Worship at Resurrection (Part 5 of 5)- A conversation with Scott Chrostek and one more service

Prophets and Pastors-- Barbed Theology Revisited

Following the service, I went out to the foyer to shake hands with Scott.  I was impressed that he had preached so many consecutive sermons that morning, and given that I usually need a nap when the preaching high finally wears off after an hour or so (a condition that I call the “homiletical hangover”), I was curious to see how he was still going so strong.  I’ve never had to preach that many sermons in a row, and if I ever get the occasion to do so, my hope is that I would be able to finish strong like Scott did.  When I shook hands with him, Scott immediately recognized me, “Hey, you were in the early service too!”  Indeed, Scott had served me Communion in that service, but even this brief interaction was enough for him to recall my face.  I explained that I was a Duke Div student traveling the country and looking at churches, and Scott’s immediate reaction was, “No way!  I graduated there in 2006!  Hey, I don’t know if you have lunch plans or anything, but if you’ve got a second, want to grab a cup of coffee and talk Duke stuff for a bit?”  An impromptu coffee invitation from a Resurrection campus pastor who is also an alumnus of my divinity program and has managed to get a full three sermons out of the issues surrounding social media?  Yes.  Hell yes.

Scott had to go change out of his vestments, so I waited at a table by the coffee shop and awkwardly typed on my laptop, slightly embarrassed that I was already violating the instruction to surrender my screen.  I did my best to keep the screen angled slightly to one side so that passersby would see that I was open and inviting conversation, but typing in this fashion proved something of a challenge, especially since I was still trying to smile or wave at anyone who walked by-- an old habit picked up from four years in rural Ohio.  I was relieved when Scott arrived, now attired in shirt and tie, and I set the laptop aside.

Adam Hamilton, servant celebrity

Scott told me a little bit about going from a career in investments to Duke to Detroit to Resurrection, and I gave him a little more information on my travels this summer.  “Whoa, you’re really going to Westboro?”  “That’s the plan, but we’ll see if I even get to talk to anyone.  Mostly, I’ve just been dared to stand outside with a sign.  It’s more a photo op than anything else.”  “Still, should be interesting.  You know they came to Duke during the lacrosse scandal, right?  They were right by the C1 stop, and I heard this one guy yelling ‘Jesus was a prude!’  Frankly, I’m not even sure what that was supposed to mean.”  We spent most of our time talking about Duke and identifying the friends we shared-- McKennon Shea, Todd Maberry, Sarah Howell, Morgan Hendrix, the list went on and on.  Scott also told me a bit more about Adam Hamilton, and while Luke had told me about Hamilton’s intellect, Scott focused on his personality.  I raised the question of celebrity pastors, and Scott told me that Adam is someone I should really meet.  He pretty much wrote the book on servant leadership.  In fact, I need to look on amazon and see if he might have literally written a book on servant leadership-- wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  Scott explained that Adam governs his life with the philosophy, “I want the people who know me the best to be the ones who respect me the most.”  The more you get to know Adam Hamilton and see how he functions on a daily basis, the more you grow to respect him.  That’s the root of his “celebrity” status, and that’s what keeps him approachable and loving in spite of the notoriety that comes from being such a prolific author and speaker.  Hmm . . . acting lovingly . . . that reminded me of something . . .

I decided to ask Scott something that had been burning in my mind ever since New Song, but it was sticking out even further to me now that I was in a setting as affluent as Leawood: What do we do with Shane Claiborne’s “Hell is a gated community” statement?  Is there really a place for that sort of brutal rhetoric in Christian discourse?  Scott’s answer was that, while the statement had some very provocative, prophetic overtones and might make a good conversation starter in an academic setting, it just wasn’t appropriate or pastoral to make a statement like that in a church.  As pastors, our words should have a prophetic edge to them, but we should not use that edge to cut and divide and attack, and a statement like “Hell is a gated community” may have that consequence.  Scott reflected that one of the reasons that divinity students have church internships is to teach us that distinction between the prophetic and the pastoral.  While the two are not mutually exclusive, they sometimes do conflict, and it’s a balance that we have to learn.  By serving in churches, we learn to let a pastoral heart guide prophetic words so that they can be used to build people up instead of cutting them down.  Pastors should never seek to alienate or accuse or belittle; even though words of rebuke may occasionally be necessary in a private setting, we should strive first to help members of our congregations build connections to further ministry.  So yeah, I’m going to close the book on the “Hell is a gated community” comment.  It’s an interesting concept best left to the classroom, and I’m of the opinion that such condemnatory rhetoric simply doesn’t belong in a pastoral setting.

