Worship at Resurrection (Part 4 of 5)- Traditional Service

“Traditions” Service (10:45AM)

Something about the seats toward the back felt less comfortable.  I’m not sure whether it was the concrete floor or something about seeing the sanctuary from a greater height.  Maybe it was the fact that people in the back of the sanctuary spread themselves out a little more, so there were far more seats between me and the next worshipers.  It felt a little less homey than the close-knit clusters up front.  The back of the sanctuary also took longer to fill, as people were still entering and drifting back here even thirty minutes into worship.  It seemed like attendance of this service wasn’t quite as high as the earlier morning service had been, and I guessed that it was probably about on par with the praise service from the previous night.  There was clapping following the organ prelude, and Scott stepped up to give the morning welcome.

Things were a little out of order this time.  Comments that had heretofore been relegated to the first minutes of Scott’s sermon were now being voiced in the morning announcements.  He presented the message from Adam and quickly revisited the previous week’s sermon.  He also extended a special welcome to people watching online.  The night before, following the praise service, Luke had introduced me to Andrew Conard, who operates Resurrection’s online ministry, and Andrew had explained that one of the main goals of the broadcasted services and online resources is to help people who watch online to connect with other worshipers in their area so that they can form connections in person as well.  I figured that Scott’s sermon would really speak to that, so even though I still haven’t gotten used to hearing the stuff about “And a special greeting to our friends watching online,” I’m glad those people had tuned in.  We stood and greeted one another, after which the lights dimmed for prayer.

Next up, it was time for a hymn: “Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart,” number 160 in the hymnal.  The standard blue United Methodist Hymnals were located on the backs of the seats in front of us, but the words were also projected on the screens, so I didn’t take the time to flip through the book.  I counted the choir members, and there were approximately 80 of them up there singing loudly in their brilliant cerulean robes, most of them middle aged or a little older.  (A special thanks to the Crayola 64-pack for teaching me the word “cerulean.”)  The minister of music, whose amplified voice provided the melody over the choir’s harmonies, lead us into a slightly less traditional song, but an older and familiar tune nonetheless:

Give thanks with a grateful heart.
Give thanks unto the Holy One.
Give thanks because He's given Jesus Christ, His Son.

And now let the weak say, "I am strong."
Let the poor say, "I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us."

I looked away from the screens and out at the congregation and noticed two figures walking up the stairs toward me-- a middle aged woman accompanying a heavy-set, shorter man clad in a well-pressed blue oxford cloth shirt and suspenders.  He looked like he might be my age or just a little younger, and I guessed that she was his mother.  She helped him up the stairs, as he seemed to be struggling a bit, grasping at the railing with stubby, longing fingers.  He seemed to contemplate each glow-tape-marked step as the two of them ascended to the row in front of me.  They were only a few rows away by the time I got a closer look at his face-- Down syndrome.  He seemed pretty with it over all, but as I watched him throughout the service, all of his movements were slower and more intentional.  He would occasionally stretch his hands outward in any direction --upward, forward, sideways--, and his mother would place soothing fingertips on his shoulder so that he would return his hands gradually to his seat’s armrests.  She looked a little tired and stressed, but they were both clearly happy to be there worshiping that morning.  With all their focus on missions, I wondered what Resurrection does to help a family where someone has special needs.  Their website would later show me the bevy of resources available under the umbrella of “Matthew’s Ministry,” and I have to admit that reading over all of it made me tear up a bit.  Even though I try not to think of any one church size as being superior, I have to admit that this is a field where the megachurch model holds a pretty decisive advantage.  With more members, more staff, and more financial resources, you can have more personnel on hand who are trained in assisting members with special needs.  You can do infinitely more to reach people in situations like this young man and his mother.  Yes, small churches can have ministries like this as well, and many do, but I haven’t seen it with the degrees of depth and specialization that Resurrection presents.  Of course, as always, I welcome examples to the contrary and will do my best to study other approaches, but right now, this one has me pretty sold.  Getting back to the service . . .

It's not a screen.  It's a notebook.  There's a difference.

Rev. Russell Brown got up to lead the prayer, and I immediately sensed a slightly different vibe from Russell than from the other ministers (and not just because he was being a little more formal to suit the worship setting).  There was a serenity about him that seemed tempered by a great depth of experience.  It was as if Russell had seen it all and now simply couldn’t be shaken.  He introduced himself with settled courtesy, “Good morning.  I’m Russell Brown, the Pastor of Support Ministries.”  Ah, a chaplain.  Well, not exactly, but kind of.  Russell explained that his main duties are hospital visits, and he made quite a beautiful comment: “There is a holiness about a hospital room.  It is a place without even a shred of pretense.”  How does the old saying go?  I think it’s something like, “Pastors see people at their best; lawyers see people at their worst; doctors see people as they really are.”  Perhaps the same is true of people in jobs like Russell’s that require so many visits to the bedsides of hospital patients.  In that atmosphere of greatest fear and greatest hope, how can you really be anyone but yourself?  Russell called on us to lay aside our pretenses, carrying on the same theme of laying aside screens from the previous two services (but in a slightly more formal and generationally-inclusive way).  He prayed kneeling before the altar and gave us a time of silence to reflect on how we cut ourselves off from one another.  He asked God to “pull us away from our screens and our iPhones and our smartphones.”  The minister of music then led us in the same musical Lord’s Prayer from the previous service, accompanied this time by organ and piano.

Random thought: What is the difference between a “worship leader” and a “minister of music”?  Is there any real distinction other than the style of music they’re directing (contemporary is worship leader and traditional is minister of music)?  I ask because I just realized that nothing at Resurrection ever described their choir director as a “minister of music,” but I instinctively labeled him as such in my notes.  Is this just my conditioning, or is there some sort of issue underlying the difference in titles?

