MainStreet Worship

In the last post, I talked about this new worship service we're starting. (Read that post to get caught up if you need to... Done? Okay, let's continue.)

One very important question to me in approaching this project was, what can we do to make the experience less of a concert/lecture feel and more like something you actually get into? (Especially since a theater naturally lends itself to concert/lecture just by its architecture...) My friend Dwain, who I believe would consider himself agnostic as far as religious belief, once attended one of our services and wrote up a very valuable critique of it from his perspective. One of his observations was an astute question on preaching: "Wouldn’t it be more productive to enter into a dialogue with the community?" That question has stuck with me, because I agree. (Obviously we try to do exactly that in small-group settings, and that's one reason we believe in small groups so strongly. We also try - with varying degrees of success - to promote a small-group culture where honest questions are welcomed and not greeted with fear and loathing.)

We had several ideas as to how to accomplish this goal of making the teaching more interactive. First, though, we had to realize that going all-out and riding the leading edge of church innovation probably wouldn't work in small-town Missouri. With some exceptions, the fashions, language, and lifestyle of our town stays about two or three years behind what's going on even in nearby Kansas City, not to mention on the coasts. Very few people in this town are probably ready to come to a worship service where the venue is covered in modern art and the scent of incense fills the air and they're handed a piece of art charcoal and told to express their feelings on the atonement by creating spontaneously on a long roll of parchment.

One idea we've seen elsewhere that we really like is to enable questions and feedback by putting a text-messaging code on the screen that people can text questions to. Then the speaker or a panel can respond to those questions at the end. The problem with this service is that it costs around $50-80 per month. We think it's cool, but we're sorta running this thing on a shoestring budget right now. Also, some of the staff have wondered out loud (and probably justifiably) if getting people started texting during the service is actually going to end up being counterproductive to what we're trying to do.

So we've ended up with a fairly easy-going atmosphere, occasional random elements added to the service like Q&A sessions, people who come and tell their story, drama, video, and other things. We're looking for ideas that are creative, without being so weird that people in this town run screaming in terror.

Your thoughts? What have you seen elsewhere that seemed to work well?

EDIT: Also, this week's theme (as part of the "God, I Have Questions!" series) is "Is Hell Real?" We want to present this not as a scare tactic, but as accurately diagnosing the danger... Kind of a "No one has to go to hell - you have to reject Jesus' forgiveness to do that. But if we believe it's real, shouldn't we be honest about trying to make sure people don't go there? Even though it is an inconvenient truth?" (Pardon me for that last...)

Ideas for something interactive or different to communicate this without screaming and such? (And no, I don't want to do a "human video" that starts with a pretty teenage girl who gets attacked by demons who make her drink and then the Jesus character comes in and beats up the demons and saves the pretty girl.)

Filling the Hours

There's a line from Oceans Eleven that I love. Daniel Ocean, played by George Clooney, is talking about assembling the team for a heist. He comments on the "Mormon twins," saying, "I got the sense they're having trouble filling the hours." This is followed by a scene showing the twins racing a monster truck against a remote-controlled miniature version of the same truck and arguing like ten-year-olds.

This week, Cindy and I don't have every waking hour spoken for, finally. This after several weeks in which "filling the hours" didn't require much in the way of effort at all. In the weeks leading up to Easter, we were heavily involved in several major projects.

The first was our church's Easter play, in which Cindy plays one of the two main narrator characters - Pontius Pilate's wife - and I play one Jesus of Nazareth (you may have heard of him). The rehearsals and set/tech work took the amount of time that these things always do.

The second major project was our church's new worship service. For several years, there have been two Sunday morning worship services - one at 8:30 am, and one at 10:45 am, with Sunday School classes between the two from 9:45 to 10:35. These two services are virtually identical in style and schedule. Last week, on the Sunday after Easter, we added a third Sunday morning worship service, running from 10:00 am to 11:10-ish. This new service is a different feel. The music is a different style (more guitar-driven and without an orchestra), the flow is different (the order of things shaken up often), and the look is entirely different. In fact, the venue is different. It's the Opera House Theater, a historic building in downtown El Dorado Springs that was completely refurbished a few years ago and is now a super-sweet movie theater with chandeliers and gold ceiling and lots of awesomeness. We worked out a deal with the theater owners that allowed us cheap rent in exchange for some cleaning and promises of being very very careful not to burn the place down or otherwise steal/kill/destroy. The approach is casual, and aimed at a target demographic of people who think cool old buildings and gold ceilings are neato. It's called MainStreet Worship.

So anyway, this required a TON of work and lots of prayer sessions, both personal and corporate, in which we had no difficulty whatever admitting our inadequacy for the task. All the groundwork leading up to the new service put a big load on the church staff. For example, Sunday school classes had to be analyzed, and in some cases moved to a new 11:15-noon time slot. If you've ever been around American Bible-belt evangelical churches, you know what a huge deal it is to change that. Also, the same message would be preached three times, by the same man, but the second of the three times would be in a different venue and different atmosphere. So the schedule is the main difficulty - Pastor Joe finishes teaching in the first service at 9:45, and has fifteen minutes to get to the theater for the start of the worship service there. No sweat. But then, depending on the way the MainStreet service is scheduled, he's sometimes finishing up there around 11:00 or 11:10. That means he rolls in to the 10:45 service about the time the music/announcements are wrapping up, and he's got to be ready to start speaking again, just minutes after finishing the message the second time. Fortunately the theater is just a bit over two miles from the church's Park Street location, and El Dorado Springs doesn't really struggle with traffic jams, so the commute is rarely a problem.

