The Trailer

My last post described how my friend Mike and I became roadies for all the equipment required by our church’s new seeker sensitive format. The only feeble resistance we offered to these new roles was to note that neither of us had a vehicle capable of pulling a trailer loaded with approximately 7,500 pounds of Christian gear.

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Pastor John assured us. “Phil is going to loan you his truck on Sundays.” This was definitely a case of a situation going from bad to worse. Phil was a fellow seminary student and a great guy, but the last time I had seen a truck like his, it was up on blocks in front of a double-wide trailer. The ancient GMC appeared to have been red at one time, though it was difficult to say for sure. Lumbering along on bald tires, it rattled, coughed, and belched thick smoke from every orifice. The thought of tooling around swank Marin in such a monstrosity was galling, though I was comforted by the fact that it only started about half the time.

For the next several months, a grim pattern unfolded for Mike and me on Sundays. Rising early, we would hoof it over to Phil’s place to get his truck. After starting the beast and letting it warm up for several minutes, we then chugged to a seldom-used parking lot on campus where the trailer was stored. Reluctant to shut the truck off lest it never reawaken, we were forced to grapple with the trailer hook-up while breathing clouds of noxious exhaust fumes.

Once at the elementary school, Mike and I were met by the remaining members of the “Set-up Team” and spent the next 90 minutes unloading and setting up equipment in the worship area and children’s classes. Bathed in sweat, we quickly pulled on fresh T-shirts before the service began and found seats near the back. There we scanned the crowd for new faces to convince ourselves that our efforts were bearing fruit, then settled in for John’s sermon (which always had a catchy title like Take This Job and Love It).

But just when we were starting to relax, it all ended. Parents collected their children from the classrooms, people began to drift off to the parking lot, and an empty trailer waited outside—its hellish craw hungry to be refilled. And once the repacking was finished, the worst was still to come.

As luck would have it, between the elementary school in Corte Madera and the seminary in Mill Valley lay a long, steep hill that taxed Phil’s ancient truck to its uttermost limits. Of course, the wreck topped out at 50 mph under the best of conditions. Faced with pulling a heavily-loaded trailer up this incline, it spewed forth extra quantities of smoke and refused to reach double digits on the speedometer.

Depending on how spiritual we were feeling during the tortuous assent, Mike and I would either pray fervently or mutter expletives that called the truck’s parental origins into question. Sometimes both. At all times, angry Marinites would fly past in their sparkling BMW’s, fixing us with glares that clearly said, “Go back to West Virgina, assholes!”

The Grand Opening

Easter Sunday always carries overtones of new hope and fresh starts, and that was surely true the Easter that newly christened Mt. Tam Community Church reinvented itself as a seeker sensitive church. Our little band of about 40 souls had prepared meticulously for the big day, sending out thousands of fliers and turning the high school cafeteria where our church met into as welcoming a space as possible.

On the big day, I was asked to greet people in the parking lot and direct them to open parking places. Frankly, I feared that the lot would remain so barren that my presence would become laughable, but minutes before the service started, dozens of cars began rolling into view. Soon, I was kept hopping with traffic to direct and hands to shake. After this initial rush died down, I slipped into the cafeteria, where I witnessed a crowd 150 strong singing and clapping along with the upbeat worship music.

This gathering felt like a mob in comparison to our usual Sunday attendance, so we all had to admit that Pastor John’s methods had worked as advertised. And though the church didn’t draw 150 people every week, our regular attendance doubled in the wake of the Easter grand opening. Everyone was encouraged by our success and glad to have the “big push” behind us.

Everyone but John, that is. Seemingly unimpressed by the boost in attendance, he was soon laying plans for further growth. Step one was searching for a meeting place that was able to accommodate larger crowds, and before long, John had leased a spacious multipurpose room from an elementary school in Corte Madera. Unfortunately, the school could not provide us with any storage space, so John purchased a large trailer that could hold all the church’s sound equipment, Sunday School supplies, and other materials.

“Loading and unloading that trailer every week will be a lot of work,” I thought, considering the chain of labor from a detached, abstract perspective. “Good thing I’ve got the parking lot gig lined up.”

But shortly thereafter, John began pulling my friend Mike and me aside to make references to our “faithfulness” and “spiritual maturity.” This was an obvious prelude to being asked to perform some distasteful chore, but Mike and I failed to realize this and were soon designated the official “Ministry Team Leaders” of the “Set-up and Take-down Team.”

Despite the evident honor conferred by such responsibilities, I failed to see why these two functions were deemed inseparable. Why not let us take charge of the “Set-up Team” then go grab a donut while the poor slobs on the “Take-down Team” did the rest of the dirty work?

Looking back, I can only guess that the other poor slobs were wise to the “spiritual maturity” bit.

