Day Four: Worship at New Song-- building relationships, communities, and neighborhoods

Total Mileage: 467

Song of the Day: “For Science Fiction” (Maritime)

Book of the Day:

 - None.  Trying to catch up on writing and remember everything that happened today.  There will be time to assimilate new information tomorrow.

Okay, I really, really, really like this church and the things that were preached here, so if you’re reading this in the hopes that I’ll deliver a string of clever putdowns at some point, get ready for a disappointment.  This is going to be one massive gush-fest on my part.  Sure, New Song has a few trouble spots here and there, but overall, I’m blown away by the church’s spirit of cooperation and acceptance, and I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to worship here again sometime.  Also, get used to hearing about New Song for a while because I have more literature than I know what to do with right now, so I’m going to be crunching on this stuff for a while.  Oh, and I apologize in advance for probably getting a few names wrong, but there were a lot to try and remember!

Preparing for Worship

Ha, I remembered to eat a granola bar this morning.  Erin will be so proud!  None of that feeling woozy and struggling to stay awake like at Summit.  Of course, after my experiences with the seafood and cannoli on Friday, I think I’ve already fulfilled my woozy quota for this weekend, but I’m getting off topic.

I checked out of the hotel and headed back to Sandtown, finding a parking space just up the street from New Song.  Given the number of churches in the immediate area and the general parking fiasco that is Baltimore, it was quite a lucky find.  I walked in and greeted Pastor Thurman, who immediately introduced me to a few people (including the host family of my friend Hannah Terry, who will be interning at New Song this summer-- I think you’re in for an awesome summer, Hannah).  The praise band was still warming up, and even though the bulletin listed the service as starting at 11:00, people still trickled in slowly and greeted one another until just after 11:15.  During that fifteen-minute gap, I talked to a few people but mostly just sat and took in my surroundings.

New Song Community Learning Center

We were in a gymnasium within the New Song Community Learning Center, and blue stackable chairs had been set out for us ahead of time.  I sat and watched the band warm up, and I was particularly impressed with the rhythm section.  At the moment, it looked like the keyboardist was having to correct the drummer on a few things, but the drummer was taking those instructions and running with them.  It’s always a joy to see that kind of cooperation between band members, and I briefly flashed back to my own days playing in a band back in college before remembering what I was here to do.  I took note that the bassist, guitarist, and drummer were white, but that the rest of the band --a keyboardist and about a half dozen singers-- were black.  The one exception was one of the singers (an Indian woman adorned in a traditional-looking gold sari) who I would later learn was Patty Prasada-Rao, the co-director of New Song Urban Ministries.  Taking note of Patty’s attire, I looked around and realized that the people slowly filtering into New Song were not just black and white, but also Indian and Asian.  I scribbled in my notebook, “Wow, this church really is multi-ethnic!”  I looked up and noticed that the screen featured Psalm 96:1-2, the Psalm from which the church draws its name:

O sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.

Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.

The worshipers’ choices of attire were wide-ranging, and I noticed everything from suits and ties to t-shirts and jeans.  I was actually wearing the same clothing combination that I had worn to Summit, and I felt that I had struck a pretty decent middle ground, possibly even erring a bit on the formal side.  Even in the band, the range of clothing was wide: t-shirts, ties, formal dresses, and Patty’s traditional garments.  I also noticed that there was no stage in this room, so the band, while still being at the front, was very much on the same level with us, and I found that pleasant and comforting and intimate, feelings which would only be amplified once the service began.

Sister Tanya walked in and greeted me, and it was at about this time that the oddity of being a “participant-observer” struck me once again.  Sure, I was trying to research the church and take notes on their worship style.  I was trying to see how much they talked about issues of homelessness and poverty and community in a worship setting.  I was trying to watch for how they handled a speaker or musician’s charisma, and I was trying to see how they behaved toward one another.  But Sister Tanya had shaken me out of my academic bubble with a reminder that I had actually met the people here.  I was actually forming friendships (even if very temporary and transitory ones).  I wasn’t just here to research and take notes and be a fly on the wall who could sneak off and blog about it for his div school friends.  I was here to worship.  Again, I’m still working on the balance of all that.  I’m kind of wondering if it will be easier to hide behind my notebook in megachurches, but maybe I’m stereotyping.