And then there were questions. What do we do for childcare at this new location? Should we recruit some "core members" for this new service? Can we change the aesthetic of the theater for worship in some simple, portable, yet powerful ways? How can we avoid just falling into the same old ruts in a new location?

So we kicked it off last week. And yesterday was the second one. I loved it. I hope the people who don't currently attend church who have come the last two Sundays liked it too. Most seemed to (but of course in this small town I'd be one of the last to hear any negative feedback, because negative feedback comes in round-about ways in this culture).

Then Saturday night, Cindy was one of the main sponsors for prom. She got drafted into that job a few years ago through no fault of her own, and stays in the job because she won't take my advice and do shoddy work to get out of being re-elected. She has to beg and plead and cajole to get enough helpers from the Junior Class (the official producers of the event) to get all the decoration/planning done. I hate prom. But since she has to be there, I help. And I watch all the worst parts of my memories of high school played out in front of me. And I see teenagers I care about getting way too much in the vein of a Britney Spears music video for my taste. (I'm going to be a very overprotective father, I'm afraid. I suspect my children will not be fans of me when they're teenagers.)

So three weekends in a row were the Easter play, MainStreet Worship's first iteration, and prom. We haven't had trouble filling the hours.

More on MainStreet worship in the next post. I hope you read that one and give me your feedback.

Sleep Talkin Man

Okay, so I just discovered this thanks to Kevin Allred. This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while, but BE WARNED - his sleep-talking language is definitely obscene at times.

http://sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/

Awesomely Bad Church/Ministry Websites

So a couple of weeks ago, Jeremy Oehring, who has been interning here this fall, found a church website with the most awesomely bad flash intro either of us had ever seen. You MUST check it out here (BUT make sure your speakers aren't up too high - they might explode from sheer awesomeness!):

http://www.evangelcathedral.net/

My favorite part is that after the glory beams launch into the sky around the church building and we're done with the intro, then the rock guitar kicks into its plaintive wail, and the pastor welcomes us to their "PPresence" on the web (a "P" plosive sound is a cardinal sin in recording).

Yesterday I was trying to find this site again to show it to someone, and couldn't remember what it was called. I googled for "church site flash intro" and it was in the second result - this. Careful - if you spend too long in that post you may never return from the awfulness. But I noticed that several in that list were designed by the same designer as Evangel Cathedral's, including this one:

http://www.iccm-1.org/

Another gem on this site is found after the intro is over by clicking on the "Founder and CEO" link on the left. The guy has "over one hundred best-selling books"?!?!? REALLY? Over a hundred? Best-selling by whose definition? I'm pretty sure Stephen flippin' King doesn't even have that many best-sellers. So why haven't I heard of this guy?

If you want lots more of the same, check out the designer's portfolio here. Especially scroll to the second page and watch the K & K Mime site intro. It doesn't even have a "skip" button! It actually just has a "replay" button! How... why... uh... eh?

I wish I could come up with some pithy summing-up paragraph here that makes a clever commentary on something. I think the Flash awesomeness was just too much for me though.

Umbrage

A useful website my dad showed me: www.umbrage.org

Make sure you read the FAQ.

The whole "keeping the Christ in Christmas" thing

Long ago I decided that I think it's phenomenally silly to protest or boycott businesses, organizations, etc. that call Christmas "Xmas" or just refer to it as "The Holidays." Well-meaning folks like the American Family Association have been in the forefront of the fight to force businesses to use the word "Christmas" for the past few years. I confess I fail to see the point of protests and boycotts on an issue like this. A time to remember the advent of the Savior of the Universe, and we're writing angry letters and signing petitions threatening boycotts.

Now let me make clear that I do oppose efforts in some circles to ban the use of the term "Christmas." Ridiculous. Losing the legal right to use the word in business or governmental circles would be highly annoying to me. But punishing businesses who use "Holidays" has long seemed silly and a misdirected concentration of energy badly needed elsewhere.

But though I've long thought that these well-meaning efforts were a bit silly, more recently I've decided it's more than silly. It's counterproductive and even injurious to Christians' representation of Christ to the world. The AFA article linked above refers to the "Christmas culture war" and compares a small-town municipal decision to remove a nativity scene from public property to the Taliban's removal of cultural symbols from Afghanistan. I'm thinking if I'm an outsider to this odd ghetto of American Christianity, I might originally think it a bit silly of the town's government to decide to remove the nativity scene, but my main reaction to this campaign as a whole would be, "Whoah, AFA. Calm down now." Dwain and others, I'm honestly eager to read your (likely much more erudite) comments if you have a few minutes to do so.