The Body, the Blood, and the Disinfectant

In the interest of being honest and genuine with him, I mentioned some of my concerns about the Saturday evening service to Scott, and when I made the observation about people not singing, Scott pointed out that maybe I was expecting the wrong things from that service.  “We’ve been trying something new on Saturday evenings lately-- going with a more barebones approach, trimming the band down to minimal instrumentation and vocals to allow for a different atmosphere of worship.  Like any change to a worship service, we’re still feeling things out a bit, but the goal of that service is very different from the big celebrations.  Now, if you were looking for a big celebration, that’s what our Sunday praise service is designed for, so you should come back tonight and give that one a shot and compare the two.  We pull out the full band and tear the roof off the place.  It’s probably our biggest service.”  Sunday evening is the biggest service?  Wow, this was new to me.  I have always worked under the assumption that the 11AM service is the one that people really hold most sacred, but then again, that might just be the Duke brainwashing talking.  A 5PM service does present certain conveniences that an 11AM just doesn’t (particularly to the sleepy 20-something demographic that I proudly represent).  Sure, I had a good bit of writing on my plate still, but if it would help me get a fuller image of worship life at Resurrection, I’d give it a shot.

Our old friend H1N1

Scott had other appointments that afternoon, so we had to cut the meeting a little short.  Still, as Scott stood up and prepared to leave, another question occurred to me that I just had to ask.  “Hey man, I’ve got to know:  How did the whole hand sanitizer thing get started?”  Scott laughed and explained, “Swine flu.  The whole thing started because of the swine flu scare.  People were getting so nervous about it that they wouldn’t come to receive Communion, so we had to address it somehow.  The hand sanitizer was a concession we made, but it’s something unique to the Leawood campus.  We don’t do it downtown.”  I checked the dates and realized that the downtown campus’s founding in 2009 (after the waning of the swine flu scare) meant that the hand sanitizer issue would have been a little outdated by the time that campus was up and running.  The Leawood campus, however, had fallen into a routine of spritzing the hands of any who came forward to receive Communion, so the practice remains in place.  Scott was very relieved to hear that neither of the ushers that morning had gotten pushy when I refused the spritz of sanitizer.  Apparently, some of the ushers enforce the Resurrection germ warfare ministry pretty ferociously, and Scott was glad to know that they had been accommodating toward me.  After all, hospitality is a component of missions, and based on the swarm of greetings I received following the 9AM service, I think it’s one that Resurrection takes pretty seriously.  In fact, even the hand sanitizer was a ritual that originally arose to accommodate member concerns, so although I still don’t particularly care for it, I understand why it was instituted and realize that it is a form of hospitality (however odd it might seem to a first time visitor).

Scott and I parted ways, but we were friends on facebook within a few hours-- the positive side of social media.  I saw him briefly before the 5PM service, but it was just long enough to talk a bit more about the blog and about Adam’s leadership through humble example.  Scott expressed his disappointment that I wouldn’t get a chance to meet his wife, who is also a Duke Div grad and enjoys meeting Duke students.  Of course, the loss is very much mine since meeting div alums is always a good reminder that there’s hope for employment after all this!  I’m glad Scott and I will be able to keep in touch via the blog and facebook.  He preached a solid sermon all four times that I heard it, and I was immediately impressed with his heart for pastoral ministry regardless of setting, whether it’s in the affluent suburb of Leawood or the innermost neighborhoods of Kansas City.  Scott gets that, while the pastoral and the prophetic are both key elements of ministry, prophetic words are most effective when spoken by a pastoral heart, and I thank him for helping guide me to that realization.

The Final Service-- Praise (Sunday, 5PM)

As tired as I was and as much extra work as it made for me, coming to this service was not a mistake.  In fact, it was probably my best worship experience of the weekend and very much the big celebration that Scott had promised me.