Music and Scripture

Just after 11:15, Pastor Thurman casually said, “Okay, let’s get started,” and the band kicked into its opening song.

Welcome into this place,

Welcome into this broken vessel.

You desire to abide

In the praises of Your people;

So we lift our hands

And we lift our hearts,

As we offer up this praise unto Your name.

Okay, it’s not the deepest song ever, but as the band repeated that chorus over and over, I found myself continually coming back to that line about broken vessels.  I remembered a quote from Pastor Thurman on the church’s website: “We are a congregation of broken, messed up people that God loves anyway.”  This song was starting out the service on that note, and I thought that was a pretty gutsy move given the feel-good openers that you hear at a lot of churches.  The song was even followed by a group prayer of confession and words of assurance from Psalm 130:3-5:

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.

The band’s next number was a contemporary resetting of “I Surrender All,” and again, that’s normally something you’d expect to hear at the end of a service, not the beginning.  It seemed that New Song was encouraging a spirit of humility and contrition at the beginning of the service rather than saving it for an invitation at the end.  I was intrigued.  During “I Surrender All,” I took note of the dynamics in the band: the keyboard and male voice were definitely the leading sound, with the drums providing the steady beat that kept the song moving.  I found it interesting how soothing this song felt, and I looked around to see a few hands raised here and there.  Most interesting of all, it seemed that the church members were largely silent (or perhaps singing very quietly), but while I might have taken this for laziness or timidity at another church, the stillness in the congregation seemed to have a prayerful feel at New Song.  Maybe I’m being a little overly charitable, but then again, maybe the feeling in the room was just that real.

It came time for the Scripture reading, and this gave me a chance to see something that I like to experience at every church: How do the worship team and pastor respond to a mistake?  A church member got up to read Proverbs 2:1-6, and as he did so, a different set of words appeared on the screen.  Stranger still, Pastor Thurman’s sermon was going to be on yet another section of the book: Proverbs 1:1-7.  The bulletin said Proverbs 2:1-6; the reader read Proverbs 2:1-6; the sermon was on Proverbs 1:1-7; and the powerpoint said who knows what.  I looked three rows ahead of me and saw Pastor Thurman looking a little agitated, but he allowed the reader to continue, and I was particularly amused by the knowing, pacifying smile Pastor Thurman’s wife was wearing throughout this whole affair.  It was the sort of smile that said this was nothing out of the ordinary and that God would work through it and that no one’s worship experience was going to be impeded because a little more Scripture was read than expected.  All this gave me a very warm feeling.  The second reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-25) went a little more smoothly, and then it was time for another song, and this one had a phenomenal bass riff behind it that brought forth a lot of clapping and raising of hands-- actually that was probably the Holy Spirit and the general feeling of effervescence in the room, but I really liked the bass line too.

Glory and honor, dominion and power,
Now and forever, the Lord God omnipotent
Reigneth with power, forever with power,
Greater than all, you are sovereign God.

Again, not exactly a ton of theological depth to this.  Dr. Freeman (my Baptist Studies professor) likes to use the term “Hymn Sandwich” to describe the pattern of alternating Scripture and hymns in worship, and I think, in that analogy, praise choruses sort of serve the same function as mayonnaise.  They’re good for holding things together and making everything go down a little easier, but they don’t necessarily add a lot of their own flavor to a service like a good whole grain mustard would (wow, I really have Gambier Deli on the brain right now-- so glad I’ll be in Ohio for a while this week).  Still, there’s something so neat about how New Song approaches praise choruses.  Keith Stewart, a musician I know from my first field ed placement at Fremont UMC, used to explain to me that the point of praise choruses was in their repetition.  The goal is to make it so that you stop thinking about the words and enter a meditative state in which worship takes place (sort of like the effect of Taize music).  As the congregation at New Song repeated the words “nobody greater” over and over and over as the band crescendoed, I sensed that effect.  This band was really polished, but the lack of a stage and the intentionality of everything they played gave the service a very genuine and personal feel.  Of course, it was also during this song that I caused myself a considerable amount of pain by trying to clap while forgetting that I had an open pen in my hand.  I think I might have accidentally tattooed a little dot into my left index finger.  Yow!

