Naked Singing in Church
I recently worshiped in a carpeted sanctuary with a capacity of about 1000. Perhaps 100 people attended the 8:30 service, and we were spread out all over the sanctuary. Boy were we spread out — passing the peace took two seconds because you couldn’t reach the hand of the nearest person to you. Sort of felt like what worshiping with the quarantined, but I digress.
This experience reminded me that people sing best when they sit fairly close together — when they are close enough to hear other voices with their own. Hearing other voices assures you that you aren’t singing a solo, and the blend of sound supports everyone else.
I’m a trained singer and a hymn lover, but in said quarantine worship environment I admit I sang neither loudly or well. I felt naked. If I sung out, the person four rows in front me would hear me and only me — when I’m singing to God, I don’t like feeling it’s also a solo to unknown person in front with bald spot and bad sports coat.
I’ve heard multiple stories of congregations who were seeking to improve their congregational song finding simple steps such as getting folks to sit closer together, putting choir members behind them, and playing the organ more quietly rather than acoustical assault greatly helped. Or you could always take up the carpet 
image by Gözde Otman
Are You an Urbanist? Thoughts on Rural Ministry
Good for Time Magazine and David Van Biema for drawing attention to the state of the rural church and farming community in “Rural Churches Grapple with a Pastor Exodus.” Such questions are very much at hand for me these days as I look for a first call. As my classmates and I are finding out, there are many congregations in rural areas seeking pastors, but few congregations seeking in urban areas. To seminarians with significant debt, the salaries most rural congregations offer may barely cover the hundreds a month required for loan repayment. And, even worse, there’s a functioning fallacy in most seminaries that their best students should be called to cities. As Daniel Wolpert, a pastor in rural Minnesota, says, a professor once told him: “Don’t go [to a rural call], you’re too creative for that.” If you ask me that’s ridiculous small-minded urbanism.
All this is very close to my heart since Megan is from a town of 50 in northeastern North Dakota. (In fact, her Lutheran congregation is searching for a pastor if you’re interested.) In any case, let’s take, for example, the presbytery that Megan’s house is in, the Presbytery of the Northern Plains. It is comprised of 66 churches, 75% of which are under 100 members. Just as the population of North Dakota is declining, so is the population of the church. It doesn’t take long clicking through the Presbyterian website with such information to find several congregations in North Dakota with membership numbers under 10.
Call me naive or excitable, but doesn’t this call, then, not for hand-wringing and remembering the good ole days, but for our most creative, gifted, pastoral leaders to head to the midwest (or rural wherever)? If Frederick Buechner is right, and call is where “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” more of us need to seriously consider the great rural needs of this generation. And, dare I say it?, should thriving wealthy urban churches give part of their resources to supporting rural congregations?
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to idealize rural ministry. It’s not for everyone. If you ask me –and hell, what do I know– it’s more challenging than urban ministry, more diverse than college ministry, more lonely and at the same time more people-oriented than youth ministry. And, perhaps, more rewarding as well. Rural ministry is particularly challenging for pastors’ spouses seeking employment, and for young folks seeking peer groups. It ain’t for everyone. No way. But there’s something in me that thinks it’s for more than we’re giving it credit. And boy, the opportunities for smart, faithful, and innovative use of technology abound.
This is all to say, read this Time article. Think on these rural ministry things. Check out Carol’s fantastic post here (and the great comments). And, if you’re at all churchy, think about how we urbanites can expand our vision to include all God’s children, even those from towns with a population of 50.
image by Renaude Hatsedakis
Technology and the Next Hymnal
Sing to the Lord a New Song:
Technology and the Next Hymnal
Technology opens doors in the church and in the world. One tweet on Twitter can connect pastors in ways unimaginable when my Dad was in seminary (sorry, Pops). Blog communities bring new and exciting — though imperfect — ways to discuss Christ and culture. What self-respecting youth group these days doesn’t have a Facebook group? That said, I’m also aware of the growing digital divide in our congregations. Now, when we think of our diversity, we must also remember the diversity of those with email and those without, those with a high-speed internet connection and those without a computer. Ahh, the challenges of ministry in 2009.
The Presbyterian Hymnal Committee, a group formed last year, is in the initial stages of developing the next Presbyterian hymnal. The next hymnal will include songs composed since 1990 (the publication date of the blue hymnal) and will seek to honor our rich heritage. Perhaps it will bring back some from the red book, but it’ll also put into print some of the new places that God is leading us. For all your next hymnal questions check out http://presbyterianhymnal.org , and remember the committee is just beginning its work.
Especially in these early stages, though, I want to take to the committee some ways that new technology might best be used to sing a new song unto the Lord. Copyright law is tricky enough with printed materials, let alone when concerned with electronic formats, but I want to think broadly at this stage.
(On a parenthetical note, let’s not forget the amazing “technology” of the bound paper printed book. What a remarkable, durable, cheap, easy-to-use, technology it is — and will be for years to come. The next hymnal will certainly be in book format, but why stop there?)