Speaking in Tongues

Though not as disastrous as the nursing home experience described in my last post, the other leadership roles I assumed as part of the Supervised Ministry class I was taking at seminary were hardly an unqualified success. For instance, despite my earlier reservations, I began leading one of our church’s family groups. And trouble was not long in brewing.

Shortly after I became the leader, our small group ended a meeting in prayer, as was the custom. Different individuals would voice out a prayer as they felt inclined, then I would wrap things up. Normally, the closing prayer time was uneventful, but on this particular night, a member of the group named Ben decided to begin “praying in tongues.”

This odd phrase refers to speaking or praying in an unknown, ecstatic language, a New Testament practice that is common among Pentecostal and “charismatic” Christians but decidedly frowned upon in Southern Baptist circles. Baptists tend to believe that tongues were okay for the early church but—to spare the theological niceties—are a bit kooky for today’s world. But our congregation had started attracting folks from across the spiritual spectrum, and Ben wasn’t one to be fettered by an inconsistent approach to biblical literalism.

However, Jeffrey—another member of our little group—was one of those Christians who felt that tongues were best left in the pages of the Bible, and he became deeply offended at Ben’s unexpected outburst. I saw them in animated conversation after the meeting was over and could easily guess the subject of the debate. Being a decisive leader, I quickly determined that Ben and Jeffrey would be best served by having the freedom to work through their differences themselves, so I made a beeline for the other side of the room.

Unfortunately, Jeffrey was not content to leave me out of it, and he called me later in the week to request that I serve as a mediator of sorts between Ben and himself. The next day, the three of us gathered at a coffee shop, and I tried to find some theological middle ground. On the one hand, I pointed out that, according to the Bible, there was a clear precedent for Christians to speak in tongues, so Jeffrey may have overreacted to Ben’s prayers. But, on the other hand, I noted that each individual believer has the responsibility for thinking about how his or her actions affected others, so Ben might want to put a sock in it during group time. To my relief, this solution was agreeable to both parties.

But more trouble was coming.

The Nursing Home

I threw myself into the fevered efforts to convert Mt. Tam into a seeker sensitive church by Easter, partly because the Supervised Ministry class I was taking at seminary required me to invest 10 hours per week in local church ministry. Unfortunately, Supervised Ministry also required each student to lead a worship service during the semester, and it didn’t seem likely that Pastor John’s plans for a snappy, high-quality Sunday morning service would include any kind of visible role for me.

To get around this roadblock, I signed up to lead a worship service at a local nursing home. Area churches shared this responsibility on a rotating basis, and I convinced my friend Mike that by taking a turn, we could lead worship without making fools of ourselves at a real church. This notion would prove to be horrifyingly mistaken.

During our first visit to the home, Mike and I helped the staff recruit worship participants, some of whom appeared reluctant to leave the big-screen TV set in the rec room. Once we had gathered a dozen grumbling congregants, a staff member named Ed informed us that the old folks enjoyed singing and suggested that we start by leading a few hymns.

“Oh, too bad we don’t have a piano player or singer with us,” I said with a tense smile.

“That’s okay!” Ed fairly shouted. “Just start one acapella and they’ll all join in!”

Making a mental note to strangle this man after the service, I hesitantly rasped out the first few lines of The Old Rugged Cross. But it quickly became obvious that, despite Ed’s assurances, none of the old-timers had the slightest intention of singing along, preferring to stare at me blankly or talk among themselves. To make matters worse, Mike—who had not grown up in a Baptist church—didn’t know enough of the words to be of any real help. So I was essentially left to sing a solo as Ed merrily hummed along.

After finishing my caterwauling, I slumped into an empty seat to let Mike deliver the sermon. But before my jangled nerves could begin to unwind, the wheelchair-bound woman to my right reached over and began to vigorously rub my thigh with gnarled fingers. Horrified, I grabbed the offending hand and tried to exert some control over its movements while giving the appearance of making a comforting gesture. When this failed to work, Ed redeemed himself by wheeling my lecherous companion away, as I was left to ponder why such things never happened when I was seated next to a 20 year-old.

Meanwhile, Mike was having troubles of his own. After he made an innocuous statement about the importance of faith in our daily lives, a scowling woman in a faded blue housecoat cupped her hand to her mouth and cried, “That’s mental!” After she barked out a few similar comments, a startled Mike brought his remarks to a hasty conclusion. Once we had said our goodbyes and walked out to his car, he fumed, “I can’t believe that old lady heckled me! Next time, you’re preaching.”

“Better heckled than groped,” I sighed. Leadership, we were learning, was no picnic.

