the last christmas pageant ever
I’m guessing at least 50% of you attended a “Harvest Party” or “Trunk-n-Treat” at your church last month, and at least 25% more attend a church that held one.
Which is all fine, as far as it goes, although I take issue with two of the most commonly given reasons for these sugar-fests: that they provide a safer alternative to traditional trick or treating, and that they are a powerful outreach activity to the community.
Although some local news stations still dust off the razor-blades-in-the-apples story each October, Snopes.com disproved every instance of candy tampering ever reported in conjunction with Halloween. It’s just a myth—as is, most likely, the adult who actually gave apples.
These events also fail to reach our communities. Lots of people may show up and the church might receive some good press. A few families may even return for a weekend worship service because of the experience they have on your campus—although I’d bet a Snickers bar your church doesn’t know if that’s happening. Meanwhile, we spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars recruiting volunteers, organizing games, and haranguing church members for candy donations.
Or there’s Christmas. I don’t have the Snopes link to prove it, but do you know anyone who became a Christian because of a Christmas cantata? Usually the audience for such things is comprised of the family and friends of those in the choir, most of whom are already believers. (This is doubly true for children’s programs.) Again, the investment of time and energy is out of all proportion to the spiritual ROI.
If we really want to show love to our neighbors at Halloween, we could follow the example of my own parents, who make a big pot of apple cider, park themselves in lawn chairs at the bottom of their driveway, and give cups of the hot drink to every tired, cold parent who comes along with his tiny princess/pirate/Disney character. They talk to their neighbors, serve them in a small way, extend friendship, and ooh and aah over little people in costumes. (They give candy, too, the good stuff—kids aren’t excited about cider.)
Or, like Journey Christian Church, we could organize a “Light Night” and challenge members to creatively transform their homes into places of light and welcome on this traditionally dark evening. My fellow blogger Arron, who serves as senior minister at Journey, says the church offered a variety of ways for people to participate (set up games or bounce houses, make popcorn or cotton candy, host costume contests, and–yes!–give out hot cider). Members were encouraged to distribute info about Journey’s programs for kids and copies of the Gospel of John along with the candy.
At Christmas, what if we asked church members to spend Wednesday night having dinner with a non-Christian neighbor instead of attending choir practice with lots of already-Christians? What if, instead of lining the sanctuary with video cameras to capture Junior’s debut as wiseman #3, we opened our homes for Advent parties for all our kid’s friends?
I’m really not lecturing—there’s more I can do in this area, too. But let’s be honest—we do Fall Fests and Christmas pageants because these things make us feel good. If we really wanted to serve and reach non-Christians, we’d be doing something else.
a new york minute
I would rather scrub toilets than work on most church staffs. I’d even prefer cleaning the bathrooms at the church. But I might change my mind if Church of the Incarnation came calling.
This new congregation just held its first services this past Sunday at St. Matthew and St. Timothy church, an Episcopal congregation near Central Park. (You’d know all this if you received the CS enews. Sign up here.)
In keeping with the more formal (and beautiful) worship space there, Church of the Incarnation has adapted a liturgical service style. Of course, this is also user-friendly to the many unchurched New Yorkers with Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican backgrounds. Services combine prayers of confession and responsive readings with songs from a variety of time periods. You can find examples of their liturgies here.
“The new church has an old name for a specific reason,” says Orchard Group, the church planting organization that helped to start COTI. “First, ‘Incarnation’ ties the community and its vision to the heart of the good news in Scripture—God taking on flesh in Jesus Christ in order to renew all of creation. Second, ‘Incarnation’ ties the community and its style to practices of worship shared by the ancient church. New churches in the city who are more contemporary in feel are healthy and effective. Yet Incarnation is taking a different approach by retrieving a range of ancient practices in the hopes of providing a hospitable environment for New Yorkers who might not gravitate towards more contemporary expressions of faith and worship.”
I love this, and I can’t decide if I’m more envious of Rhesa Storms, who plans the weekly services, or Jonathan Williams, who organizes service projects, book clubs and movie groups. If you guys need any help, give me a call. Bathrooms are negotiable.
