Tag: Church

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If It Hadn’t Been for Cotton-Eyed Joe

By Amy Spiegel

While I was enjoying Thanksgiving break at my folks, my dad pointed out an article in the local paper about a Christian country music artist and his idea for making church more accessible to country music fans. Why not have church in a bar? Not just any bar but a country line dancing bar? The musician has convinced his pastor and congregation to support the idea and has begun organizing monthly services. The services take place on Monday nights since those they are trying to reach are sleeping in on Sunday morning.

My first inclination was to dismiss this approach as yet another American, evangelical “innovation.” But I didn’t. Maybe it was the result of the residual warm feelings of Thanksgiving. Maybe my critical thinking skills had been dulled from too much dressing and cranberry salad.

Whatever the cause, I tried to set aside my skepticism and imagine how I might react differently if this Coors Light Church was taking place in a beer garden in Berlin rather than a line dancing bar in my hometown. Would I be so quick to criticize some missionary in a foreign land who was trying to work with the culture instead of against it? Was it a form of my pride which was offended by the idea that my country is a mission field?

Of course, we all should be trying to reach the lost. But somehow when I think of friends off saving the lost in Thailand or Columbia or some other far away and exotic place, the lost of those countries seem different somehow. I imagine them living in a darkness of disbelief based on ignorance while the lost of America seem more willfully disobedient. Surrounded by churches of all sorts and sizes and the freedom to worship as they please, it feels naïve to see them in the same light as those who have never heard the name of Jesus, never read God’s words in the Bible, never heard the Good News. But geography has little influence on the slavery under which so many labor. Surely the human heart is no more or less rebellious in the heart of the heartland as it is the depths of the Amazon jungle. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right?

In my imagining, I began to examine what it said about us as a nation that this type of service would appeal to so many. (The article reported that more than 600 people attended the first service.) I conjured up the cultural orientation which might take place in order to ready missionaries for ministry among us. While certainly southern, country line dancers are a distinct subculture. I think a few of the lessons can be learned about the indigenous population as a whole. Perhaps keeping these things in mind can help us as we search for the lost sheep among us and try to keep from becoming lost ourselves.

  • We are a people desperate for relationship. Though the message was not printed in its entirety, it was summed up by the pastor as basically “God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you.” Now I don’t know exactly what type of relationship this pastor is talking about but I am pretty sure that God doesn’t want just to have you “friend” Him on Facebook and move on with your day. And there lies the source of our starvation for relationship. We don’t want to give up anything, of ourselves, of our time, of our resources in order to relate to other human beings or even the Creator of the universe. One of the premises of the service was that people wouldn’t want to give up being out all night long on Saturday in order to attend church on Sunday morning. If we are to reach our culture, we must convince them that in order to fill the great void of loneliness from which they suffer, they must be willing to make great sacrifices.
  • We care a great deal about our own comfort. The article stressed that the people in attendance were those who wouldn’t feel comfortable in a normal church setting. Why is that exactly? Are churches really such scary places? I have been to a lot of churches in my time and while a few have been cold or intimidating, I have often found the problem with churches is that they are too friendly. Jim and I once made the mistake of visiting a small church struggling to attract new blood. I didn’t think we would get out alive, or at least without promising to come again. So what is it about church that scares people? Maybe it isn’t the other people they fear encountering, but rather they fear encountering themselves. There is little time for self-reflection in our media-soaked society and sitting a pew for an hour or two certainly gives one time to take stock.
  • We don’t care too much for the sacredness of place. We are a nation of transitory people, always on the move and so the idea that place has meaning and value is odd to us. Combine our nomadic ways with our utilitarian tendencies and it is little wonder that people have no problem worshipping the Almighty amidst Jeff Gordon signs and mechanical bulls. (I can’t confirm the mechanical bull, but I have my suspicions.) I know God is everywhere but I do think the way and where of worship matter too. It’s why I make my boys wear shirts with collars and jeans without holes on Sunday morning. And it’s why we don’t pile up on the couch to worship but pile into our van and enter a place of worship. But certainly we need to take care to make all feel welcome in that place, sacred though it may be.

The name of the establishment in which this service took place is “Cotton-Eyed Joes” and since I read the story I haven’t been able to stop mumbling a portion of the song by the same name. I thought to cure myself but actually looked up the lyrics and stumbled across this verse “He brought disaster wherever he went; The hearts of the girls was to Hell, broken, sent; They all ran away so nobody would know; And left only men ’cause of Cotton-Eye Joe.” Rather ominous words for a fluffy country song but perhaps there is a warning there for us all. For just as we should be seeking the lost, wherever they may be found, there is another who is seeking them as well. He brings only disaster and brokenness. And if we don’t find the lost, he certainly will.

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Stubbing My Toe on the Stumbling Block of Tradition

By Amy Spiegel

I love tradition. If ever we do anything the same way twice (the same holiday routine, the same vacation spot, the same meal two Saturdays in a row), I immediately want to canonize it and say that we have to do it the same way every year. When Christmas time rolls around, I try to find as many ways as humanly possible to “create” tradition while Jim huddles in a corner somewhere, waiting out the storm of my enthusiasm. We have to listen to the same Christmas CD while putting up the tree, eat the same foods, use the same ornaments, etc. This also applies to my church-going routine. If I could convince my family to attend a church that played only hymns from the first century A.D. sung in Latin, I would do it. I am greatly comforted by the knowledge that if I am in error, I can blame some guy with a funny name who died thousands of years ago who may or may not have shaken the hand of our Lord and Savior. Sadly there are no such churches in our area so we have settled on a reformed church with one foot solidly planted in traditional worship and maybe a big toe and a few smaller appendages dabbling in the territory of the more contemporary.