The committee can make no promises — we have budget considerations like everybody else — but we will consider, in good faith, how God may be calling the church to use technology in its congregational song and worship planning. That’s where you come in.
Comment away. What tech ideas — hymnal/singing/worship related — would be handy in your congregation? How do you use the hymnal for worship planning and how could that be bettered with new technology? Do you use existing online worship resources? What, technologically speaking, should the hymnal committee consider?
Pop a comment on this post, or email me at adamjcopeland at gmail dot com. Peace.
Praying (or not?), "O God of Our Many Understandings"
image by Dez Pain
Thanks to Mary and TellingSecrets, I paste below Bishop Gene Robinson’s prayer at the inaugural festivities yesterday. He did, as he said, and prayed to the “God of our many understandings.” I respect Bishop Robinson for many a personal trait and a theological stance, but I differ with him on this decision.
From my point of view, Bishop Robinson, an Episcopal priest, was asked to pray because of who is he is: a religious figure, yes, but one particularly of the Episcopal tradition. This tradition brings with it certain theological claims, like, um, “Jesus is Lord” and “God is Triune.” It’s a tradition that leaves plenty of room for the Spirit to reveal to us more knowledge of God and God’s work in the world, but it’s a tradition that has clear creeds, makes clear claims about God who we understand in a particular way.
I’m from the school of thought — and, I confess, at a seminary that tends to lean towards this school — that inter-religious dialogue is cheapened when we try to make God into a common denominator like “God of our many understandings.” Instead, coming to the inter-religious table knowing much about your own faith, making clear claims about the God in whom you believe, I think, leads to richer, deeper, more honest conversation. Instead of some fluffy unknown unrevealed God, we can address the God we know and understand, tell others about that God, and our faith may be deepened and our knowledge expanded by the conversations that follow.
On his blog, Robinson writes, “I have received a lot of critical email since announcing that my prayer would not be overtly or aggressively Christian, as most of the inaugural prayers of the last 30 years have been. My plan is to address this prayer to the “God of our many understandings,” acknowledging that no one Christian denomination nor no one faith tradition knows all there is to know about God. Each of us is privy to a piece of God, as experienced in our faith tradition. My hope is to pray a prayer that ALL people of faith can join me in.”
What if my “understanding of God” is that God only helps those who help themselves, or hates people with blue eyes, or damns those who fail to recycle? Did Bishop Robinson lead me in prayer too? I guess so.
I don’t understand how one can have such an open-ended address to God, and then pray for so many particular things. It seems to me that if one is consistent about such a stance one would need to just leave a time of silence for everyone to lift up their own particular understandings of what the prayer should include. As soon as you start to make everyone happy in a prayer, or invite all to join, you’re surely leaving out others by the very nature of that invitation in the first place.
I’ll put the full prayer up below. I’ll definitely give him props for the line, “our new president is a human being, not a messiah” and the two-fold nature of the prayer for big-picture justice and then for Obama in particular is nice. Inter-religious stuff is HARD to do with integrity and I’m totally not looking forward to my first experiences. But, when I have them, I’ll bring to the table who I am, what I believe in, and testify to the God in whom I trust.
Bishop Gene Robinson’s Prayer:
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
The Church as a Barn, dog leash, NCAA bracket, and Hip Flask
Just up in my Seminary Reflections column at Presbyterian Bloggers. Apologies to my classmates for poor descriptions of their grand ideas.
Apologies for posting a bit late in the day, but I wanted to write this seminary reflections piece after my class this morning. It’s a class of all seniors, and together with three professors we’re attempting to integrate our seminary experience up to now, our knowledge of the church, and our hopes for a resilient future in ministry.
Today’s activity called us all to bring in an object that represented our view of the church today. Some of us thought of the PC(USA), some of us thought wider, others about their own denominations. I admit, going in, I thought the activity was a bit elementary and cliche, but at the end of the morning I walked away with my mind changed. It was fascinating –and moving– to hear my colleagues’ various descriptions of the church. Here’s a few…
The church as an old barn. People love the barn, it served a great purpose in its day, and it’s still wonderful to look at. You can throw great nostalgic parties in it and people have a fantastic time together, but if it rains, well, the roof leaks a bit. And it’s not very fitting for today’s farm needs. And the trouble with old barns is, they keep getting even older and it’s hard to know when to fix them, or whether to just knock them down, whether a tent might work better, or whether you just need a bigger better barn.
The church as an NCAA basketball March Madness bracket. At the beginning of March Madness everybody picks who they think will win, how they are sure the future will ensue. But, almost never, does anyone completely pick correctly. In fact, once folks get to the final four it’s pretty rare that they even have two teams correctly chosen. We can’t see the future, and when we think we do, we’re usually wrong. Maybe the church is like that. We think we’ve got it all figured out, that our bracket is picture perfect, then God comes along and reminds us what we’ve got is all wrong, shows us the true way forward. And our entire bracket, or worldview, changes.
