Home Again? (Part One)
Because we are adventure-seekers, Amanda and I traveled north last weekend to experience the Prince William County Fair. We stayed with my parents. But I am not writing about the gigantic turkey leg my dad bought that I had to gnaw on because it was too tough for his mouth, or the $4 my mom won for getting second prize in the "homemade jackets" category, or the fact that we did not ride any rides because Amanda is pregnant and it looked stormy, or the animal/magic/comedy show for kids that we watched. No, I am not writing about those things.I am writing about when, the morning after the fair, we worshiped at Manassas Baptist Church, my "home church," where I attended until going off to college nine years ago this week. Go ahead, click the link. Right there is a picture of what makes MBC unique, and its curse: the middle school and grounds the church bought in 2002 next door to the main church building. It is now known as "The Rock." I may be biased because I wasn't in favor of that purchase to begin with, but The Rock is a big boulder catapulting downhill, pulling the church with it. And because the church used a balloon loan for the multi-million-dollar acquisition (remember 2002?), and the loan is about to "pop," MBC is now in, as my 11th-grade humanities teacher once said, deep kim-chi. The pastor, the same pastor who led the church into this mess, is continuing to try to rally people around "God's plan" -- although I remain unconvinced that God requires big buildings to change hearts.
When I say "the pastor," I mean Dr. Bill, the Senior Pastor, not the Lead Pastor or the Pastor for Discipleship/Evangelism or the Contemporary Worship Leader/Coordinator. At least there's no "assimilation" pastor as there was at First Baptist in Charlottesville. Manassas Baptist has always been a fairly big church, but growing up, it seemed more like a naturally big church, not one bloated by pride and property and wanting to be a megachurch.
All of this is background for my thoughts on Sunday's service at MBC. First piece of excitement: They have a new bulletin format. It is a full-color 11x17 sheet tri-folded, with a nice logo on the front and photos of actual churchgoers. (The only two I recognize are the senior citizens, though.) My dad told me that they are trying to copy McLean Bible Church. It seems MBC is always looking to copy one megachurch or another. Underlying that is a genuine desire to do God's will, though.
In some ways, the 11:00 service at MBC is a comforting reminder of my childhood. Manassas does visitor cards the same way it always has, with two ushers coming to the front and turning around, the person at the pulpit instructing visitors to raise their hands, and the ushers walking towards the back handing out visitor cards. I never thought much about this approach, but now I dislike it. The ushers always start walking a little too early, so if there are any visitors in the first five or ten pews, the ushers walk past them before the visitors know to raise their hands. Plus, if I were a visitor, I might not always feel like raising my hand. I've experienced the bulletin tear-off, the sign-a-register-on-each-pew, the small-church call-out, and the card in the pew rack. I think the card in the pew rack is my favorite: you don't have to scream that you're a visitor, and you have a chance to ask questions.
Over the years, MBC has transitioned from Baptist to what I call Claptist. Maybe it's the contemporary service, or maybe the congregation is just moved to praise God with their hands, but they generally clap after solos. I was taught that clapping in church is generally not appropriate unless you're really sure who the clapping is for: if it's for God's Glory or to say thanks for the gifts of the performers, that's OK, but if it's for someone who just performed, that's kind of like worshiping them instead of God. Clapping is very unusual at UBC, but if a precious darling so much as squeaks out an "Amen," the congregation at MBC will clap. Guaranteed. And I'm pretty sure it's usually for the performance, not for the Glory of God. (It is also interesting that clapping is only after music and rarely after the sermon. Isn't speaking a gift, too?)
The sermon was actually pretty good. My mom said it was Dr. Bill's best in a while, and Amanda said that although it was about 30 minutes long, it kept her attention. (That could have been because we were in the second row, though.) Dr. Bill asks a lot of questions and wants people to raise their hands. As with the clapping, the hand-raising bugs me. It turns some people off to church and makes others uncomfortable -- it's not necessarily bad for a sermon to make people uncomfortable, but it is bad when they're uncomfortable because they're being asked to answer yes or no to a silly question without time to devote conscious thought to it.
