Summer-Sojourning, and Doing Church American-Style

I sat down in a huge, modern sanctuary this Sabbath morn to find a hymnal in the pew. I was ecstatic. Though there were two large video screens and a drum-set, a few guitars, and some other accoutrements of postmodern American evangelicalism littering the stage of College Avenue Baptist Church, the hymnals were a good sign, I thought to myself.

There was music being played as congregants shuffled in to the massive space, and it was hymnic enough. Ah, but then, a full ten minutes after the supposed 10 a.m. starting time, a loud, booming voice suddenly filled the sanctuary. I squinted to see who it was. The piano player, it turns out. He introduced himself, still sitting at his instrument, as the pastor for worship and creative expression--or something like that.

Uh-oh. They do creative expression, I thought. That scared me a little. I'd found this church through the online directory of Converge Worldwide--the former Baptist General Conference. (Think Piper's Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis.) I figured it was a good way to find a church while I'm summer-sojourning here.

Eying the rather unfriendly family sitting next to me, none of the members of which ever even seemed to consider looking to their left to greet me, I sank into my long stretch of pew space while announcements and other brightly colored slides were projected onto the suspended screens. (For some reason, hardly anyone ever sits near me when I go to a church alone. It must be the fangs.)

The music began right away. Standard modern fare--Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, and the like--and not one invitation to crack open the old hymnals. Odder still was the fact that no one was singing aloud. Over five or six long worship songs I hardly heard a peep from anyone around me. Most stood there looking like zombies, young and old (something I call the Californian condition). There was no Psalm 5:7 or 29:2 kind of worship happening. I consequently felt as though I was singing through a megaphone and tried to quiet myself down.

I started to realize in that moment that in my six months abroad I'd become thoroughly accustomed to the British church experience. Britons are not typically shy in singing, even if their voices tend not to be the most polished or smooth I've heard. They sing with gusto, with full dedication to and comprehension of the words. And, more than this, they sing hymns! Some Tomlin and Redman and Townend are peppered in, but, at least at St. Ebbe's in Oxford, the standard songs were those good, old, solid, meaningful, soul-deep, Psalm-based hymns the church has been singing for centuries.

Back to America, and the music seems so shallow in comparison. God is love, God is mighty to save, Jesus, Jesus--and more apparently empty praise heaped up. I don't mean to sound needlessly judgmental. My point, which I realize I've not yet really made, is that it's far from a meaningless, irrelevant critique. If man is indeed made for worship, then just how man worships is in fact of paramount importance!

This morning the worship seemed less than worshipful. The lead pastor made a good effort in trying to get congregants involved and participating, running through aisles to meet visitors, who were asked to put their hands up. (No, I didn't; I was much too embarrassed.) Yet, despite these earnest efforts, the throngs of worshippers had little to say, little to sing, little to write down during the sermon.

The greatest irony, speaking of the sermon, was that the pastor preached through the passage in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount where he outlines how not to pray and then how to pray. I'm not sure anyone was listening. I looked around to find most people whispering to one another, or sitting still with eyes glazed over as if watching late-night TV. No one seemed to really be desiring God. It was incredibly bizarre. (And no, there's really no happy ending, or some great twist at the end of my story.)

All I can say, as I reflect back on the experience, is that we ought to learn, as culturally American Christians, from our brethren in culturally less hospitable places (like England or, I imagine, any number of distant sites). Where Christianity is less embedded in the fabric of daily life is where Christians are forced to consciously choose faith and choose Christ and choose to be bravely countercultural. As for us,  in the well churched (over-churched?) regions of this strange land, where we are so free from stigma and persecution, we need to remember to one another what it means to give over one's life, wholly and without reserve, to the One who in his sovereignty and grace has chosen to redeem sinful, irredeemable us. If we sang more hymns perhaps we might recall and see more clearly the jagged lines and messy sacrifices involved in faith and begin to notice the folly and unreality of a clean, sanitary, smoothed out, strangely passionless, reverenceless, aweless, Gospel-less evangelical way.

Always reforming, indeed.