Sandtown row houses (because I forgot to take other pictures)

With the next song, the band cut into a very Near Eastern-sounding chord progression that almost imitated a sitar in quality.  In my notes, I simply wrote, “Groovy.”  The chorus was a very simple one, possibly the simplest of the bunch:

I am not forgotten.

I am not forgotten.

I am not forgotten.

God knows my name.

We repeated this line over and over again, allowing it to build and build, and as we did so, I looked around and realized that there were kids jumping up and down and dancing in their seats.  There was a little girl playing with toys on the floor across the aisle from me.  The room had filled up, and there were probably around 200 people present, and even though the majority were white (which surprised me a bit given Sandtown’s demographics), this really was a diverse crowd, and they were participating fully in the worship that was taking place.  You could feel it as they sang,

Light over darkness,

Strength over weakness,

Joy over sadness,

He knows my name.

Father to the Fatherless,

Friend to the friendless,

Hope for the hopeless,

He knows my name.

By the next song (“He Knows My Name”), I was in the zone.  I had set down my notebook and closed my eyes since I already knew the words.  I lifted my hands to about chest level and held them open-palm as the song sort of washed over me.  This lasted for the duration of the song before the thoughts of, “Uh oh, I wonder if people saw me,” and “I wonder what people thought of that,” and “I hope I’m not being judged,” started to float back into my mind.  I struggle with the whole hand-raising thing, which is probably why even this experience only brought my hands about halfway up, but something at New Song made me understand it a little more clearly.  The lifting of hands isn’t a gesture designed to draw attention; rather, you are pushing attention away, tuning out the world around you and focusing on God through the lifting of hands to the heavens.  I’m still trying to figure out the specifics of this, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other chances to write on it this summer.

Prayers, Offerings, and Introductions

Pastor Thurman got up and walked to the podium (which was barely more ornate than a music stand).  I thought to myself, “Ah, must be time for the sermon.  We’re all in the zone, so it’s time to bring the Word,” then I looked down at my bulletin and saw that the message was still a way’s off.  Instead, Pastor Thurman offered a reading from Isaiah 49 and an assurance that, like the songs had said, we are not forgotten.  He then offered up a Mother’s Day prayer, and I wondered what shape that would take in this setting.  In his prayer, he mentioned moms who had always been there and moms we had recently lost, and it was sounding a little typical, but then he cut into a different litany that I felt spoke more directly to Sandtown.  He thanked God for stepmoms and separated moms and estranged moms and moms who had lost children and women who wanted to be moms but remained barren, and then he thanked God for “community moms,” for women in the neighborhood who acted as moms to kids who never got to know one or both of their parents.  Pastor Thurman had told me the day before that, even though people come from all around Baltimore to attend New Song, he always makes sure that what he’s saying speaks directly to Sandtown, and I was seeing that philosophy in action, and it was beautiful.  He continued on to remind the congregation that, even though we celebrate mothers on this day, the day ultimately points back to God and serves as a time of thanksgiving-- a reminder of God’s love.  This actually caught me a little off-guard; I can think of more than a few churches where a pastor could get run out of town for making a Mother’s Day prayer about God, but New Song accepted this message and rejoiced in it.

(Hey, I did warn you at the outset that this would be kind of a gush-fest on my part.  I promise there will be some critiquing eventually too, but this was a really powerful, really well-executed worship service, and it really spoke to me.  If you’re tired of hearing me praise this church so much, then skip ahead to the section titled “That One Thing That Kind of Unnerved Me for a While.”  Otherwise, let’s continue.)