Dr. Bill mentioned a celebrity's support for Darfur, which I thought showed a nice awareness of issues outside typical evangelistic confines, although he pronounced Darfur a way I have never heard it pronounced before. I think it rhymed with "Babar." Another highlight of the sermon was that I received an unexpected shout-out from Dr. Bill as he was reminiscing about the large whale costume that my mother made for a musical about Jonah: "You were in it!" Well, almost; I wasn't in the whale suit (that was the husband of the Director of Music), but I was in the musical.
The reason he was talking about Jonah was the God's Plan Argument. Which is: God had a plan for Jonah. Jonah said "meh" to God's plan. God caused Jonah to have an unpleasant experience that led him to follow God's plan after all. Do you want to resist God's plan? Of course you do not, because you will end up inside a whale, and that would be unpleasant in this day and age of harpoons and whatnot. So you should follow God's plan for your life. And you should follow God's plan for Manassas Baptist Church.
I am with Dr. Bill to this point. Where I am not with him is when he draws the conclusion that God's plan for Manassas Baptist Church equals Dr. Bill's plan for Manassas Baptist Church, the implication being that church members should step up and keep the church from going into foreclosure or having to sell off the middle school property. Or else you're gonna feel guilty, or whale-eaten, or worse. As I said before, I am not convinced that God requires a middle school for Manassas Baptist Church to do its work. He certainly might, and the building has certainly spurred new ministries at and brought new notoriety to MBC, but might not an investment of $9 million in the existing property and new programs have enabled similar transformations?
Amanda noticed - although I did not - something else Dr. Bill said. It was when he was talking about Madonna (the pop icon, not the virgin Mary) and her transition to spirituality. He noted that Christian churches probably never told Madonna that they loved her or that God loved her. But God did, and does, love her. And then Dr. Bill pointed to the congregation and said, "And I love you. Because I have the heart of God!", which sounds like a slightly presumptuous claim that he is, in fact, more spiritual than the rest of us by having God's heart. I think he probably meant it as, "The person who spreads God's love in this way is acting in line with God's heart."
I think the physical expansion of MBC has created two churches where there was one: traditional vs. contemporary, organ vs. drums, hymnals vs. PowerPoint. Apparently they have tried a "blended" service, but when the traditionalists requested a slightly lower volume level so that their ears didn't get blown off their skulls, the boppers said, "No way, we like to feel the beat in our kidneys." Did I mention that when we arrived at church, Dr. Bill was finishing up the boppin' service, dressed in a casual polo shirt? And by the time the traditional service started, 10 minutes later, he was in a full suit. It's like he's Superman or something, changing in a phone booth between services to adopt a new identity. And that identity is required because he is serving two congregations. What if the two congregations' differences go deeper than clothing and worship style?
The reason we were sitting up front was because my mom was interpreting the service for a deaf woman. I always feel bad for my mom when Dr. Bill goes into strange stories, sarcasm, or recites the Bob Mumford quote, “if we fix the fix that God has fixed to fix us, He will simply have to fix another fix to fix us.” (My mother told us that because he says that once or twice a year, she has memorized how to sign it.) The ministry for the deaf is one of the really good things about MBC.
The service raised what I think is a fundamental question about how churches prioritize what they do: telling the lost vs. serving the downtrodden. Evangelism vs. social justice. Looking to save Madonna's soul vs. picking her up when she has fallen. Both are important. But given a finite amount of time, there is a real conflict in trying to do both. Churches like First Baptist and Manassas Baptist are very focused on evangelism, on telling the Good News, on winning souls, and this is often to the detriment of their missions and social justice commitments. Other churches are militant about social justice and downright scared of the term "evangelical." A select few find a balance where service and progressive ideals become the evangelism: instead of using the tongue alone, the whole person becomes an example of what God can do. That's what I'm looking for in a church.
Labels: church
posted by Peter @ 17:23
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