Changes Afoot

Mt. Tam Christian Community had barely imported its new pastor from Southern California when he determined that a number of changes need to be made to make the church fully seeker sensitive. At a hastily-convened leadership meeting, Pastor John started off by taking direct aim at the small group discussions that took place before the Sunday morning sermon (you may recall these discussions as a series of probing questions about one’s spiritual life).

“That’s crazy,” John said. “Put yourself in the place of a visitor who doesn’t know anyone. How would you like being forced to sit in a circle with a bunch of strangers and answer personal questions?”

At that moment, it was all I could do to restrain myself from leaping up and throwing my arms around our new pastor. If John accomplished nothing else but getting rid of those infernal discussion groups, his ministry would not have been in vain. But he didn’t stop there.

“And what about the name of the church?” he asked. This was already a sore spot around Mt. Tam, which had endured some criticism from seminary leaders for not having the word “Baptist” in its name. But that missing denominational tag was not the source of John’s complaint.

“What does an unchurched person think when they hear Mt. Tam Christian Community?” he asked. “It sounds like some hippie commune.”

And so it went. Every detail of our worship service was analyzed from the standpoint of the unchurched person and altered with his or her needs in mind. John’s goal was to “restart” the church with a whole new image, employing his proven arsenal of Southern California methods in the Bay Area. The plan was to put the church through a full seeker sensitive makeover, mail out thousands of carefully designed invitations to unsuspecting Marinites, and go public on Easter Sunday as Mt. Tam Community Church.

Could it work? No one except John was quite sure, but we were all thrilled at the thought that unchurched masses might soon be descending on our humble congregation. Wouldn’t that be something?

Seeker Sensitive

After surviving the loss of its founding pastor, Mt. Tam Christian Community eventually found a capable new leader. We hired John, who had been a successful church planter in Southern California, as well as a pioneer in the “seeker sensitive” church movement. Also dubbed “user-friendly,” these churches were carefully designed to attract visitors and put them at ease, particularly those who didn’t normally attend church (i.e., seekers).

And John hailed from the place where it all began. In 1955, the Rev. Robert Schuller launched Garden Grove Community Church in a most unusual venue—a rented drive-in theater. Schuller’s goal was to present his Southern California neighbors with a positive, entertaining version of Christianity in a non-threatening setting. And it went over like gangbusters. In 1980, the church became known as The Crystal Cathedral after erecting a massive glass sanctuary that held over 3,000 worshippers. Along the way, Schuller’s congregation became known as the first seeker sensitive church in America.

But others would soon follow. Scores of pastors resonated with the theory that most “unchurched” people stay home on Sunday mornings because worship services appear unintelligible and irrelevant to them. They go to church with a friend, let’s say, and have a hard time singing along with unfamiliar hymns that feature unusual (if not downright gory) titles like O Sacred Head, Now Wounded and There is a Fountain Filled With Blood. They can’t figure out when to stand up, sit down, or kneel; then they have to listen to an overweight minister with a bad haircut preach about some ethereal topic like “pre-millennial eschatology” for 45 minutes. Is it any wonder, the theory goes, that people don’t like going to church?

To combat these formidable barriers to church attendance, seeker sensitive congregations make the worship experience as accessible, entertaining, and anonymous as possible. For starters, visitors are never asked to introduce themselves and are sometimes even discouraged from contributing money during the offering. The church choir is replaced by a worship band—complete with drums, guitar, and synthesizer—and hymns are jettisoned in favor of upbeat, catchy worship songs. Sermons are brief, chatty, focused on a real-life issue like marriage or financial management, and augmented by dramatic sketches or video clips from recent movies. In short, everything aspect of the worship service is painstakingly designed to communicate, “You are welcome here, and there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that anything weird is going to happen.”

Mt. Tam Christian Community had a bit of a head start on the whole seeker sensitive phenomenon, as we already featured casual dress and a worship band. Still, readers of this blog will be aware that weird things did happen from time to time.

But with John on board, that was about to change.

The Fall of the Evangelical Nation

Once again, I want to momentarily step away from the frivolity of my seminary years and fast-forward a bit. During the 8 years that I served as a pastor in Marin and Sonoma counties, I worked alongside a total of 7 other church staff members. Of the 8 of us, only 1 is still working for a church, and at least 4 of the 8 are not even attending an evangelical congregation.

At times, I have wondered if my choices and those of my colleagues represent an aberration (this is California, after all). But after reading The Fall of the Evangelical Nation by Christine Wicker, I know better. This book is thick with statistics and sociological analysis, yet I found it to be an absolute page-turner—perhaps because the hard numbers are interspersed with compelling stories of individuals who are rethinking their faith in ways that sound awfully familiar.