Sister Tanya offered a prayer before the offering, which was collected in wicker baskets as the band played a very jazzy version of “At the Cross.”  I was really struck by the line, “It was there by faith I received my sight.”  After the offering, Antoine (the co-director of New Song Urban Ministries and an elder in the church) brought the announcements, and given how much this church does, I was amazed at how few announcements there were.  The youth would be handing out flowers to any women over 18 in honor of Mother’s Day.  The community picnic was a lot of fun and a big success.  New member classes would be offered in May.  That was it.  Of course, then Antoine surprised me.  “Now, just like we always do here at New Song, we’re going to pass the microphone around, and any first time visitors need to tell us your name and a little about yourself!”  Wait, what?  I have to speak?  Really?  The theatrical portion of my brain was elated, but the self-conscious white person side was petrified.  A few people introduced themselves as being new to Baltimore or new to the church.  There was a med student in the crowd who was looking to get involved there.  There was a couple visiting from out of state.  It was an interesting group of visitors.

When the microphone came to me, I delivered my usual sound-bitey, “Hi, my name’s Tom, and I’m a student at Duke, but I’m traveling the country this summer as an unpaid, independent researcher, which is a nice way to say that I’m unemployed and living out of my car.”  This got laughs.  “I’m looking at churches, and especially how churches interact with the communities outside of their walls, and I kept hearing that I had to come and look at New Song.  Pastor Thurman showed me around yesterday, and I’m overjoyed to be here worshipping with this community this morning.  Thank you for your hospitality and for all the work that is taking place here in Sandtown.”  At least, that’s what I hope I said.  I’m sure it was some variation of that.  When I sat down, my hands were shaking a bit.  It’s been a while since I’ve spoken in front of a group that size, especially without any sort of notice.  We now had a chance to greet our neighbors, and while I talked to several of the people I had met yesterday, I also met some new faces, included Tolu Sosanya, a recent graduate of Duke Divinity who had interned at New Song and then came back to work there.  We talked for a bit about my project (or my journey or whatever I’m calling it), but given that the service was moving on, we agreed to get in touch later via email.

Some of my Duke classmates at New Song

As the greetings continued, a college-aged girl tapped me on the shoulder and introduced herself as Bethany.  “Hey, a group of us are grabbing lunch afterwards.  Would you like to join us?”  Sweet!  I’ve always believed that a lunch invite to a first-time visitor is a great sign of hospitality, so A+ in that regard, New Song.  Another student named Andrew offered to ride with me and give me directions, so I accepted the offer.  Bethany, Andrew, and their friends are all students are UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), and I was blown away by the smarts and wisdom in this group (even though I'm sure I've gotten a few names wrong-- combine an only half-decent memory with a little minor hearing loss, and that sort of thing happens).  Andrew was majoring in chemical engineering.  Emily was majoring in computer sciences and looking to focus on cyber security.  All of them were also phenomenally well-read when it came to contemporary Christian authors like Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne.  It was a fun lunch, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

There was one more song, a song of preparation for the preaching of the Word, and then it was time for the sermon.  It was at about this point that I looked over at Pastor Thurman’s elementary-aged son who was sitting next to me, and I realized that he too had a notebook out.  His notes were far less tidy than mine, taking the shape of doodles, but still, it was nice not being the only one who was hunched over a notebook for a change.

“Wise Up” (Proverbs 1:1-7)

During my meeting with him, it had come out that Pastor Thurman had written a dissertation on preaching, so I assumed that I was going to be in for a treat, and I assumed correctly.  The sermon should be available online soon at http://www.nsc-church.org/sermons.htm, but in the meantime, I hope my notes will do it justice.  I was a little nervous when I saw that Pastor Thurman had donned a headset microphone, but he accomplished an impressive feat by wearing one of these while somehow not incurring my wrath.  Perhaps it was still the lack of a stage or the barebones podium, but the headset microphone didn’t quite exude “performance” like it usually does when I see it.