Anyhoo, when we are visiting my greatly esteemed parents, we have occasion to visit their church. It is a good church and the preaching is excellent but the worship style is definitely a stretch for my traditional tastes. On a recent visit, I was struggling with both the style and content of a string of choruses, when a realization hit me like a censer between the eyes. (According to Wikipedia a censer is a small metal or stone dish used for burning incense which in the Roman Catholic Church is suspended on chains.) The reason I object to so many of the modern choruses is what I perceive to be an overemphasis on our emotional response to God. It isn’t that I am against emotion in general. (Just ask my kids, who enjoy forcing me to read “The Giving Tree” or “The Story of the Three Trees” just to watch me blubber like a whale on hormones at the end of each.) I love classic hymns because they tend to focus our attention on God’s attributes and his saving works, and my pigheaded self-centeredness needs all the refocusing it can get. But what I hadn’t realized was that although there are certainly some doctrinally justifiable objections to a number of choruses making the rounds these days, I was not responding based on such reason. I was responding with my emotions. I don’t like that style and it doesn’t make me feel like I am worshiping God.

I believe that there are some objective standards by which we can evaluate sacred music. (Like, for starters, could we have an actual melody that most of us can sing? And is it mandatory to repeat the chorus fourteen times? Just a thought. Not that I am bitter or anything.) But I do believe that there is a lot of room for diversity here, and we (okay, I) need to be careful that worship is what it is meant to be—an expression of our obedience to God, not an expression of how we are feeling at the moment. And if I like to worship in the traditional (read: correct) ways and you like to worship in the contemporary (read: slightly less correct but perfectly within the bounds of orthodoxy) ways, then that’s okay. Yes, we should hold one another accountable to standards of excellence in both content and form. But within those standards there is a great deal of room for diversity, just as there is a great deal of diversity within the body as a whole. After all, we are a body of many parts, not just one big toe.

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I’ve Got Friends in Low Places

By Amy Spiegel

In our kitchen we have a large set of windows overlooking our quiet (when the motorcycles aren’t in season) tree-lined street. I spend a great deal of the day standing, looking out these windows, as I make the kids’ lunches, fix dinner, and do a hundred other small daily tasks. It’s strange that such a beautiful view, at least in the summer, causes me such vexation. You see, two of my good friends (and their swarm of kids with whom my swarm of kids greatly enjoy playing) live almost directly across from these windows and right next to each other. Between us is a church parking lot that functions as a demilitarized zone for the swarm and their roller blades, bikes and tricycles. It is rare that a day passes without me watching one of the kids dash across the street to see if someone can play.

What a blessing, right? Funny how human beings have a talent for taking every blessing and twisting it into a curse. Because while I often smile as I watch my kid’s mad dash toward friendship, there are other times, more often that I care to admit, that I stand on tiptoe to make sure I’m not being left out of anything fun. A recent phone conversation with a friend proved the absolute absurdity of my paranoia. The conversation began innocently enough, as we were discussing carpooling for school. Yet despite the relative unimportance of the topic, I could tell both of us were tense and a bit defensive. You see, carpooling is a very political subject, demanding a great deal of diplomacy and tact, a bit like joining NATO. You are either in and therefore recognized as a “player,” one of the inner circle and worthy of being entrusted with someone else’s offspring, or you are out and left to fend for yourself among the lesser alliances with lesser known acronyms like the IBSA Dialogue Forum or the International Black Sea Club. Finally, I confessed to feeling a bit like a middle schooler and admitted that I was afraid of presuming too much and being left out of the loop in my friend’s plans. She quickly affirmed my value as a friend, and I suddenly felt like I had someone to sit beside me at lunch for the rest of my life. (What is a more likely place for humiliation than a large room full of adolescences balancing trays of food and desperately trying not to look desperate?)

What followed was an honest and refreshing tête-à-tête about how often we feel isolated and excluded from the social circles revolving around us in a seemingly endless chain of play dates and sleepovers. The irony was that I felt this way about this very friend. As she expressed her longing for true community and a sense of belonging, I heard my own voice (only I normally just talk to myself or Jim, if he is unlucky enough to answer his office phone at the wrong time). The more I listened, the more I felt something click in my head about my own views on community. I realized that however I try to disguise it by dressing it up in language about the “body of Christ,” what I really mean when I talk about community is a place where I feel completely comfortable. Though I talk about wanting to serve others and support and encourage them, what I am really looking for is others who will serve and support me. And if they think I am fun, like my cooking, and greatly admire my parenting skills, that’s great too. I am not looking for community; I am looking for an entourage. And as I sat there looking out my windows, my mind came to rest on Jesus. What an entourage He had! The disciples were not exactly prestige friends, and I feel quite certain they weren’t in the elite carpool. Christ had something to offer them, not the other way around. He chose friends who needed friends.

I suddenly saw the vicious cycle I was in.  Thinking only of myself just magnified each perceived slight, which made me think about myself more, and so on. The irony is that when I die to self and let go of my firm grim on self-interest, it is in that moment I find peace. When I am only looking out for myself, I am all I see. (This experience is a bit like looking too closely at one’s reflection in the glare of the dressing room mirror. Absolutely no good can come of it.) I have been standing at the window looking out for myself when all the while I should have been looking out for opportunities to serve. The contentment that I feel in the presence of others does not come from thinking about myself. It’s when I look to the needs of others that I cure my loneliness. The isolation Jesus experienced every day of His life on earth and especially on the cross wasn’t cured by gathering to Himself the best and the brightest. It was through His ultimate sacrifice for our sake that He restored fellowship with His Father, for Himself as well as for ourselves. The community of heaven awaits me if I am willing to lay down my life. God placed me in front of a window looking out, not in front of a mirror looking in.