sullying religion’s name with crass politics!” I would have said to myself. But since I agreed with the thrust of what those old women were saying back in the 1800s when they were inventing Mother’s Day and what Mr. Preacher Man was reading from his script, ‘twasn’t that big of a deal.
I also found it kind of odd that such a “progressive” message (at least in Christian circles) was delivered in such a “traditional” feeling place- among wooden pews, a center aisle, choir in robes, organ and piano- amidst “traditional” music and amongst some grey-hairs. Context is so important.
But I left with one big question and one big lesson for myself.
Question: Do people ever listen to a sermon so as to disagree? Or do we like one preacher over another when they say what we already believe? Do we like having our ideas confirmed?
Lesson: On liturgy- I have finally figured out how to talk about my problem with responsive readings and reading prayers. I’m still fiercely independent. I loathe the idea of reading aloud someone else’s words as if they were my own. This is why I tend to not personally utter a script written out for me at least not until I’ve had a lot of time to review the words, think about them and decide if they are reflective of something I really do believe or even aspire to believe. For what good is served if I lie to both God and myself? And, on a purely aesthetic level, the sound of people monotonously reading aloud is absolutely chilling to me and not in a good way.
Yet another interesting day amongst strangers, but in the grand scheme, not strangers.
Whatcha' Listenin' To/ Watchin'? (Special Wagnerian Edition)
Let me tell you about one of the many cool things about the library. Imagine this scenario:
All through high school and college I hear about this humongous cycle of operas by Richard Wagner called
Der Ring Des Nibelungen. I am reminded of it when reading Alex Ross’s
The Rest is Noise (on loan from the library.) When checking to see if the library has recordings, or even better, videos of the operas I find out they don’t. I suggest the title, never thinking they would actually purchase them (we’re talking about one standard length opera and three super-sized operas, probably close to 15 hours of material in total!) Well, two weeks ago I was notified that they came in and were on reserve for me. Wow! When systems actually work like this I get excited.
Last night I finished watching the entire cycle, which has taken a little over a week to fit in the time. Let me start with some basics:
1) This kind of stuff is not for everyone. In fact it’s only even marginally for me! After all, this is OPERA we’re talking about! And I don’t even like opera. But I’ve always been curious about this Ring cycle for several reasons, as I’ll discuss.
2) The four operas tell a continuing story and were meant to be staged over four consecutive nights. The titles:
Das Rheingold,
Die Walkure,
Siegfried, and
Gotterdammerung. Have you ever heard the terms “epic” or “spectacle?” I can think of no better words to describe Wagner’s intent with this massive work of art. It’s the story of gods, goddesses, humans, dwarves, supernatural heroes, there’s a dragon…(Sound like another Ring-ish work, maybe?) Wagner had about 50-60 years’ head start on Tolkien, but I found some striking similarities between the two story lines. I have reason to believe they were drawing from the same well.
3) I watched all of this with a combination of: a)
awe at Wagner’s sheer artistic ambition- imagine it, imagine writing hours upon hours of musical score for a giant orchestra with scenes connected by instrumental sections, writing the libretto (lyrics), envisioning stage directions and practical matters like visually creating HEAVEN BURNING DOWN!- and b)
frustration- does it really take half an hour for two characters to say goodbye? On one hand, this continuous work of art is the absolute height of human creativity and ingenuity and labor. It’s THE example of a Romantic artist with something to say. On the other hand it’s an overweight, bloviating bore. One thing is for sure. This Wagner fellow would be out of place in our world. I wish I could bring him here in a phone booth time machine like Bill and Ted and introduce him to this Twitter thing that is all the rage.
4) The actual production (from the 80s) on the DVDs felt a little bit odd. One, the conductor was Pierre Boulez-- Mr. 20th century, anaesthetic, math-as-music guy. Probably has never had a Romantic impulse in his life. And he’s French--not the guy I immediately associate with German Romanticism on this loud of a scale. Two, the production design seemed to be a bit of a departure from the horned helmet and long pigtails that you normally see as the caricature of this music. I was a little distracted by the purposeful anachronisms—ancient looking, dark, foggy sets looking like a primordial Middle Earth and suits and ties for the men at points. Obviously this was the set- and costume designers’ attempt to present this story as timeless yet timely and relevant to today as well.
5) Unlike in other versions of musical theater there really isn’t any “acting” as we typically think of it. There are no spoken lines. Every bit of plot and emotion has to be expressed through singing and music. Due to the sheer size of the sets the “acting”, as it were, winds up looking a lot like it used to in the Greek theater where the characters wore giant masks to portray emotions over a large distance. While Wagnerian opera doesn’t have masks the performers are really insignificant in comparison to the giant landscape behind them.
