Worship at Resurrection (Part 1 of 5)- Praise Service

Praise Service (Saturday, 5PM)

I’ve decided that attending a Saturday evening service is fraught with peril and not the best way to get to know a church.  Very often (as I would later find out), these services are a chance for worship leaders and preachers to experiment with new ideas in a lower-risk setting.  Most of the time, the people attending a Saturday evening service are already pretty familiar with a church and its activities schedule, so Saturday evening attendees are often more forgiving when a new style takes a little longer to develop fully and take hold.  For that reason, a Saturday service can have a drastically different tone from a church’s other services, and I later learned that Resurrection had revamped this service just a few months prior, so a lot of what I was witnessing might be classified as growing pains.  I didn’t know ahead of time that the service was supposed to have a “barebones” feel to it, and having this knowledge might have helped me to appreciate it more.

This service was kind of a mixed bag, and after the strong showing Saturday morning, I was a little disappointed when it didn’t quite suit my tastes.  While the sermon was pretty strong, I didn’t really know what to make of the music at first, and there was one thing about the Communion presentation that just didn’t quite sit right with me.  Over all, I’m afraid this service wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I still had three more services ahead of me, and one of the reasons that churches like Resurrection have multiple services is to offer enough variety for everyone to find something they like.  With that in mind, I’m not going to let a Saturday evening service color my opinion of the church too heavily.  Instead, I’ll try to give an honest appraisal of this service, hitting both high and low points.  Also, I should address the fact that I didn’t attend this service alone (since I had Luke with me as a guide), and I haven’t ruled out the possibility that simply having someone with me might have changed the dynamic a bit.  After all, people are more likely to come up and greet someone who is alone.  People are more likely to ask a lone church visitor questions (such as “What the heck are you writing in that little blue notebook?”).  Still, I think there’s an even stronger psychological effect of going alone vs. having someone with you, and the more times I listened to Scott’s sermon on social networks (both virtual and real), the more I started to think about this as a possible reason for my not having the greatest experience at this service.  While Scott preached on there being power in a crowd, I think there may be even more power in being anonymous in a crowd.  More on that later though.

A Closer Look around the Foyer

Luke and I arrived with about twenty minutes to spare, so this gave me more time to poke around the church’s facilities.  In particular, I devoted a good bit of time to exploring the myriad handouts displayed neatly next to the information desk, and I was impressed that there was an entire section on local mission opportunities.  I started pulling out pamphlets left and right before remembering, “Oh wait, this is all available online, and I’m taking a pamphlet from someone else who might actually be able to participate in these activities rather than just write about them.”  I neatly refiled almost everything, keeping a couple of brochures as personal mementos.  One such brochure told the story of the church, which started meeting in 1990 in the McGilley Funeral Home.  Incidentally, it still cracks me up that a place called “Church of the Resurrection” would get started in a funeral home!  The brochure gave a quick synopsis and statement of purpose:

The Church of the Resurrection began in 1990 with the dream of launching a church that would reach thinking people who were not actively involved in a church and help them to see how the Bible and the Christian faith could change their lives, and how they could change the world.  Today, Resurrection is indeed one of America’s fastest-growing churches and one of the largest churches in the Methodist denomination.  More than 15,000 people worship, study and serve at Resurrection’s campuses in Leawood, Kansas, Western Johnson County and Downtown Kansas City, Missouri.  We are committed to changing lives, transforming our community and renewing the mainline church.

The brochure also provided a more detailed timeline, but this information is also available online by clicking the line labeled “Our Story” on the beliefs and values section of the church’s website.

The complete Adam Hamilton library

Like Willow, the church has a small coffee shop and bookstore.  Luke pointed out the television screens in the coffee shop and explained to me, “These are here so that, should you have a crying baby or some other reason to leave the sanctuary, you can come out here and watch.  Of course, they had a problem for a while with people coming out here just because they wanted to watch the service from the comfort of the coffee shop, so I may do a little research of my own by coming out here during the service to see if there’s a crowd.”  It only just now occurred to me as I write this in the wee morning hours, that I never did ask Luke about the results of his study, so I might come back and add that later.

Although I didn’t see any signage to indicate it, the bookstore seemed to have some affiliation with Cokesbury just because of the identical shelving and labeling that you find in most Cokesbury stores.  It just looked and felt like a Cokesbury, and given the church’s strong United Methodist identity, having a Cokesbury-managed bookstore seems like a logical move, so I’m just going to assume they’re affiliated somehow until I can ask someone.  Of course, the bookstore had an impressive display of Adam Hamilton’s books, which were enough to fill their own shelving unit without that many repeats.  Hamilton is hands-down one of the most prolific authors alive, and Luke even told me, “He writes like most people breathe, and it seems like inspiration is striking him all the time.  We were once traveling to a conference together, and halfway there, he pulled over and asked me to take over driving.  He moved to the passenger seat, pulled out his laptop, and just clicked away the rest of the way there.”  Luke also assured me that Hamilton is a huge astronomy nerd and just a nerd in general really.  (Keep in mind that, in the context of a conversation between two divinity students, “nerd” is a term of incredible endearment and respect.  While I liked Hamilton before, Luke’s generous ascription of the title of “nerd” instantly endeared the man to me further.)