When I hear of this kind of thing I also think of a painful ride home from a certain Large-Scale Christian Youth Event which will remain unnamed.

I had taken my youth group to said event, mostly because their high production values were cool, and several of the students and I shared a fondness for the headlining band that was featured the second day of the event. Also, we had had generally positive experiences at other events sponsored by this organization. But at this particular event, the theme for the weekend was highly military. (Disclaimer here: I am very well aware that the Bible uses lots of militaristic language, but Paul makes very clear that our battle is NOT against flesh and blood. In other words, people aren't the enemy.) The speakers, drama, and all the graphics and promo stuff was all about how we are in a "culture war" in America. Apparently, according to the thrust of the weekend, if we win this culture war, American culture will be predominantly conservative Republican and Christian.

A couple more disclaimers. I'm fairly conservative and Republican, and Christian. And to their credit, this organization did place a heavy emphasis on mission work and compassion toward those less fortunate. But the "culture war" language did its damage. A girl who had gone with us (and I was very excited about it, because she was just coming clean from some serious addictions and other destructive patterns of behavior) who wasn't a Christian turned to me during one of the drama performances and said, "This is why no one likes Christians. You all see us as the enemy."

On the ride home, Randy Joe Bland and I spent the bulk of the two hours talking to this girl and basically trying to tell her how sorry we were for this misrepresentation of Christianity. After that ride I have enormous respect for Randy's ability to listen with compassion, his lack of defensiveness, and his wisdom and depth. (I know some of you are thinking, "RANDY?!? Riiiiight..." But that's because you've only seen his humorous side and his constant deceptive drowsiness.) I think we were successful in communicating to the girl in question how followers of Jesus really should be about compassion and selflessness rather than militancy against fellow human beings, but damage was undoubtedly done. The campaign to force "Christmas" on everyone does similar damage.

Instead of going on the offensive with legal action, boycotts, and nasty letters, wouldn't Christians' cause be better served by buying less junk at Christmas time and using that massive marketplace muscle to put a serious dent in some of the social ills at home and abroad? Instead of decorating the house with 300,000 tiny bulbs and fattening up the Christmas bonuses of execs at Target, why not finance a clean-water well in Africa, where cholera is a sweeping the continent yet again? You can even buy a goat for a family in Africa for $75. Instead of spending time and energy and legal muscle protesting a "Holiday" display, why not spend that valuable time and energy and legal muscle speaking up for those who cannot speak up for themselves?

If Christians want people to celebrate Christmas as Christmas, let's be a people who make the birth of Christ impossible NOT to celebrate.

To close this post, I'll say this. It's easy for me to sit here and whine about how I think some other Christians are a bunch of bumbling incompetents. Talk is cheap. I must confess that my own materialism is seriously out of control in many ways. Without going into specifics, I'll tell you that this Christmas I'm going to do some things to reduce my consuming and increase my contribution to stuff that really matters. Even if it's a bit painful.

I know the half-dozen or so of you that read my blog probably have some ideas for ways to make an impact. Two of you actually ARE a way to make an impact. Share your ideas below please.

-- Edit 11/11 - The AFA is calling for a new boycott. See story here. (I THINK this link works.)

-- Edit 12/16 - See this interesting article from Time about The Advent Conspiracy.

Just a quote

From Don Miller's blog:

I had a long conversation with a distinguished scholar last month whose lifelong expertise is story structure. He is not a Christian. And as we talked, he said something that fascinated me. He said this:

“I understand you Christians. I understand the essence of your message. It’s this: If you are not a good person, you are going to burn in hell for all eternity.”

As I said, this man was a distinguished scholar and so it surprised me when he made this statement from a position of absolute knowing. There was no doubt in his voice. He wasn’t asking me to confirm. He knew. But he was absolutely wrong. That isn’t the essence of the Christian story, and anybody who believes so is a heretic.

Our story, and by our story I don’t mean the Christian story, I mean humanity’s story, is this:

The Trinity existed forever in a completely loving community. They were and are other focussed, without what we think of as ego (though I believe they have something like ego, we would not recognize it in comparison to our own) and they created an existence, including you and I, to enjoy their company. That is the most loving thing a perfectly loving being could do. But love cannot be controlling, it has to set it’s muse free, so they gave humanity an option out. And humanity took it, thus, by necessity, there was a separation between pure good and anything other than pure good. So now, we who have been designed to be complete in God, seek affirmation and validation from each other as though our lives depend on it. But it doesn’t work. Nobody has agency but God. So God sends his son to earth and his son essentially says this:

“You guys have all walked away from God. He can’t have anything to do with you, because he is purely good. But look, I haven’t walked away from him, so if you marry me, and we become one, you’ll be reunited with the Trinity. He’ll look at you and see me. We’ll do this at a wedding in heaven. Until the wedding, though, just have faith. It’s as though it’s already done. But it’s going to kind of suck until then.”

So that’s where we are in our story. We are waiting for the wedding, and until then, we have hope, and we have an explanation for our hope.

I know some of y'all are hopelessly cynical about Don Miller, and, for that matter, about life in general. My cynical heart beats with yours, but this is good stuff.