Following the Lord’s Prayer, during the offering and passing of the attendance books, the choir sang “A City Called Heaven,” a gospel tune popularized by Mahalia Jackson.  A tenor soloist stole the show:

I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow
I'm left in this wide world alone
I ain't got no hope for tomorrow
I'm trying to make Heaven my home

The camera panned across the choir, confirming that they were mostly baby boomers or older, all of them white.  The soloist himself was a bit on the older side as well, and like some of the members of the praise band, I strongly suspected that he had some professional experience.  When the offering plate came around, I noticed that it was far fuller than in the previous service.  I thought about it for a second and decided that this had more to do with where I was sitting than any other factor.  The back is a safe haven for visitors and younger adults, two groups which are much more likely to give spontaneously, while regular members and older adults tend to have more structured giving patterns often handled outside of the worship hour.  For this reason, I’m going to suggest that the offering plates in the back will almost always get more donations than those up front.  It’s a hypothesis that I may not get the chance to prove this summer, but if you find yourself attending multiple services at a megachurch, make sure you try moving from section to section to see how the giving varies (not to mention other factors like average age and hospitality).  This also has me second-guessing my “the 9AM crowd is friendlier” assessment of Mars Hill; I’m starting to suspect that the change in friendliness had more to do with where I was sitting than when I was sitting there, or it could even be some combination of the two factors.

Russell returned to the stage and 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)

Sermon (again)

Scott was getting more comfortable with each round of the sermon, and as some of his initial comments had been taken care of during the welcome at the beginning of the service, he had a little more time to play with his wording and really bring his illustrations to life this time around.  He started by thanking everyone for letting him preach out at the Leawood campus, throwing in a self-deprecating “Sure you must be tired of me by now” that got plenty of laughs.  Scott moved through his opening prayer and his litany of events that took place forty years ago.  The mention of Jimmy Carter’s election elicited a groan from somewhere up front-- the political climate at Resurrection appears to be mixed.  Bono.  Homefield advantage.  Mob mentality.  Crowdsourcing.  Wow, I am really hungry.  On crowdsourcing, Scott devoted a little more time to an example: the website iNaturalist.org, which recently began an “amphibian blitz” in which people were encouraged to submit photos of frogs.  In the event’s first day, May 25th, 170 new species of frogs were identified, and that number had risen to 700 within a week.  Scott described the event as “saving the frog population one frog at a time. . . . yeah, preach that.”  The congregation loved this.  Moving on.  Fantasy baseball illustration.  The Digital Disciple . . .

At this point, a teenager had come in and sat down behind me.  At least, I assumed he was a teenager.  He was smacking a piece of chewing gum loudly and talking to the girl next to him.  Suddenly, the sermon had a commentary track, and when Scott posed the question, “Do we talk to one another in church or just hide behind our screens?” I sort of wished that this chatty pair would opt for the screens.  Eventually, I did turn around to see who was smacking gum in my ear, and could you believe my surprise to find myself face-to-face with a man well into his 30s who was talking to his teenage daughter?  I adopted my “Dude, for real?” expression, but it seemed to have no effect.  It was almost as bad as the woman at Lawndale who was talking on her Bluetooth, but at least this guy was a good 3/4 of the way back from the stage, so it wasn’t quite the same level of disruption.

Scott talked about the Happiness Project and mentioned that God exists in community (“God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity!”), and Jesus would only leave a crowd during a time of prayer.  It was as if Scott had gotten my telepathic message to talk about Jesus’s times of solitude.  Scott also told all of this more from the disciples’ perspective this time and painted a picture of Jesus reassuring them that there is value in a crowd of people.  After talking about Kevin again, Scott wrapped up the sermon with the call to be present.  He clocked in at just under thirty minutes, and this was actually the first time that I had remembered to time him (which is a major compliment to Scott’s preaching ability).  Scott would later inform me that his screen there on stage actually has a little running timer, so part of the fun of preaching at Resurrection is trying to pace yourself against the clock.  (Believe it or not, to someone like me, that actually does sound incredibly fun.)

Antiseptic Communion (Part 3)

The words of institution felt even more abbreviated this time, and I found myself wondering, “They break a different loaf every time, but then they use the pre-bagged bread pieces instead.  What happens to that loaf after the service?  I really hope it’s given away or something.  I mean, in addition to being the Body of Christ, it could also be a free meal for someone.”  More pressing questions would come to mind when I met Scott after the service, so this question remains unanswered for me.  Again, Scott lifted up the special offering for the unemployed and encouraged people to give specifically to that offering as they came up to receive Communion.  The minister of music sang a hymn as people processed forward.

Come and partake the gospel feast,

Be saved from sin, in Jesus rest;

O taste the goodness of our God,

And eat his flesh and drink his blood.

This last line had the father and daughter behind me in hysterics.  Again, dude, for real?  This time, when I went to receive Communion, I simply brushed past the usher without a word from either of us.  An older gentleman in a suit, I could feel a judgmental stare follow me up the aisle, but at least I had escaped that obnoxious spritz.  The minister of music launched into another song, but as he did so, I observed that a lot of people were simply leaving after Communion rather than sticking around for the rest of the service, and they were missing one of my favorite hymns:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though there was no cue to do so, we seemed to stand in unison once the last person had received Communion.  Scott brought forth the announcements, mentioning the journey classes, the upcoming Willow Creek Leadership Summit, and a benediction, after which we processed out to an organ rendition of “Come Thou Fount.”