All of these ramblings about church has brought me to a deeper question about the anatomy of the church service. Why are our church services structured the way they are? I’ve seen radically different services that include all sorts of different things. Most include some sort of sermon, prayer, possibly a Bible reading, music, sometimes a special performance often referred to as special music (or just “special” if you’re at a BGEA chapel), an offering, and communion.

What’s most interesting to me is that the Bible never really talks about all of these things together in one event. The Bible commands us to meet together with other believers, but we’re not told to hold a weekly event every Sunday morning where we follow a set schedule. Maybe I need to read my New Testament again, but I don’t remember ever seeing it in there.

For that matter we don’t see anything about church buildings and property. Yet somehow over the years we’ve added all of this extra baggage and now church in our minds is a building we go to on Sunday mornings where we follow a specific routine. There’s nothing wrong with the elements of that routine or the building, or any of that. But the fact that often we only think of church as being that, especially our particular brand, that’s when we get in trouble.

The church as described in Acts is pretty revolutionary. And it’s nothing like what we have today. What if we tossed our order of service out the window and came up with something new? What would it look like? And would anybody want to come?

The sermon is part of church you really can’t get away from. And frankly, most sermons bore me. The simple style of a sermon and how it’s presented can say a lot about church.

In the Baptist church I grew up in, and many I’ve visited since, the sermon is the centerpiece of the Sunday service, and it’s given a full 40 minutes. Now maybe I’m just a TV-addicted, fast food, microwave, insta-person, but I have a really hard time paying attention to a 40 minute sermon. As hard as I try, I lose interest in the middle and my mind goes somewhere else.

My current church has sermons of 20 minutes or less, and sometimes I think they aim for 10-15 minutes. This is a much better time frame when it comes to actually paying attention and getting something out of the message, for me anyway. It’s probably a lot harder to really go in-depth, but what’s the point of going in-depth if I don’t have the patience to follow?

But no matter the length of the sermon, what really interests me is that we have a sermon. The speech is practically a historical footnote today, relegated to politicians and pastors. Back in the days before TV, movies, and radio, I imagine speeches were all the rave. Not so much today.

Sometimes I wonder why the church clings to such an old-school device. The Bible doesn’t exactly give guidelines that every Sunday service must include a biblically based message. Yet I think people would flip out if we tried to remove the sermon from today’s church services. What about a play? Or a video? Do we even have to have some sort of exhortation or challenge? Hmm.

In my on-going observations of church, music is something you can hardly ignore. I grew up in a conservative church where drums and guitars were not accepted. The occasional acoustic guitar might be OK, but don’t even think of plugging it in (if you must, hide the amp behind the poinsettas). Hymns were the staple of our service, and the youth group would sing some risky praise choruses.

Not surprisingly, I found the music dead. It bored me to tears.

Now that church I grew up in, and a lot of other churches are expanding to a more contemporary music. They’re using plugged in guitars and (gasp) drums, as well as a host of other instruments. They’re replacing the sole song leader with a worship team, and picking music from the new crop of worship songs that’s sprung up.

Often it’s an attempt to be more seeker-sensitive, to offer music people off the street will actually like. In some ways it’s successful, though I’ve often noticed it’s the older generations that are drawn to the contemporary music. Older folks (meaning people older than me) seem happy to leave the organ behind and sing something new. But I don’t think having contemporary music in and of itself really does it. While I’m certainly happy to have guitars and sing something besides “How Great Thou Art,” I find that totally modern worship is just as dull and repetitive as solid old-school hymns.

Not to offer my church as the grand, holy example, but I really like the music at my church. It’s this eclectic blend of all types of music from all ages. We’ll sing a brand new song originally performed by the Newsboys, then we’ll sing a hymn from the 19th Century, and then we’ll sing an ancient chorus that’s doesn’t have a documented history. We have a full band that backs the music, but the arrangements vary as greatly as the song selection.

Personally, I find satisfaction in this broad mix of past and current music. In some ways it offers something for everyone, but more importantly for me it offers variety.

What I think is most interesting about music is that many churches get the idea that all they need to do to reach the younger generation is change their music. If their music is up to the times, they’ll reach younger people. I don’t think that’s true at all. In fact, I think it will actually reach older people. But I think the younger generation, from twenty-somethings on down, isn’t interested in modern music alone, but more in a diverse tapestry of music. Having a modern worship band is nothing, because the church can’t compare to the Dave Matthews Band. But tap into the church’s inherent history, and now you’ve got something. I heard the latest Passion CD follows this trend, using solely ancient songs.

What will really validate my poorly backed theory is if in 20 or 30 years a number of churches with contemporary music are stocked with aging boomers but nobody younger. They’ll be dying out just like the hymn and organ churches are today.

When I started attending the Episcopal church I now attend, what struck me the most was the incredibly poetic language. The liturgy brought a level of quality to the language that seemed to impart the holiness of God.

Compared to the extemporaneous speaking at the non-liturgical churches I’ve grown up in, the liturgy was a welcome relief. I can count how many times I’ve heard that awkward “we’re so glad you came to our church” introduction, or how many rambling, bumbling prayers I’ve heard that are trying so hard to sound so pious.

There are certainly ups and downs to both liturgy and the extemporaneous style.

Liturgy can become stale and old from repitition. The extemporaneous style opens the door for theological inaccuracies, aside from the just plain goofy sentiments. On the other hand that open door also allows for God to speak in a free-flowing service. The liturgy offers moments for God to speak — it’s often amazing how God can speak in different ways through the same words — but also offers an historical and theologically correct skeleton for a church service. There’s a certain sense of communion in the fact that I’m repeating words that thousands of fellow believers have repeated before me. (I’ve often complained about the lack of historical context in the church I grew up in)

I don’t think fancy words are necessary in speaking to God. God will hear the bumbling prayers or pre-written prayers. Perhaps what I prefer in the liturgy has more to do with the church-goer than with God. I don’t think God gets wrapped up in what songs we sing, what words we say, or how we do any of those things, but he does care about our heart. And perhaps from my perspective, my heart is best quieted before God with a humble, yet poetic language that imparts history, theology, and in fact the very message of salvation.

Maybe that’s just immature, but that’s where I am. It always amazes me the diversity in the churches. God doesn’t give us much of set plan in the Bible for how to do church, yet we all find our own way. Sadly, we often get pretty set that our way of doing church is the correct way.

In an earlier post, I talked about differences between the liturgical style of the church I now attend and the more free-flowing style of the church I grew up in. I wanted to expand on some of those differences in a short, observation style.

In the Baptist church I grew up in, and many other evangelical churches I’ve been to, communion is a strictly symbolic ceremony. The grape juice and cracker symbolize the blood and body of Jesus Christ, and unlike the Catholic or Episcopalian versions, it’s simply that. There’s no transubstantiation or anything that would grant anything more than symbolic meaning. It’s juice and crackers.

Yet if it’s simply symbolism, why is the service so incredibly formal and stiff? I’ve noticed many communion services where the ushers and pastor rigidly serve one another in a regimented order that you fear cannot be broken on penalty of death.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the pomp and circumstance of communion in the Catholic or Episcopalian churches, it makes sense. Their theology grants special importance to the bread and wine (notice that it’s actually bread and wine), and they treat it as such.

Yet other Protestants seem to not even understand what they’re doing. It comes off as a ritualistic religious ceremony. Sometimes I wonder if all the forms of communion I’ve described are just missing the point. Jesus broke bread and shared wine, something the people of his time did every day. It’s akin to unwrapping a burger and popping open a can of Coke. I think that it’s through these daily rituals, shared with believing friends, that we are to be reminded of Christ’s sacrifice for us. Not in once-monthly batches of Welch’s and saltines.

A few days ago I posted a story I wrote about what a modern Christmas might look like. Those thoughts really jaded my Christmas church experience, though I wonder if I’m just too cynical or if I’m truly disillusioned with the faults of the modern church.

On Christmas Eve we dressed up with the family and headed to church. A lot of my complaints stem from differences between a liturgical-based service and the more traditional free-flowing service I grew up with. But aside from those differences, I was just put off by how cliche Christianity has become. We sing about the Messiah finally coming and spending his first night on a bed of hay, and it just rolls off our back as part of the story. It doesn’t seem odd or challenging or amazing or any of the things it’s supposed to be.

Later in the service we sang about the dumb speaking, the lame walking, and the leper rejoicing. Those mean nothing to us. We say we believe in a Messiah who can make wheelchairs obsolete, but do we really believe it? This Messiah hangs with AIDS patients, why don’t we? The mentally handicapped that speak in slurs and we avoid, this Messiah approached them and brought healing. We can’t even approach them, much less think our God would heal them.

And then comes the fact that we dressed up for the evening. We dressed up to come to church, which is completely contrary to everything that Christ came for. It seems so right that we should put on our best before God. I’ve thought that many times in my life. But do we ever think how that appears to God? We are crap, and somehow a nice shirt and tie is going to make everything OK? God asks us to come as we are, not to dress ourselves up and pretend that everything is cool. God approaches us as we are in our brokenness, which is the very foundation of our faith, yet we’d rather tidy ourselves up to come to church.

We’re denying our faith, and what’s worse, we’re driving people away because we refuse to accept them as they are. So many people are hurting in this world, just needing to be loved as they are. If only the church was doing our job these hurting folks would find welcoming arms in church, instead of judging eyes.

So many people who are put off by God are actually put off by Christians who despite all their claims don’t know anything about God.

My only prayer is that I can stop pretending to know anything about God and allow God to reveal himself in me.

The following is a story I wrote to read at my youth group’s Christmas recital. I tried publishing it a few places just for the heck of it, but so far no luck (UPDATE: Though it sounds like Relevant Magazine will be publishing an edited version on Christmas Eve). So here it is.

Christmas has never made much sense to me. It centers on the little baby Jesus, born into a world of nothing, so we celebrate with overabundance, presents and goodies and decorations festooning every nook and cranny starting the day after Halloween. We’re over-compensating for the whole manger thing, hoping Jesus won’t hold it against us.

In reality, that first Christmas so long ago wasn’t the saccharine scene we see depicted on Christmas cards, where a dank and drafty hut looks positively homey. That first Christmas wasn’t clean and polished, and if it happened today no one would notice.

Imagine Mary and Joseph, youth group alums getting married in college. Maybe Mary is 19 and Joseph is 21, incredibly young, but not irresponsible. They’re the excessively cute, engaged couple, wearing matching sweaters and registering at Target. They’re excited and eager and scared all at once.

But then the bride is pregnant, the husband-to-be floored. There’s talk of visions and dreams that the family tries to keep quiet, but everyone knows. It’s an episode of Jerry Springer, and the unrepentant Mary — holding her head high and spouting about the Messiah — is shipped off to stay with her cousin –- the older, wiser, pregnant-after-she’s-married cousin, leaving Joseph behind. The big day is forgotten in a cloud of shame.

Despite what everyone says, Joseph knows they didn’t shack-up. His fiance is either a slut or crazy. He’s not sure which one’s worse, until an eerie nighttime visitor gives him a third option -– he’s the crazy one.

In the midst of all the gossip and leering eyes, Joseph comes to Mary’s defense, not exactly touting her Savior story, but not denying it either. Mom and Dad wish they’d just fess up, and all could be forgiven, but Mary clinging to her true-love-waits card in the third trimester is a bit much.

When a Draconian government edict requires them to be home for the holidays, pregnant and all, they huddle into Joseph’s sputtering college car and shuttle across the country. They roll into town too late, the hospitals crowded, the doctors out of town, the inns overbooked.

It doesn’t matter anyway, since this severely pregnant woman gets scorn, not sympathy. It’s obvious she’s not the chaste virgin she claims to be, and with Joseph by her side he’s either too forgiving or guilty as well. This is their mess, let them clean it up.

With no one to take them in, not even insurance to secure a hospital bed, they wander through the streets. The homeless shelter must have been full, and the church locked for the night. In the end Mary and Joseph curled up in an alley, next to a dumpster and a garbage can, to bring the Savior into the world.

The young mother is scared, she screams and cries out into the darkness. There’s no epidural in an alley. A rat looks on. Joseph does all he can to midwife the child. He’s seeing a part of his wife he was not yet supposed to see, and is clinging to the hope that she’s not crazy, that he’s not crazy, that this baby is actually more than everyone says.

The baby is finally born and Mary crumbles in a heap. Joseph cuts the umbilical cord cut with his pocketknife and wraps the child in old newspapers. This is our Messiah. A back-alley baby, just as well aborted or left in the dumpster.

But this isn’t the end of our sordid tale. Late in the night transients come and look on, the kind of riffraff that ask for change in parking lots with elaborate stories about needing bus fare to North Dakota. Mary can smell the alcohol on their breath, but they don’t ask for a hand out. They ask to hold the baby. They pat Joseph on the back and head out into the night, singing together in their semi-drunken stupor.

Next comes a crowd of foreigners, immigrants who barely speak English. They look like 9/11 hijackers, and rather than useful gifts like blankets, diapers, or even a onesie, they bring odd knickknacks from their homeland, the kind of present you’d bring to a state dinner, not a baby shower. In broken English one of them says grand things about the baby, something about a majestic king and a new era. The new mom and dad look at the Star Tribune covering their child and their delivery room alley, and they can’t help but wonder who’s crazy now.

Morning comes and the bewildered trailer park family moves on, to raise their child under the watchful eye of people who call him a bastard, a child of sin, and look down with derision.

That is the birth we celebrate with fat Santas and gifts and cookies, frosted electric red and green. That is why we string tacky lights, hang greens, and wish one another a Merry Christmas. All because of an illegitimate child born in the streets.

Years and years after that hapless family pulled together, miles away from the bloodstained alley where it all began and the leers of gossipy neighbors, that bastard child flipped tables at the church potluck, and had dinner with homosexuals and HIV-victims. He gathered a gang of truck drivers and gas station clerks, even an IRS agent and a prostitute, touting them around while he insulted the bishop and walked across the Mississippi.

That back-alley baby stepped on one too many toes. They falsified some evidence, found a loophole, and ramrodded him through the courts. A jury of his peers approved of his guilt, and in the end they send 1,000 volts coursing through his body. It was finished.

So raise your hands, and let’s sing a song of the dumpster baby, adored by hookers and terrorists. Let’s frost a rat-shaped cookie and hang some trash on the front door, to commemorate that back-alley birth. This is your Savior, the Christ-child, and the story of an implausible Christmas that gives new meaning to the phrase God with us.

Today in church the sermon hinted at a concept I pondered about some time ago. The basic idea is that sin is defined as missing the mark. It’s not defined by a list of wrongs, it is defined by good things going undone.

I wrote about this at great length a while ago, and I find it’s still a concept that is just barely getting into my head and heart. I think of myself as a decent Christian. I go to church, I give, I volunteer my time. I don’t drink, smoke, or tell dirty jokes. I avoid certain movies and I don’t break the law.

So what? Does any of that really matter? What good am I doing? As I think about that, I realize the challenge of Christianity is so incredibly hard. Jesus called us to take up our cross and follow him, and that’s about how hard it is. It’s not pew-warming on Sunday, it’s choosing to do hard and difficult things every day, every hour. It’s choosing to be uncomfortable and socially awkward, and possibly even put yourself in danger. It’s complete denial of self, and I think that’s an unheard of concept for us today.

There is such a lethargic, apathetic spirit permeating Christianity. I know it squelches my life, and I let it. How can so many millions go to church every day and completey miss it? How can we be so ineffective?

Christianity has become an inheritance, a faith passed down from our parents that entitles us to eternal life.

But John the Baptist warned the Israelites not to get comfortable with their inheritance: “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and throw into the fire.” (Luke 3:8-9, NRSV)

That was the precurser to the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist went on to call the people simply to do what was right. He called for social justice, for those with extra to give to those who have none. He called the tax collectors to collect only what was right. He called the soldiers to do their jobs and not threaten or extort anyone. He didn’t call anyone to a strange or difficult journey. He just asked them to do what they were supposed to do.

Why is that so difficult? Why is it so hard for us to do simply what we’re supposed to do? I would guess that apathy is not a recent plague upon the human race, but something that has daunted us throughout time.

May God have mercy on us all.