Pastor Thurman was kicking off a series on the book of Proverbs that day, so he told the church about the book’s wide-ranging applications, saying, “We’re going to be talking about justice.  We’re going to be talking about money.  We’re going to be talking about sex.”  Guess which one of those got people’s attention!   “We’re going to be talking about how we use our words.”  As a future pastor, that one really resonated with me.  Pastor Thurman explained that “wisdom” in the Bible is more like street smarts for God’s people, and he told an old joke about a plane that was about to crash.  You probably know it: the pilot informs the three passengers that there are only three parachutes and then jumps out of the plane with one of them, leaving only two parachutes for the three passengers.  One of the passengers --often told as a current political figure, but Pastor Thurman didn’t go that route-- claims to be the smartest person in the world, so he/she takes a parachute with the justification that such a smart person must live in order to better society.  The last two people (and in this case, Pastor Thurman actually used two members of the congregation: Dante and Sister Linda) debate who should take the last parachute until Dante discovers that the smartest person in the world just jumped out of the plane with his backpack.  Again, it’s an old joke, but the inclusion of church members put a new spin on it, and this got tremendous laughter.  Pastor Thurman used this story to make the point that there is a difference between being smart and being wise, and he spent the rest of the sermon expanding on what Proverbs 1:1-7 has to say about wisdom and about smarts and about the source of both of these.

He was dropping Scripture references left and right, so I was glad to have a printed outline of his sermon right there in the bulletin.  Much of the sermon revolved around King Solomon.  “God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt.” (1 Kings 4:29-30)  Pastor Thurman was careful to point out a very fun fact about Solomon though: the reason that he got so wise was because he asked God for that wisdom!  “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.” (James 1:5)

Pastor Thurman pointed out how wisdom involves a concern for moral understanding and self-discipline, and he explained how Proverbs is not so much a “how to” book as a “how to be” book.  As the motto of New Song states, Proverbs is about loving God and loving neighbors.  The book of Proverbs teaches us that the wise and the righteous disadvantage themselves for the benefit of the community, while the wicked disadvantage the community for the benefit of themselves-- definitely a relevant message for Sandtown and New Song!  It was at about this point that I noticed how much Pastor Thurman was sweating as he delivered the message, and a man sitting near the front actually walked forward and gave him a handkerchief to dab the sweat off of his brow.  Delivering a message in such an enthusiastic and dynamic manner while attired in shirt and tie is always enough to make one break a sweat, and Pastor Thurman was on a roll.  He continued with a call to educate the young, and he pointed to the story of Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12 as an example of a foolish young person ignoring seasoned advice.  By the same token, he also reminded us to make sure that the old never stop learning, and he cited another pastor who had once stated, “If you ever stop learning, then it’s time to retire!”

We were now getting into point #3 and the last verse of the passage for the day: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7)  God is the source of all wisdom.  According to Psalm 130, God is also the source of all forgiveness.  The fear of the Lord that this verse talks about is not just being scared; it is a “life-rearranging, a joyful awe and wonder before the grace of God and all that God has done!”  Pastor Thurman pointed to Isaiah as an example and retold the story of Isaiah’s call during a vision of the heavenly court in Isaiah 6.  He explained that, in spite of Isaiah’s total lack of knowledge about what he’s signing up for, Isaiah quickly yells, “Pick me!  Pick me!” and Pastor Thurman allowed his voice to crack to show the prophet’s youth and inexperience, much to the amusement of the congregation.  Though Isaiah lacks the knowledge of his fate, he does possess the fear of the Lord.  A fear of the Lord is fundamental to wisdom.  Just as a basketball player has to know the fundamentals of the game or a writer has to know the fundamentals of grammar and spelling --and I think he threw that second example in for my benefit--, so too must a person seeking wisdom remember to fear the Lord.  According to Psalm 14:1, a fool is someone who denies God in spite of all this; a fool is someone who tries to build storehouses on earth rather than in heaven.  Only knowing God can make you wise.

At the end, the sermon came back to Christ as the perfect embodiment of wisdom here on earth, and Pastor Thurman fulfilled the old staple of “taking it to the cross” in a very poetic fashion by talking about the thief who asked Jesus to remember him upon coming into his kingdom.  Pastor Thurman invoked the songs from earlier: I am not forgotten.  He knows my name.  Sin and atonement and wisdom and all things were wrapped up together at the cross, and in that moment, Jesus revealed that he remembers us.  That man next to him didn’t have any right to be remembered, and neither do we, but Jesus did it anyway.  Oh wow, Pastor Thurman just compared us to the thief on the cross.  If that’s not a call to humility, I don’t know what is.  With a closing doxology, we were dismissed.