“the message” meets the hymnal
I’m always pleasantly surprised by the simple but effective ideas my church comes up with for meaningful worship. Perhaps churches without instruments try harder? More likely we’ve just been blessed with leaders who understand that thoughtful and on-theme don’t have to mean expensive and complex.
Before singing When I Survey at a recent mid-week service, the worship leader and I read a short “rewrite” of each of the hymn’s four verses. The reading set the traditional hymn in a fresh context, causing us to think about the familiar words in a new way. It was effective for the listeners, I hope, and certainly helpful for us as leaders of the experience.
It’s also easy—I wrote the one below in 10 minutes, start to finish. And as a public service to every worship leader who’s avoided verse two because of fifth grade boys who giggle at “raising their Ebenezer,” I selected Come Thou Fount. I’m on your side, folks.
Source of all blessings, help me to praise you. Your mercy always pours over me, and you deserve big thanks, loud thanks. Thank you! Teach me how to worship you. There is no one but you who deserves my worship. You have redeemed and loved me.
I proclaim your victory and help! I know you will continue to guide me until I leave this earth and meet you. After all, you loved me when I was just a stranger to you, and you died to rescue me from my mistakes.
So I am in debt to your grace. Your goodness is overwhelming. Even though I still have a sinful heart, help me, God; help me to follow your goodness and not wander away to follow my own paths. Here’s my heart. It is all yours. Protect it and keep it.
personal checks
Shared a hotel room with my parents for a week……check.
Organized a tea for women in ministry at churches and parachurches…..check.
Met new friend Ruby, age two months, and cuddled against her will…….check.
Drank 278 cups of coffee and ate the best banana pudding ever…….check.
Received “Why aren’t you married yet?” inquiries from seven people……check.
Emceed a luncheon with Tammy Trent and a Bible study with Liz Curtis Higgs…..check.
Participated in encouraging and productive conversations about work projects…..check.
Caught up with special old friends and remembered one more time how blessed I am…….check.
Slept too little……check.
Raised money so the NACC could have a women’s conference this year and coordinated the details……check.
Was thanked for my help……well, maybe next year.
Another NACC is history, and I’m off to the beach for a week—no edifying books, no schedules, and no blogging. Catch you in a week, friends!
ask force
Love this. Little things matter!
the graduates
I’ve been home a couple hours now, but I’m still smiling. Tonight I had the privilege of attending the end of year banquet for Christian Community Services Inc., an organization here in Nashville that helps underserved families become completely self-sufficient—that is, not relying on any form of assistance, government aid, or public housing. To accomplish this mission CCSI pairs mentors from Woodmont Hills Church of Christ and Schrader Lane Church of Christ with “mentees”—usually young single women, usually with a few kids—who commit to nine months of classes on budgeting, parenting, relationships, life skills, and finance. Tonight’s dinner honored this year’s 17 graduates.
I wrote about CCSI for a recent Christian Standard, and I encourage you to read the article to learn about the program’s other components: tutoring for the mentees’ children, relationship-building around shared weekly meals, individual development accounts that encourage and reward saving, and even ongoing support to help graduates become home buyers. It’s a program that could work in any city, and needs to receive more national attention for the immense good it’s doing in this one.
But I also encourage people to check out CCSI because of that curious word “underserved.” When I began researching the ministry and interviewing its staff, I appreciated the focus on personal responsibility and self-sufficiency, but didn’t understand how the families served by CCSI were under served in any way. To be frank, I thought what many of us, if we’re honest, sometimes think: they get our money for food stamps and welfare—sounds like they’re being served just fine.
I quickly learned why the term is so appropriate. In the words of Dr. Jones, minister at Schrader Lane and co-founder of CCSI, “Disenfranchised people do not set out to be that way. And they are not destined to stay that way. But to change the generational patterns, we must show them a better way.”
CCSI provides these students with information you and I may take for granted—why to save money, how to create a budget, why to avoid check advance stores, how to set boundaries in relationships, how to discipline children. With this knowledge, and the love and support of their mentor and the CCSI staff, these women completely change their lives, paying off thousands of dollars in debt, saving for their homes, revolutionizing their family lives, and ending the cycle of unhealthy or unproductive choices.
These women are “underserved” because at some point they missed out on opportunities to learn basic skills and foundational information. CCSI offers a second chance.
So tonight I sat with my new friend Ukela, a graduate and new homeowner who is now a paralegal, actress, model and author, and we cheered for all 17 graduates and for our table mate Angel who signed the papers for her new house at 9:00 this morning. LaTonya gave a great testimony about the difference CCSI made in her life, one of the Tennessee Titans (who’s very cute and who should date Ukela) shared some encouraging words, and, since none of us had the winning orange dot on our program, we made sure Angel got the centerpiece of yellow flowers to take to her new home. And I’m still smiling.
in the enews—friday
In America, anything over 100 years is old—so Plainfield Christian Church, founded in 1829, is a really old church.
But the church and its leadership don’t take themselves too seriously. PCC is spending a year in the book of Matthew and created this video to easily and humorously reinforce some key themes in chapter six.
By the way, isn’t it nice to hear of a church working through a chunk of scripture together rather than always relying on a four-week series? They’ve learned some things in their 180 years.
in the enews—thursday
I wanted to share this earlier, but I was sworn to secrecy.
Well, not really, since by definition anything presented in enewsletter form can’t be considered confidential. But I like the idea of covert ops—in fact, during our senior year of college, my roommate Kiley and I wasted several evenings participating in a relatively complex scavenger hunt/”spy mission” orchestrated by our friend Matt, who shared our love of all things James Bond and our boredom with all things Grove City.
So today’s enews item, from 2|42 Community Church in Brighton, MI, is extra fun. In a recent church newsletter, 2|42’s lead pastor David Dummitt wrote, “Shhhhhh! Don’t let the rest of the staff know that I’m talking to you! I’m hoping you can help me with something, but it has to be a secret if it’s going to work. May 6th the entire 2|42 staff will spend a day away from the office connecting with God and each other at a staff retreat. Will you help me inspire and encourage them by simply sending me email messages addressed to the staff? You can address one person, one ministry, or the entire staff. You can tell a story or explain how their ministry has helped you take next steps with God. We are so blessed to have not only a tremendously talented and creative staff, but a group of folks that truly love Jesus. Will you help me encourage them?”
Love this—what a kind and meaningful way for Dave to serve his team. Maybe next year he could tape the emails under pianos or rewrite them with invisible ink or make the recipient eat a note after reading it. Just a thought in case Brighton’s as boring as western PA.
in the enews—wednesday
Christian Standard’s enews comes out every Wednesday, and one of today’s stories is a recap of two more baptism celebration weekends, one at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, one at Mountain Christian Church in Maryland. As with the cardboard testimony craze, people around the country are learning about the huge impact of these weekends—in which the pastor preaches on baptism and invites everyone who wants to make a decision to come forward in whatever they’re wearing and be baptized at that moment—and trying the idea at their own churches. I can be kind of snarky about bandwagons, but you can’t argue with these results: Savannah Christian Church kicked off the idea with hundreds of baptisms, Christ’s Church of the Valley dunked 482 one weekend in January (with another 100+ the next week), and Crossroads Christian in Corona, CA baptized 518 on Palm Sunday.
And then there are these latest two with stories that are wonderful, and wonderfully too numerous to fit in just one online update: Mountain Christian reports “the elderly woman who, with trembling lips, just before she was lowered in baptism, said, ‘Jesus, I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long;’” the woman who cleans the church handing her mop to someone and coming forward in her cleaning uniform; the husband who ran on stage when he saw his wife in the baptistery, shouting his love for her over the music.
Jud Wilhite, senior pastor at Central, writes, “I watched college students, CEOs, soccer moms, bikers, models, entrepreneurs and every other kind of person you could imagine climb into cold water in their street clothes with no regard for themselves, for their clothes, or for their appearance—only Jesus. I stood by a thirty-something guy decked out in $1,000 clothes who could care less about them. He just wanted Jesus.”
Jud notes that his invitation was straightforward and not based on an emotional appeal. “This was not about great programming, but about our great God who chose to move in people’s lives in a tremendous way, in one of the world’s least likely cities,” he says. “I’m reminded of what Paul wrote: ‘God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God…. As the Scriptures say, ‘If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:27-31, NLT). We are boasting about the Lord today and so thankful that we could witness his move.”
Hard to be snarky about that.
Jennifer Taylor
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