Unit 34

Deciding to visit other churches is a little like deciding to try to have a baby: Even after just one time, you're committed. We've still not visited more than one other church in Charlottesville, but it's always on our minds.

The last Sunday of August, we were in Greensboro for our first visit since moving to Charlottesville. So we went to College Park, the church that caused all this ruckus. Here is one reason why I liked that church. I do not know Peggy Hester, but her words explain things much better than I can: "Bumps in the road happen in this congregation as ... in all churches but somehow they seem to maintain a sense of foolishness that rounds the sharp edges and smooths out the rough places." You can probably imagine some of the bumps in the road to becoming a progressive Baptist church a mile or two away from a common meeting place of the Southern Baptist Convention. Evidence of the sense of foolishness is easy to find, too, thanks to the magic of YouTube. I am looking for a church with a sense of foolishness along with a sense of mission.

I did a lot of math on Sunday morning. I learned not too long ago that when you feel that tickle in your eyes, and you are thinking about something that is going to make you cry, one of the best ways to maintain composure is to occupy your brain with something else, and math problems are relatively easy to create on the spot and work on. Being back at College Park brings back some memories. And I am not a big weeper most of the time, but I did a lot of math on Sunday morning. In the hallway right after we got there. In the packed, overheated Sunday School room. And in the Sanctuary.

It wouldn't be fair to let College Park off without a little examination of the details of the service, but mostly, I like the way they do things. Specifically:

• The bulletin always contains a selection of quotes for reflection. They are sprinkled throughout the service: one beforehand, one at the Moment of Silence after the anthem, one at the Offertory, and one at the end under the Postlude. These are not Bible quotes; they are usually from non-Biblical poets, authors, philosophers. Example Meditation of Preparation from Sunday: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." - John Donne
  
• The bulletin is smaller than it used to be. With a responsive reading or two, a bunch of announcements, and the aforementioned quotes, and because they often use hymns that aren't in the Baptist Hymnal, the bulletins at College Park had gotten absurdly long before we moved away. It was not unusual to pick up a 16-page booklet in those days. Now, though, the bulletin was the size of the one we had used the week before at Manassas Baptist: a single 11x17 sheet, tri-folded (plus a survey on an insert). Yay for saving paper!
• The Meditation of Preparation, Lighting of the Candles, Tolling of the Hour, and Welcome and Announcements (including the stand-up-and-shake-hands time) are all done before the Prelude. This allows the prelude to establish the mood of worship without a lot of gabbing during it, and the meet-and-greet doesn't mess things up. I've heard other churches argue that they can't do things that way, because late-comers will miss the announcements and meet-and-greet. But you know what? People can get there on time.
• After a Bible reading, there is a response. This is typical of liturgical churches, and it is often, "This is the Word of the Lord; Thanks be to God." At College Park, though, one little Word change keeps things fresh. On Sunday, the verses were from Acts and about the early Christian community. So the response says, "This is the community of the Lord; Thanks be to God." Somebody has to spend time figuring out what the response should say, and I think it's worth it.
• The Blue Cards are good. These nifty little pew-rack cards provide space for visitors to make their presence known, space for members to volunteer to serve, and space for anyone to make a statement of intent to join the church. (This makes it possible to avoid a spoken invitation at the close of the service, which was very new and different for me at first but a pleasant change from the typical scene of the pastor standing up front, looking lonely and dejected that no one has come forward.) I have even known the Blue Cards to be used to communicate anonymous messages to ministers, such as asking them to clarify their use of the phrase "in lieu of."
• The communion table up front had small framed photos on it. We forgot to walk by and see what they were, but this is one manifestation of how College Park is able to personalize religion. I remember one month where people were invited to bring in action figures to go on the table. Although I've forgotten the exact meaning of that exercise, I know it was yet another way to get people involved with God in a personal way - and to make church sacred and reverent but not untouchable (Amanda's words).
• There are clear instructions in the bulletin. The setup for kids after the children's sermon is kind of complicated: 3-year-olds go to a toddler room, up to 1st grade go to children's worship, and older kids sit in Big Church. This is explained clearly in the bulletin, along with what ages/grades are invited to come forward. As a kid, I remembered agonizing over when I was too old to be going up there. Someone probably thought it was best to let kids decide when they weren't kids, but this is not true. Kids want to be teenagers. So we had lots of too-cool 8-year-olds dropping out of the children's sermon back in the day.

Speaking of the children's sermon, it featured precious darlings saying something funny, as usual. In this case, they were supposed to be coming up with rules for living together in community. They were doing pretty well until one bright child suggested an important rule: "Do not show your--," whereupon the adult leader wisely interrupted, "OK, let's stop there."

To be honest, we were a little disappointed when we learned that the pastor was out of town for our visit. I was hoping for a Dr. Seuss sermon from his summer series. But God works in unexpected ways, and the excellent sermon we heard seemed oddly appropriate for us. It was from Cindy, the Sunday School teacher we had at College Park, and it was her first time preaching. (She may have been terrified, but she did a great job.) In 2006, she invited us to her class, and we went often, even though we were the youngest people there and didn't always contribute much to the discussion. She was one of the most influential people for us there.

The topic was the church as a community - a diverse one. People have a need to be accepted, included, and involved in a community: the concept of koinonia. This word has lots of meanings for Amanda and me. From the funny and memorable Koinonia Farms monologue at BSU in college, to the slightly awkward koinonia dinner groups at Binkley, to the real spirit of koinonia we found at College Park, we have now ended up looking for that sense of community again. Churches of all sizes often seek to create it through small groups, and neither of us has much experience belonging to a small group that meets in homes regularly.

Cindy quoted from a blog (this one?) about a place "where I can be my most ME." The right church community is where I can be my most me. She also said that at its best, the Christian community is counter-cultural. She pointed out that no Christian community is perfect, but that Christian community is incredibly important for spiritual growth. I liked all these little sound bites, and they speak to what's going on with our church-hopping.

One of the highlights of the sermon was towards the end, when any narcoleptics were jolted awake by sudden, loud drumming. This accented the return to a central thread Cindy had woven through the sermon: she had seen a drumming circle in Asheville (the Charlottesville of western NC) that was full of diverse people with crazy different beats, but eventually, they all began playing in rhythm. The right Christian community is like this drumming circle: it blends with your unique beat, although the other drummers aren't drumming exactly the same way. And it may take time to find the circle that blends with your beat, Cindy said, but don't give up. An encouraging word for us. (And maybe this is a stretch, but she said something about the "throb of the Spirit" that reminds me of Derek Webb's new song that questions whether some Christian communities would rather just have the literal drumming circle - the latest gimmick - than feel the genuine beat of Christ.)

A bonus from the sermon was getting to hear some of Cindy's personal story that we really hadn't heard before. But enough about the sermon. After that was a short focus on a recent missions effort at a nearby elementary school that serves a lot of kids from low-income families. Two staff members from the school visited the church to share their thanks for the work, and it was a perfect example of evangelism through service, as I mentioned at the end of this post. Although there was some applause after these visitors spoke, I have been strongly advised that the congregation is not Claptist and was just being polite.