Having looked around the coffee shop, bookstore, and information desk, it was time to head into the sanctuary for worship.

Worship

The sanctuary at Church of the Resurrection is one impressive space, with seating for thousands that gently slopes from stadium seating in the rear right down to the great level plane hugging the edge of the stage.  Like many Protestant megas, Resurrection’s sanctuary is very intentionally plain and humble in spite of its size, colored in the same beiges and grays that comprise the rest of the church’s color scheme.  In fact, the only color in the room comes from just two sources: the large screens around the stage and the attire of the people entering into the worship space.  The stage was adorned with a number of artfully-contrasting elements that had been arranged to complement the sermon: an immense screen bearing the logo for the sermon series (“The Real Social Network”), a large number of potted ferns, a rather unassuming wooden cross, a highly traditional altar and candles, and the instruments of the praise band.  Luke told me that each sermon series gets its own set pieces, which are stored and reused in various ways as other sermon series come up.

Looking around at the people in the room, I felt like the demographics were fairly similar to Willow’s Saturday evening service: predominantly white, middle and upper class baby boomers in mostly casual attire.  I haven’t quite attended enough services or read enough papers to validate this theory, but more and more, I’m suspecting that baby boomers are the real backbone of the whole megachurch movement, so their large representation at Resurrection did not surprise me in the least.  I like baby boomers, and all the megachurch baby boomers I’ve met so far seem to share three characteristics: friendly, conversational, and slightly noncommittal.  All this makes them fun people to sit with and interview, but I’m getting off topic.  There were a few older folks here and there, and there were also some teens present along with a few college students and young couples, but the vast majority of the congregation seemed to be products of the baby boom.

The lights dimmed a bit; lyrics appeared on the screens; the praise team walked on stage and began playing.  It was time for worship to begin.

The band consisted of drums, bass, keyboard, and two guitars (one electric and one acoustic), and there were no additional singers.  While the musicians were incredibly talented (especially given their youth), there was one thing that really bothered me about this arrangement.  I’m about to get kind of negative here for a second, but I promise it got better after this.  I’m raising this criticism because I was so otherwise impressed with the church, and I feel like this would be a really easy fix for them.

The praise team started with a contemporary resetting of “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” and immediately, I noticed a big problem.  For this particular service, the Resurrection praise team has a way of trading off solos rather than singing as a group-- always just one individual singing, no backing vocals, no harmonies.  While I later found out that the intention is to create a very simple and meditative effect, this solo-trading turned out to be somewhat detrimental from a worship-leading standpoint.  The way I’ve always understood it, the goal of a worship leader is to encourage the congregation to sing along with the band.  In fact, you might even say that the goal of a worship leader is not to be heard.  The best worship leaders are the ones that can allow themselves to be drowned out by a congregation; they know how to worship with a congregation rather than for a congregation.  While the Sunday worship leader (Lance Winkler) seemed to have this down to a science, Resurrection’s Saturday evening praise team struggled with it, and unfortunately, the very first singer set the tone for the rest of the music that evening.  Pulling double-duty by playing electric guitar and singing, he sported jeans, spiky hair, and a goatee.  While the rest of the band that night seemed to be about high school or college age, a close-up on the screen revealed that this electric guitarist was a bit older, and I wondered if he might have some experience in the secular music world that might have carried over to his performance here (in mostly good ways, but with a few lingering bad habits as well).   While his stage presence would have been ideally suited to a secular concert setting, it felt a little out of place in worship.  He wailed into the microphone,

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

It was obvious from his embellished notes, his intense microphone-straddling posture, and his dramatic overuse of rubato: he was performing.  I know that the line between worship and performance is often difficult to perceive, and sometimes our enthusiasm can really run away with us, but when I saw him bobbing around and lifting his guitar emphatically in the next two services, I realized that someone might need to talk to him about this.  I know that my opinion is not universal, but I found his stage presence distracting, and I didn’t really get much out of the first two songs on Saturday evening as a result.  Even though the other singers encouraged our participation as their turns to lead came around, I really felt that this approach of solo singing prevented the congregation from singing along to a single melody.  The others in the band were far more adept at sticking to the melody and encouraging people to sing, but that one performer set the tone for the rest of the service, and it was difficult to recover after that.