I drove back to Luke’s for a quick lunch before heading back over to Resurrection one last time.  After grabbing a few more photos of the facility and working for a bit in their coffee shop, it was time to head into the sanctuary for my final service of the weekend.  I walked in and grabbed a seat immediately behind the sound booth, and I quickly noticed that upbeat contemporary music was being piped into the room.  Even more impressive, it actually sounded good-- so good that I couldn’t even tell that it was Christian at first.  Hmm . . . that comment sounds far meaner now that I see it on my computer screen, but I’m going to go ahead and leave it intact as a commentary on Christian attempts at aping pop music since that is a serious problem.  A full explanation of my beef with the Christian music industry will have to wait for another time since I sort of need to close the book on Resurrection tonight so that I can begin my New Life research and writing.

Immediately, I noticed that this was a slightly younger crowd, with the average age being early 40s or maybe even late 30s.  I also observed that this batch of worshipers was a little more diverse than the previous services’ attendees.  While Resurrection is vastly majority white, I would say that ethnic and racial minorities might have constituted at least 5% of this worship service.  That’s not exactly an overwhelming number, but by comparison to the other services, it was a significant increase.  I noticed that the Sunday evening worshipers were casually attired, and they had broken out of the segregated-by-age seating pattern from that morning’s services.  Quite a few people would trickle in late, and I’m pretty sure that Scott was right: this did seem to be the biggest service of the four that I attended.

Though a percussionist had been added to the mix, the band and set list were virtually identical to that morning’s 9AM contemporary service, so I don’t feel the need to go in depth here since I would be repeating myself.  The key difference was not so much in the band anyway, but in the congregation, who now bobbed and swayed with the music, clapping in rhythm and sometimes prayerfully lifting their hands.  Normally a hallmark of contemporary worship, I was surprised when I suddenly realized that this was the first hand-lifting I had beheld in my entire time at Resurrection.  The congregation were singing louder than in any other service, and I felt like Lance was doing a better job of really leading the singing than he had that morning.

Glen led the prayers, again focusing on the forgiveness of sin and the process of letting go of our past mistakes.  Glen used a phrase in his prayer that really stuck with me: “Deploy us increasingly in seeing Your Kingdom come.”  Similar to his prayer that morning, Glen seemed to be saying that God was going to make it happen, and we were just blessed to be a part of the process.  The Lord’s Prayer was spoken this time instead of sung, and after a special welcome to online worshipers, we passed the offering plates and attendance books as the female singer once again offered up her rendition of “Your Great Name.”  Glen read the gospel once more:

“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)

This was probably Scott’s best version of the sermon, so it seemed a fitting conclusion for my time at Resurrection.  He offered Adam’s greetings along with another self-deprecating “Thanks for enduring my sermons,” to which the congregation responded with affirming laughter.  I noticed that Scott didn’t offer a recap of the previous week’s sermon this time around, and I thought this was an improvement-- it had bogged down his intro previously.  Instead, he jumped straight to the litany of events from forty years ago, and when the congregation was fairly quiet in response, Scott quipped, “By that silence, I’ll assume we’re all under forty!”  When prompted, about 60% of the congregation raised their hands to admit that they had surpassed the big 4-0.  Again, this was a younger crowd.

The camera operators were having a little more fun capturing this sermon on film, allowing more shots with Scott’s full body (rather than just the waist-up shots preferred by the morning camera crew.  At one point, the camera even panned out to show Scott walking to another part of the stage, and the camera operator managed to fit the entire “real social network” banner perfectly into the background.  It was a great shot.  Of course, this reminds me of a trend that I noticed in all of the services at Resurrection: if there are screens in a sanctuary, it is much easier to watch the preacher on the screen than it is to watch him on the stage.  Something about the lights on Scott made him appear exceedingly bright on stage (particularly when they reflected off of his white stole during the morning service), so looking at his actual physical presence for too long was a little difficult due to the intensity of the lights shining on him.  It proved much easier to look up at the screens, where the whole image was slightly darker and therefore easier on the eyes.  Back at Willow two weeks ago, Reba Collins’s traveling companion, Bill, had suggested that we prefer our pastors on screens nowadays because that’s become the new norm for getting information.  As a society, we have trained ourselves to watch screens, and we can watch them for exceedingly long periods of time, so putting screens in a sanctuary is just a way of accommodating a new cultural style of learning.  I would like to modify this theory by suggesting that the screens also help because megachurch stage lighting is just so darned intense that we need a filtered image to protect our eyes.  Okay, that was a serious tangent.  Where was I?