Throughout the sermon, I found myself wanting to talk back, to provide amens, grunts, and my-my-mys.  A few little amens came out here and there, but I sort of wanted more.  It was a sermon that was certainly powerful and passionate enough to provoke such talkback, but I can’t help but wonder if the absence of any might have been related to something I had noticed throughout the service . . .

That One Thing That Kind of Unnerved Me for a While

(and a personal account that made me okay with it after all)

Okay, big old elephant in the room.

This may sound weird, and I can’t think of a nicer way to put it, so I’m just going to say it: I was a little concerned with the number of white people at the service.  Sandtown is approximately 99% black, and the service I attended was probably about 60% white.  The demographics just didn’t match up.  Don’t get me wrong; I was blown away by the diversity there, as black, white, Indian, and Asian families were all present in the church, but that white majority really struck me, and it gnawed at me a little.  There’s a rising trend in churches where diversity really sells now, and there’s something hip and rebellious about attending a multi-ethnic congregation.  That’s not to say that multi-ethnic congregations are a bad thing; I think they’re wonderful, and I think they're the wave of the future, and I think that’s what the Kingdom of Heaven really looks like.  That being said, I do think we need to keep a constant eye on our motives.  Do we worship in these spaces because we genuinely care about a community and want to build relationships with the people there, or is there a certain exotic thrill in it that gives us a feeling of superiority over more segregated churches?  This could be a personal bias surfacing, but a little part of me just has this lingering fear that we’re all looking to prove that we’re open-minded, and church shouldn’t be about that.  Obviously, I didn’t have time to talk to everyone there and investigate their motives, so I was left to theorize: Where did all these white people come from?

During my first meeting with Pastor Thurman, my curiosity had been eating at me, so I asked about a rumor I had heard about New Song: “Do you really turn people away if they don’t live in the community?”  Pastor Thurman explained that, once upon a time, the church did have such a policy.  If someone from outside of the community attended two services in a row, the pastor or an elder would pull them aside and give them “the talk,” during which they would emphasize that New Song’s ministry was just to the sixteen blocks around the church and not really targeted at outsiders.  In an amazing display of hospitality, it was actually the residents of Sandtown who told the church to discontinue this policy.  Community members spoke up and said, “We appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you absolutely cannot tell people where they can and can’t worship.”  The talk hasn’t been a part of New Song ever since.  Residents of other parts of Baltimore are welcomed into the community to worship, and, as I saw on Sunday, one consequence is an imbalance in demographics.

Looking at New Song and Sandtown, my fear was that, if the church became increasingly white while the organizations and the community remained majority black, the church would eventually just be a separate entity displaced amid the sea of projects it oversaw without any real personal stake in them.  The congregation and neighborhood would cease to overlap, and New Song would become two communities instead of one.  That’s not what Sandtown needs, and that’s not the mission of this church.  I was really scared that the influx of white people attending the service could potentially unseat New Song in this way.  Well, I was really scared about it, but then I heard about John’s story, and it gave me a much more hopeful outlook . . .

As I was driving to lunch with Andrew, he filled me in on his connection to the church: “A group of us from InterVarsity come to New Song every Sunday, and we were actually first brought here by John Bollinger.  Remember the drummer in the band?  That’s John.  He started coming here when he was at UMBC.  He got involved in the church and its projects, fell in love with the neighborhood, and now he lives in Sandtown.”  Wait, he actually moved into Sandtown?  Whoa.  So it’s not just about the multi-ethnic tourism or lording it over the segregated churches.  One of these white outsiders actually relocated to the community.  I’m going to say it again for emphasis: One of the white college kids who started attending the church actually relocated to the community.  He became a part of the neighborhood.  It wasn’t about doing the cool, trendy, multi-ethnic thing.  It really was about the relationships for him.  Wow.  Whether the church inspired him to do it or whether John is just that good of a guy, that is my idea of a success story.  If New Song’s outsiders love Sandtown so much that they’re willing to come and live there, then this church isn’t just bettering Sandtown; it’s bettering the rest of Baltimore as well.  My concern is alleviated, and I withdraw my objection, and I'm still just amazed that my one point of criticism turned out to be a point in the church's favor!  Even if the demographics don’t perfectly match up, this church is still doing it right because this church --white people and all-- is a part of Sandtown and is completely committed to that neighborhood.