The church as a double dog leash. When you walk two dogs on two leashes that are connected, one dog may veer off to the right, and another to the left, and you may want to go a completely different direction. You may have to follow one dog, or the alpha dog may drag you to a place you’ve never been before, but is really great. When the dogs are pulling different ways it may seem as if they’re at odds, but they’re really trying, in their own way, to discern what’s best. Maybe we’re just like dogs smelling our ways forward, and would do well to stop and remember who is leading us.
The church as a hip flask. Acts 2, the story of Pentecost, tells how the early disciples got taken as drunks because they were so consumed by the Spirit. It’s good to be drunk on God, but sometimes, often perhaps, we in the church get drunk on other things: the way things were, money or power, buildings or prestige. Instead of gathering at the Lord’s table and sharing the wine with the community of saints, we’re drinking the cheap liquor of our own ways not God’s. It’s fine to drink, to get drunk on the Spirit, but we need wisdom to discern our tastes are true and good.
And there were many more. Legos. Phones. Shells. Tool boxes. Olive trees. Sure, these are playful exercises and we all know every image is incomplete, flawed, and broken. But I found it quite fun, and perhaps telling, to consider.
So if you could choose an image to describe the church today, what would you choose–have some fun with it?
image by Lillian Nelson
Christmas Eve: Scrooge Edition
A few wonderings re Christmas Eve…
- I read multiple advertisements in today’s newspaper for churches’ “Traditional Candlelight Service.” Strange use of “traditional,” I bet. I don’t have the books with me to prove it, but I’m pretty sure candlelight services are a relatively new American tradition, certainly not more than 50 years old. Then again, in a church, it only takes doing something twice to become a tradition.
- If Christmas is all about celebrating Christ’s birth, then it seems to me that evening services on Christmas Eve celebrate it too early. With all the waiting of Advent, why can’t we manage to wait one more day and celebrate on Christmas Day? I’d understand a watch-night service, maybe, that went deep into the night and ended in celebrating the incarnation, but Christmas eve services jump the gun, if you will. Why isn’t our big Christmas celebration on Christmas Day?
- Let’s all make an effort to keep the Christmas celebration going through Epiphany, post-Christmas sales not withstanding.
- As I explored in my eschatological Advent sermon, I think its a good idea to keep eschatology in our minds and in our liturgy even on Christmas day. I think Mark Koenig does so well, saying:
On this night
bellies spasm with hunger
winter seeps into the bones of people with no homes
thoughts turn to Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and places between and beyond
people plot violence
children watch parents die of AIDS, wondering when their turn will come
relationships fray and come apart
children and women and men endure abuse
economic uncertainty undoes nations and households
walls divide people from their homes
nuclear sabers rattle and handguns bark
drugs surge through veins to allow escape from reality’s pain
death comes calling — sometimes welcome, sometimes not
sorrow and suffering spread around the world
trouble and turmoil touch us all
evil stalks the earthYet
in the midst of all that
in the face of all that
in spite of all that
because of all that
on this night,we gather
to sing
and pray
and read ancient words
and light candles
and celebrate again
the birth of a child —
— nothing more and nothing less
than the every day miracle —
except that this child — this Jesus —
tells us
teaches us
shows us
life does not have to be the way it is
but that it can be filled
with
hope and
faith and
grace and
sharing and
commitment and
community and
justice and
righteousness and
well-being and
wholeness and
peace . . .
. . . on earth . . .
. . . for all!Glory to God, may it be so.
image by Steve9091
Help for the Journey
A few months ago now, I attended a conference put on by The Fund for Theological Education. If you’re connected to the church in any way, you need to know about FTE. They have a rather significant budget, and they’re all about supporting young people explore vocation — too all forms of ministry — but, especially, to church leadership.
FTE offers some great scholarships for undergraduates, seminary students, and racial-ethnic PhD students, and more broadly, seeks to cultivate a culture of call that permeates all congregational life.
I attended the Calling Congregations Conference in October, held here in Atlanta. I definitely recommend future conferences to pastors and church leaders interested in exploring how God is calling a new generation of church leaders.
I write this post, however, with last week’s post on “The Huge Problem of the PC(USA) Call Shortage That Doesn’t Exist” in the back of my mind. I suppose it could be argued that because the PC(USA) has plenty of leaders, statistically speaking at least, that FTE’s mission is already complete. But to make that argument, one would have to be pretty out of touch with the denominations I know and love.
Sure, we need to address the PC(USA)’s dwindling numbers, empty rural pulpits, and swelling urban presbyteries, but isn’t the problem, more broadly speaking, one of quality? The church doesn’t need more pastors, it needs quality pastors who, with God’s help, help the church increase in faith, hope, and love.
Also (and this point came up multiple times in the comments of my previous post), we need folks leaving seminary without tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt so that first-call pastors can take a rural call and still pay their student loans.
Finally, I’m very supportive of cross-denominational conversations, especially ones hosted by organizations like FTE who not only have the know-how and grit to ask tough questions about the church’s future, but who have the resources to really do something about it.
Below is a video FTE recently put out. Watch it, and check out their website for great sources of funding for your congregation or ordained ministry-considering young person you know: http://www.thefund.org (you may even see my picture!)
Connect Online