Until you hear the voices. Good Lord, the voices! It’s another one of those dichotomies. The sheer lung capacity and power required to be heard over a large orchestra including drums, trumpets, horns and strings is quite impressive. It is almost “musical technique as athleticism.” It’s also piercing and not the kind of thing you’d like to relax to.
So, all in all, I’m glad I exposed myself to this monstrous work- this impressive, impractical, frustratingly slow, ambitious, sometimes glorious work of art that reminds us exactly what human beings are capable of.
A Month of Sundays Part II
So, it turns out that regular church-going people that maybe don’t play guitar or maybe don’t teach a class or maybe aren’t on staff at a church really have it easy. They roll out of bed at whatever time on a Sunday morning, maybe have some breakfast, probably read the paper and watch the news at a leisurely pace before they have to arrive.
Yesterday I went to church by myself, an anonymous stranger for the first time in my life. The first thing which struck me about yesterday was just how
late 10:30 in the morning is! No wonder people can fall into a pattern of shopping around for churches. When you are unconnected or have no responsibilities or both, church-going is easy! (Of course I realize that for the average family with kids a Sunday morning is anything but leisurely. You can’t make the start time late enough for those frazzled folks.)
I went to a medium-sized non-denominational church yesterday on the northern side of town. Just like at my home church the service started with music and the musicians started pretty much on time, but the majority of the congregation, casually-dressed and ranging in age from babies to early 50s, were straggling in about five or ten minutes later.
(Note: If I wanted to I could probably write an entirely different blog, separate from
Sic Semper Tyrannis purely about church music and my experiences with it, aesthetics, etc.) Therefore I will limit my musical remarks to two things I know for certain:
1) I do not get excited about “Christian” music, by which I mean BOTH “praise & worship music” and traditional hymns with the organ, choir, orchestra and the whole nine yards. It’s just not the kind of music I listen to at home, at the gym, in the car, or anywhere outside the walls of a church, (other than when someone specifically asks me to learn a song as an accompanist.)
2) I do not expect a church’s musical selections to be consistent with my aesthetic preferences. If I did, I would be a miserable, miserable person. For the church that sings Radiohead, Red House Painters, Frank Zappa and Steve Reich or plays John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” (all artists or compositions that I would say have struck me on a very “spiritual” level, if I even knew what that means)
most likely doesn’t exist.
Having said that, the music was pleasant enough- a couple acoustic guitars and vocals and rock band rhythm section, nothing too loud, distorted, or fast. I enjoyed watching people react to this music, everything from stone still statue, (a page out of my book!) to the requisite lifting of hands, closing your eyes, etc. I also thought it was sweet to see a couple little girls dancing at the front, as if they were having fun. Fun? Anyway, I get the feeling I will always feel like a foreigner during the musical part of a church service.
After the music there were a couple baptisms of kids. Of course with as many churches as there are in the world, that’s probably how many ways you will hear people talk about baptism. One thing I thought was interesting was how the baptisms were performed not by the pastor, but by either a parent or someone influential in their lives, (a small group leader, etc.) Scandalous! Thus, the talking during the baptisms was very off-the-cuff and unpolished.
Then came the pastor’s sermon, pretty basic stuff about how we need God and that we need to realize that fact.
And of course, it’s not church if the congregation isn’t invited to respond to the message. I was intrigued by how “low-pressure” the invitation to “come forward” was. For some reason, I guess to avoid coming across as some kind of salesman, the pastor seemed almost apologetic that they follow the sermon with soft music and a prayer time.
And then church was over. Really not unlike hundreds of other services I’ve been to in the grand scheme of things.
While I had some trepidation walking into a church by myself, (as I would have in walking into
any social situation by myself), I will say that I was very comfortable in this place as an observer. I spoke to no one. Nor was I spoken to. That’s an easy morning. I know at my home church, they try to make that an impossibility-to be completely anonymous as a visitor. However, it didn’t bother me one bit this first time out. “Other people” are a blessing and a curse in my worldview anyway! But I would think that too many weeks of that on end would start to feel a little hopeless, however.
But this talk of social interactions leads me to think about why someone decides to go to a church service in the first place. I know why
I have gone all of these years: to see my friends at this easy, predictable meeting place and time... to play music...to be of service...and (when I’m of the mindset) to hear about God and his people. But why would someone else go to church?
I’ll let you know when I figure it out…