Bravo, New Song.

Parting Ways and Making Connections

As I was preparing to leave after the service, I tried to make my way over to Patty and Antoine to talk to them about New Song Urban Ministries, but I had to talk to Sister Tanya first so that she could give me a hug and demand I come and see them again.  I thanked her for all the hospitality I had been shown, promised that I would see her again after the whole journey wrapped up, and continued to make my way over to Patty and Antoine.  I stopped again since I couldn’t resist helping the UMBC students get the chairs back in order; I was impressed by their initiative to serve the church even in that most basic way.  I tried once more to make my way to the front, but then I was intercepted by the med student who had introduced himself during the visitor introductions.  His name was Joey, and he was very curious about my project, so I gave him a post-it with the blog website on it.  (Memo to self: make business cards; people actually find this project interesting enough to merit a few dozen business cards.)  I gave up on ever reaching Patty and Antoine, but my conversation with Joey more than made up for it.  We talked for a while about the various needs facing the church in the ever-changing American religious landscape, and I shared my curiosity about what would happen if you combined megachurch evangelism tactics with inner city church missions.  Joey liked this concept, and we had a very pleasant conversation.  He explained that he was new to the community and looking for ways to get involved, and I immediately started filling him in on New Song Family Health Services.  Wow, I had been at New Song for one weekend (not even quite 24 hours really), and already I was signing people up for things!  Joey assured me that we’d be in touch, and I look forward to seeing where his involvement with New Song takes him.  Maybe he’ll have the same kind of story as John Bollinger someday, or maybe God will lead him down a totally different path.  I needed to go though since I had an appointment for lunch with the UMBC group.

Well, it’s 3 AM, and I have to drive 270 miles tomorrow, so I’m going to wrap this up, but sometime in the near future, I want to talk a little about my conversation with the UMBC students at lunch, because Bethany in particular raised a really interesting issue about Shane Claiborne’s rhetoric that I want to explore further.  I’m also looking to introduce a new phrase into our jargon: “barbed theology.”  I can dive into all that later though.  Instead, I want to close with this thought:

New Song is about loving God and loving your neighbor, and in living this out, it’s also about building relationships.  It’s easy to be a face in the crowd at some churches, but I was a part of New Song for barely more than 24 hours, and in that time, I made more connections than I know what to do with.  I see myself emailing Pastor Thurman for advice in the future as I prepare for ordination and ministry.  I see myself coming back to Sandtown someday to visit Gerry’s Goods and see Sister Tanya again.  I think I’ll remain in contact with Joey and Emily and the whole UMBC crew (even if it’s just because I have a really off-the-wall blog).  You can’t go to New Song without experiencing community.  Real community.  Not some hypothetical happy place that only exists in the classroom.  Gritty community.  Loving community.  Worshipful community.  A community that knows itself and knows each other and constantly seeks after the will of God.

I love New Song.  I don’t really see myself moving to Baltimore, but wherever I do wind up, I’d love to be in a church just like it.  Of course, the beauty of New Song is that it can’t be replicated quite the same way anywhere else.  New Song exists specifically to serve the needs of Sandtown.  New Song takes pride in listening to its neighborhood to learn what the real needs are, so if you really want to take the practices of New Song to heart, all you really need to do is listen to the world around you, get to know your neighbors, and then let God do the rest.

Okay, bedtime.  I’ll come back and edit and add in graphics sometime when I’m a little less tired, but I really wanted to get this done tonight.

Tomorrow: Ohio.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom