It had been one of those rather dreary March days, but there was lots of activitiy at my church. Many people had been around most of the afternoon and now on this Wednesday evening, they had packed the sanctuary. The praise band was warming up for the service—rather raucous at times, but no one complained; excitement was in the air. I looked around, surprised at who had shown up for a Wednesday evening service. There were lots of folks from my church, others that I didn’t know, even some teenagers had come without their parents.
The service began with a beautiful prayer from our former pastor’s son, and then we began. Our singing was a little timid at first, but with a little encouragement, our praise filled the sanctuary. We sang a lot—never tiring of the melody. The preacher also warmed up and got excited and we reacted. We sang, we clapped, our hands were in the air—it was awesome! I couldn’t stay for the entire time, but understand that many people stayed for at least three hours.
Okay, so there’s one little fact that I’ve left out—there was a movie crew in town and they were shooting a church scene for a movie. We were all extras in this fun little adventure. I had to leave early because the choir was practicing for Easter Sunday in one of the smaller classrooms and I was needed on the piano. I’ll be honest, at first I wanted to stay in the sanctuary where all of the action was, but when I walked into the choir room where the real life stuff was happening, I wanted to go back and grab folks from the sanctuary and put them in the choir.
This incident has been playing over and over in my mind for several weeks now. I wondered what would happen if, on the following Sunday our worship leader said something like this; “Pretend that those cameras are still rolling and let’s praise God this morning!” Please understand, that I’m not criticizing my friends at church, I’m puzzled and curious about all of our behavior, including my own. At first I would have told you that what was happening on that Wednesday evening was “pretend” worship, but after thinking about it, I’m not so sure. We were given permission to cut loose, and we did. Actually, it felt pretty good.
Generally, we’re all rather reserved in our worship and I don’t know that it’s a conscious choice or if it happens by default. There was another occasion where I’ve watched people totally abandon their inhibitions during a worship service and that was during a church exchange visit with a Baptist Church from Detroit. (Their church had been racially targeted and our church had expressed our love to them and a strong friendship formed.) When they visited us with members of their congregation, including the choir, I can’t even begin to describe some of the things that happened, nor can I explain it. I remember sitting in the choir loft singing with their choir (concentrating hard on the clapping and swaying thing) and members of my own congregation were on their feet, barely able to control their emotions.
And so I’m left wondering. I’m not judging—I would never equate spirituality with one’s physical behavior in church—I know better than that. Many of us were raised in church environments that were much more structured than those same denominations are right now. And I certainly don’t believe in behaving in ways that are expected in a certain environment. I know it starts in the heart and if my heart isn’t right, no amount of emotion can make up for that.
And so I’ll pray—for myself and for all of us, that as we approach Easter, we will be ready and open to worship God with abandon—however that looks for each of us. I’m praying that I don’t need the movie cameras or the gospel choir, but that my heart overflows. I’m getting excited, how about you?
(For those of you who are reading this as a note on facebook, this is also posted on my blog: theda-cuttingloose.blogspot.com)