(photographic evidence of my music experience)

I try not to do this all the time, but I’m about to play the “I was in a band” card again.  See?  That’s me on the far left playing electric bass.  One thing I observed back in those days was that the best way to get an audience to sing along with us on a familiar tune was to have several band members singing at the same time.  It creates an inclusive chorus effect that invites others to join in.  I think that leading worship works the same way.  If only one person is singing, that sends the message that it is a solo, but if a group are singing together, it invites further participation.  Based on one praise team member’s emphatic request of “Can we sing it like we believe it?!” I know that the Resurrection praise team want the congregation to sing with them, and I think that having their guitarists and keyboardist sing together will help them accomplish that.  Just a thought.

That was quite a digression.  Where was I?

Rev. Adam Hamilton

Worship Continues

Rev. Scott Chrostek came forward to one of the microphones and welcomed us to Resurrection.  Something about Scott’s demeanor onstage made him seem instantly approachable.  Sporting glasses, a short haircut, and a tie-less dress shirt tucked into jeans, Scott was energetic in his welcome, and something about his unassuming attitude just gave me the gut feeling that there might be a healthy self-deprecating sense of humor lurking behind his smile.  Scott assured us that Adam Hamilton wished us well from his travels.  As Scott put it, through his speaking engagements at UMC Annual Conferences around the country, Adam was seeking to fulfill Resurrection’s mission to renew the mainline church, and Scott asked that we pray for the church’s pastor as he worked for that process.  After a quick few seconds to greet the people around us, we were back to singing.  It was a Matt Redman tune, and the electric guitarist again made the music difficult to follow.  As he sang, a group of alb-clad acolytes processed forward with a banner and the standard acolyte candle staffs (the name for which escapes me).  Seeing the traditional acolytes process to such new music was an interesting contrast, and I really enjoyed it.  It had a certain holy whimsy about it that I think our worship experiences could use more of.  The electric guitarist continued to sing:

Blessed Be Your Name

In the land that is plentiful

Where Your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name

When I'm found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out

I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your glorious name

People still weren’t singing, and it was getting me down.  As with the previous number, the congregation clapped after the song, something which I’ve grown to accept in large church settings, but it still makes me a little squeamish (see previous concerns about the thin line between performance and worship).  I was relieved when the next singer in the rotation (the acoustic guitarist) strongly encouraged us to sing along, and he sang the melody in a way that was lyrically pleasing but easy to follow.

Hear the holy roar of God resound
Watch the waters part before us now
Come and see what He has done for us
Tell the world of His great love

Our God is a God who saves
Our God is a God who saves

Let God arise
Let God arise
Our God reigns now and forever
He reigns now and forever

His enemies will run for sure
The church will stand, she will endure
He holds the keys of life, our Lord
Death has no sting, no final word

Luke and I were both particularly impressed when the musicians used the drums and overdrive-laden electric guitar to produce a literal ROAR at the beginning of the song.  I found myself swaying to the instrumentation, and Luke was even clapping along, but we were alone in our revelry.  I took a look around the room and saw it devoid of smiles.  Maybe the problem wasn’t just with the band.  Maybe the Saturday evening crowd was just inherently quieter-- more introverted, more reflective.  I didn’t quite feel that prevailing meditative sensation that Mars Hill had, but could something like that have been occurring here as well?  Perhaps the Saturday evening crowd just has a more reserved style of worship that I wasn’t understanding properly, but as the band seemed to want them to sing as well, I figured that a cylinder was misfiring somewhere in the mix.

At this point, Rev. Andrew Conard (pastor of Resurrection’s online ministry and an old friend of Luke’s) came forward to offer up a prayer, and the lights dimmed.  Andrew called on us to think about the screens through which we try to govern our lives, the barriers that we establish through our own technology.  He called on us to lay these before God, and he allowed a still silence to hover above the room for a bit.  He then prayed that God would help us to live in the world without being of the world, and he asked that we would receive guidance in how to use our social media wisely, after which he led us in the Lord’s Prayer.

During the next song, we passed and signed a set of the leather-bound attendance notebooks, and I have to admit that I didn’t fill in all my information.  As much as I want to keep up with these churches in the months ahead, the regular bombardment of emails that I get from Mars Hill has made me cagey about giving out my personal email address.  Following the passing of the books, the ushers also passed around the offering plates, and I was a little surprised to see that they were using the traditional metal plates rather than the bags and buckets I had seen at the other larger churches on my route so far.  I was also excited to learn later that, at Resurrection, the first offering of each month goes to help recently unemployed workers with their job searches.  I love it when people tell us where the money is going, especially when it’s going to a good cause like that!  Again, Resurrection was continuing to rack up points in the missions department.  With the band’s assistance, the acoustic guitarist sang another Matt Redman song during the collection, and even though people still weren’t singing, the acoustic guitarist’s rather unassuming stage presence made his solo a little more worship-friendly:

All over the world Your song will resound
All over the world Your praises ring out
We're living to see You're name and renown
All over the world

Andrew returned to lead the scripture reading (for which we all stood), and as the lights dimmed, and the band left the stage, Andrew read:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  (Matthew 18:18-20)