Scott was moving faster this time, and I knew that part of this was his race against the clock so that he could make it to the downtown campus in time to preach.  Still, he was hitting all of his points and even building on them.  When he reached the illustration about a friend having a spiritual experience at a U2 concert, Scott emphatically quoted the friend, “It was the most spiritual experience in my life!”  Scott allowed the words to hang for a second amid murmurs before he added that he had hoped the “most spiritual experience in my life” would involve church or Jesus or God, and this was greeted with murmurs of approval.  As I observed the congregation collectively responding with varying levels of murmuring, I realized for the first time really that this is a crowd.  This is one of the very crowds of which Scott was speaking in his sermon, and this crowd had power.  It spoke with a collective indignation or approval or amusement at every example Scott lifted up.  The crowd and Scott and God were all communicating to one another, and it was incredibly meaningful to be a part of that.

Homefield advantage.

Peer pressure.

Crowdsourcing.

Wikipedia.

Frogs.

World of Warcraft.

Fantasy baseball.

Farmville in the elevator.

I knew Scott’s sermon cold at this point, so I was really devoted more to watching the congregation, and they were with him every step of the way.  This crowd was collectively responding to the face on the screen in front of them.  When Scott told the story of Kevin, it solicited a loud “Oh my god!” from one woman in the crowd, and I think her concern for Kevin’s wellbeing was enough to help us all overlook the minor blasphemy.  Of course, the funniest moment in the entire sermon might have been when Scott again referenced The Happiness Project and posed the question, “Can you guess what one activity people said they always prefer to do alone?”  Someone up front suggested, “Going to the bathroom!”  Scott laughed, and so did everyone else, but then Scott made a point that he hadn’t quite nailed down in the previous tellings of this illustration: prayer, by its very nature, is a communal exercise.  It can never be done alone because God exists in a Community of Three, and when you pray, you commune with those Three and become part of God’s crowd.  Wow.  I had sort of been waiting for that explanation, and there it was.

Matthew 18:18-20 calls us to live beyond isolation.  It calls us to do life together.  It reminds us that Christ is with us, and that’s not just good news; it’s GREAT news!  To be a Christian is to be in community, and God calls on us to be willing to step around our screens and into other people’s lives.  It’s not enough to build a virtual network with people we never encounter in the physical world.  We must be real in our communities, be real with our neighbors, and be real with our God.  That’s a real social network.

Wow.  Now that’ll preach.  Well delivered, Scott.

Scott had to sneak out as he was praying.  After all, he had one more sermon to preach that night, so Glen presided over Communion.  He used the standard United Methodist liturgy with a few little community-themed additions here and there.  Using very sacramental language, he asked God to make the elements that evening a means of grace, and he called on us to give thanks as we received that grace.  Rather than Lance or the female singer, it was the keyboardist with the ethereal voice who sang this time:

I was carried to the table
Seated where I don’t belong
Carried to the table
Swept away by His love
And I don’t see my brokenness anymore
When I’m seated at the table of the Lord
I’m carried to the table
The table of the Lord

Somehow, the usher had missed me, and I looked up from my notes to realize that my row had already processed down to the front of our section to receive Communion.  I was sitting there alone, and the usher had already moved farther up the aisle.  There was no one to signal me to get in line, and there was no one to try and spritz my hands.  It felt a little strange to do so without the prompting of an usher (almost like I was usurping grace or something), but I simply stood up and walked down front.  For some reason, taking initiative like that made me feel very Baptist and reminded me that I was the wolf in the flock at this United Methodist mega.  Oh well.  At least I dodged the hand sanitizer for the third time in a row.

Worthy is the,
Lamb who was slain
Holy, Holy, is He
Sing a new song, to Him who sits on
Heaven's Mercy Seat.

The congregation started to join into the singing one by one, and once everyone had been served, Lance signaled us to stand up, and the song swelled with all these new voices.  It felt like everyone in the room was singing.  Every voice was lifted (and even a few hands as well).  Scott was right.  This was the sort of celebration I had expected from Resurrection.  It fit with what I expected-- that a church where service was the constant refrain should also be able to worship in this way, communally and excitedly.

Following the song, Glen mentioned the journey classes on missions, encouraging us to participate and learn where we might serve among Resurrection’s many ministries.  He asked us to pray for Adam Hamilton, as he continues to travel the country, seeking to bring renewal to the mainline church.  He blessed us, and as the keyboardist played quietly, we all departed.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom