Austin Stone Evening Service (Part 2)

From here, Aaron muttered something about amazing love, and the band transitioned into what may very well be the most familiar hymn of all time, a song around which all generations of Christians can unite to sing:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

i once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now i see

As I prepared myself to jump into the next line (“’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear . . .”), I was surprised to see that we simply cycled back into the first verse again.  I have to admit that this kind of disappointed me since I’ve always felt like the first verse of that song is really just the tip of the iceberg, and stopping there misses a lot.  Of course, I guess I should be grateful that they only left stuff out rather than changing things around.  A lot of churches will substitute “soul” for wretch or make the line “that saved and strengthened me.”  I have to admit that I’m not really okay with that; we have the original English lyrics, so we might as well go with them.  I mean, I understand changing “thy” to “your” in liturgy, but it’s Amazing Grace.  It’s one of the few hymns that pretty much everyone knows, so I get aggravated when people try to change the lyrics; it confuses people.  So yeah, while I was frustrated that we only sang one verse, at least it was in the original wording.  Aaron said a few words about not ever wanting to cheapen God’s grace, and the lights came up slightly as we moved into the sermon.

Since I’ve already presented Paul Tripp’s sermon, I’m not going to revisit it.  It was essentially the same sermon as that morning’s, even though there were a few different wordings here and there-- a few concepts explained a little more clearly, a few slightly different jokes, etc.  Since the lights had come up to allow for note-taking, I was also able to look around and see that, from the very front seat to the bleachers in the very back, that room was full of young Christians.

The lights went back down during Paul’s final prayer, and the band returned to the stage.

There is a name that moves

A name so wonderful

With power to rend the Heavens

And peace to still the storms

His name is Jesus, Jesus

The Lamb of God, the Lord Most High

He is Jesus

There is a name that loves

A name so wonderful

The One that loves the sinner

And heals the broken heart

(It was a much slower song, and in the midst of it, Aaron spoke up and asked us not to rush this moment and to savor this time with God.)

His name is Jesus, Jesus

The Lamb of God, the Lord Most High

He is Jesus

All glory and fame be unto the One who reigns

Yes, You reign

All heaven and earth rejoice at the sound

Of Your name, of Your name

There is a name that saves

A name so wonderful

His blood has sealed our pardon

Through the triumph of the cross

The drums led the transition into the next song, practically shaking the room as they did so.  There was some interplay between drums, bass, and guitar before Aaron led us into the final song of the service.  Hands shot up around the room and people bobbed and bounced in their seats.  In particular, a young guy (probably late teens) a few seats in front of me had one hand lifted into the air, and he was covering his bowed face with the other hand in an act of what looked like some combination of reverence and contrition.  The spiritual high of the service was nearing its climax, and if tears were to flow or shouts of joy were to be exclaimed, this would be the time.

The earth is changed

With Your great grandeur

The stars above

Shine for You

And the world below

Responds in wonder, God!

And we’re all lost in You

In all You say and do

You are worthy of Your glory

God Almighty, You are Lord

Forever

You’re robed in honor

You’re armed in power

God forever, You are Lord

Forever

The waves resound

They pound Your praises

The flowers bloom

And stretch to You

Let everything

You’ve made now praise You, God!

Oh, let all creation sing

Awake my soul and sing

Awake my soul and sing

Awake my soul and sing

Let praise arise from my whole being

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,

You are Lord

Forever Lord!

There was a brief reprise of an earlier song as the worship service came to its close:

Your love never fails; it never gives up; it never runs out on me.

Your love never fails; it never gives up; it never runs out on me. . . .

Tyson returned to the stage to deliver a closing prayer, and I noticed people sneaking out before the offering baskets were passed.  Tyson delivered the announcements-- the exact same set from St. John, but with a slightly different set of comments.  When talking about the parenting seminar, Tyson commented that it might be useful “you know, for those of you who want to be parents one day.”  Wow, this really was a young crowd!  On our way out, we all grabbed our folding chairs and stacked them to make cleanup that much easier for the volunteers, and as I made my way slowly through the mob of people, I walked back to the For the City tables to pick up my conversation with Steph and Andrea where we had left off.

Teaching to Serve

Steph apologized again for having so many conversations that required her attention earlier, but with Switch starting up the following morning, I don’t blame her one bit.  I asked a bit more about the program, so Steph launched into a very business-like explanation of the camp-- it seemed like she had given this explanation many time before.

Switch attracts middle and high school students, usually from within Texas but outside of Austin.  In fact, Austin Stone was the only Austin youth group that would be participating.  The goal is to teach teens how to be merciful in their daily lives, and this is done through funneling the visiting youth groups into Austin Stone’s partner ministries all over town (sort of like Austin Stone does with their regular attendees, but in this case, it’s a massive deluge of youth volunteers).  Steph told me that there were 26 specific opportunities for service in which they had placed the youth groups, ranging from bagging hygiene kits with the Caritas homeless ministry to prayer walks around the St. John neighborhood, which Steph again assured me is very much a bad neighborhood in need of Christian presence.  There is still drug addiction and prostitution and gang activity, and the church wants to do what it can to help people out of those destructive patterns.  It may not be Sandtown or Cabrini-Green or Orange Mound, but every city has their areas that need special care.

Of course, the youth groups will also be getting plenty of time to worship and reflect and attend various workshops together.  Steph was particularly excited about a workshop on storytelling in which the focus would be on how all of us are part of God’s story and how we must hear and treasure the stories of others before passing them along, letting our own stories grow and be changed in the process.  Honestly, if I heard that sort of talk in a classroom, my eyes would probably glaze over, but the fact that this workshop was taking place at Austin Stone with a group of teens who might not have ever encountered that style of thinking before made it exciting.

Steph also wanted to focus on the fact that these kids were not just here to do relief.  She suggested that the camp really had as much to do with lifting up the youth as lifting up the neighborhood, and the real transformations they were hoping for this week would take place in the hearts of these teenagers.  This was a chance for the youth to experience service providers similar to the ones in their own communities, and the hope was to give them ideas about how they might serve when they return home at the end of the week.  I was particularly impressed when Steph stressed that Austin Stone discourages duplication of ministries.  The church is not telling these groups to go back and start their own nonprofits.  The church is telling them to go back and get together with existing nonprofits.  If every church went back and started all its own programs, you’d just get a shortage of resources and too wide a dispersion of donations.  It wouldn’t really help anything, and it might even make things worse by wasting funding and resources.  Austin Stone wants people to partner with nonprofits.  It wants Christians to serve the community through the organizations that are already out there and build reciprocal relationships between churches, agencies, and the people accepting assistance.  Sure, if there really is nothing in a community, then people should start their own programs, but there is almost always something already out there, so rather than competing for resources, we need to be praising and supporting and participating in the work that is already taking place.

Whoa.  Bravo, Austin Stone.  This is a megachurch that is seriously flexing its muscles, and I’m impressed.  That spirit of partnership and relationship is something that I think we need more of in this world.  I have to admit that I’m still a little ambivalent about the whole thing of doing internships up a pyramid (often in lieu of a seminary degree), but I’m not going to argue with the impact that church is having on the world around it.  With that web of connections to nonprofits around the city and their presence there in the St. Johns neighborhood, Austin Stone is doing some impressive things, and though I don’t necessarily seek to duplicate them (as Steph had cautioned against), I have to admit that I was sort of taking notes with an eye toward something similar but maybe on a smaller and more intimate scale.

Now that I think of it, that word intimate is resonating with me strangely right now.  I thought about what Devin said back at LaSalle Street about how they were working to incorporate the homeless folks they help more directly into the church’s worship as a means of making sure that their community all truly felt like part of one intimate congregation.  Though Austin Stone is doing quite a bit to reach out, I wonder if that deep a level of connection hasn’t fully taken shape yet.  The service that I had experienced that evening was intimate, but it was intimate in the sense of predominantly-white middle class youth sharing in the effervescence of a Christian concert.  There was a ritual intimacy to it that wasn’t quite how I grasp onto that word these days.  I think of intimacy as being something very one-on-one, and though Aaron’s stage presence (his enthusiasm and vulnerability) had helped facilitate those feelings in the youth and young adults present in that room, I’m not sure it’s the approach I take.  I don’t want to undercut that worship experience or discount it in any way; I’m just saying that it’s not really a culture I get to be a part of anymore, so my approach to Christian intimacy has had to adapt.  I’ve attended some very moving and life-changing youth worship events in my day, but the experiences which I look back on and really describe as intimate have all been very small and very personal:

Sitting and talking in Jeff Williamson’s office every Wednesday night after Bible Study back in high school.

Sipping smoothies with Jeff Bergeson on a Middle Path bench as he tried to drill through the layer of granite I had erected around my brain and heart when it came to matters of faith.

Talking about life experiences with Karl Stevens, Steve Robishaw, and Clay Brown in the chapel basement every Monday night during my last semester at Kenyon-- a time when I had only just started identifying myself as a Christian again and still had a lot to wrap my mind around.

Sitting in a booth at Torrero’s on my birthday with Madison Jordan and Harryson Turner after leading a Bible Study again for the first time in years.

Having a beer with my brother and knowing that, while we disagree on issues of religion, there’s a family bond that will always unite us.  He’s got my back, and I’ve got his.

Sitting in the student lounge at Duke with fellow divinity students as we shared one another’s joys and frustrations.

Washing Erin’s feet at Wesley’s Maundy Thursday service just a few months ago in an awkward time where we knew how we felt about one another but hadn’t quite reached that moment of saying aloud, “Yes, God, this one.”

These are some of the times that I think of as intimate, and I don’t deny that the people in that room at Austin Stone felt just as deeply in that service as I did in these moments.  I think that the corporate sense of intimacy in a service like that must be paired with deep personal relationships in order for it to be sustainable though, and based on my conversation with Steph, it sounds like the church really encourages that.  Still, it doesn’t change the fact that, while hearing about Austin Stone’s work with local nonprofits and the St. Johns neighborhood was invigorating to say the least, something about that worship service had me feeling like I was on the margins somehow.  There was an intimacy about that church to which I was somehow denied access, and that’s still eating at me just a little.  I’ve been doing the megachurch thing for quite a few Sundays now, and I think I need a different kind of service next . . .