In a nutshell, Wicker lays out a well-researched tale of “halves.” She notes that fully 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, but only half (40%) say they went to church in the last week, and only half of those (20%) were actually there. Moreover, less than half of the true church attenders (7%) hew closely to traditional evangelical beliefs like viewing Jesus as the only way to heaven and accepting the Bible as the inerrant word of God. On top of all that, approximately 1,000 evangelicals leave established churches each day, and many of them are deeply committed believers who have become disillusioned with the state of conservative Christianity. Some seek out new forms of faith like the “emerging church;” others don’t bother.

As I read this book and the personal narratives it relates, my mind flashed back to a summer mission trip I took in college. Students from various Campus Crusade for Christ ministries across the nation spent the summer sharing our faith at a beach town on the east coast, and one night we received a sober warning from one of the CCC staff members. He told us that, if past patterns held, 75% of us would not be “walking with the Lord” in 10 years time. This was a shocking number, and I got the message loud and clear: if we “fell away,” it would be because we neglected our faith—not because something was wrong with the beliefs we all held.

Wicker’s book provides ample statistics to back up the attrition rate I was quoted, but it does something more. It explains that many people do not leave evangelicalism because of moral failings or a lack of commitment, but because they have grown weary of believing that their particular version of Christianity has cornered the market on truth, and that its corresponding right-wing politics has cornered the market on values.

Perhaps my old Campus Crusade leaders would number me among the dreaded 75%, but The Fall of the Evangelical Nation tells me I’m in good company. For that and other reasons, I recommend it highly.

Picking Up a Vibe - Part 2

Two weeks after rebuffing my romantic overtures during a trip to Costco, Mimi unexpectedly invited me to lunch. But I found this surprising turn of events only mildly exciting, since Mimi made it clear that we were just two friends getting a bite to eat. Mike, on the other hand, was elated—interpreting the lunch as proof that his vibe detections were to be gloriously vindicated after all.

But, having been burned once, I refused to get my hopes up. And the lunch itself did little to change my mind. At several points during our meal at a Chinese buffet, Mimi reminded me that this wasn’t a “real date” and strenuously insisted that we split the tab 50-50.

I offered no resistance to this plan, and when the bill came, I began mentally calculating my contribution while Mimi dug through her purse. But after a moment, she set the purse aside and burst into spasms of laughter. It was some time before she was composed enough to tell me what was so funny.

“I don’t even have my wallet,” she finally said, before dissolving into further mirth.

I think that was the moment when I knew that we would be together in the end. Part of me must have sensed that my only hope for romantic success was to find someone who could laugh off embarrassing situations, as life with me was sure to produce a wealth of them. So I decided to press my luck and invite Mimi to my office Christmas party—carefully emphasizing that it wouldn’t be a “real date” or anything.

Under those conditions, Mimi agreed to go. And though I feared that she would be bored among the scientists and engineers I worked with, or turned off by my poor singing during a “Twelve Days of Christmas” spoof I was forced to participate in, Mimi seemed to have a good time. And as we left the party, she casually slipped her hand into mine.

Mike, I knew, would be pleased to hear this.

Picking Up a Vibe - Part 1

As the midpoint of my seminary career neared, my roommate Mike decided to take an active interest in my love life—in part, to preserve his own sanity. Mike had begun seeing a young lady from church who drove a red muscle car, and she often dropped him off at the dorm after yet another of their dates. As the throaty rumble of her dual exhausts died away, Mike would bounce into the room to find me clipping my toenails and sighing loudly.

“Have a nice time?” I would ask, managing a weak smile in spite of my apparent loneliness.

After a few months of this sad spectacle, Mike took matters into his own hands. We sometimes hung out at the apartment his girlfriend shared with two seminary students, and I had become friendly with one of the roommates named Mimi. She had grown up in Maryland and once impressed me by singing a few bars of “Hail to the Redskins” as we all watched an NFC playoff game. Sensing an opening, Mike began encouraging me to ask Mimi out, thereby relieving himself of the necessity of living with a depressed and embittered soul. But I was having none of it.

“Mimi would never go out with me,” I insisted. “She went to Johns Hopkins and makes fun of me for graduating from a ‘football factory.’”

“That’s what women do when they like a guy,” Mike responded with an air of confidence. “Listen, I’m picking up a vibe when she’s around you, so this is in the bag.”

To that point, I had not been aware that “vibes” played a significant role in male-female relationships, or that Mike possessed any special ability to detect them. But he seemed to know what he was talking about—and he was dating a girl with a red muscle car. So I decided to follow his advice.

Shortly thereafter, I maneuvered myself into an opportunity to accompany Mimi on a Costco run. And though she didn’t seem particularly friendly as we shopped, I chalked this up to my previously established ignorance of vibes. And on the way home, I asked her out.

Twenty minutes later, I slumped into the dorm room that Mike and I shared, carrying more peanut butter than we could consume in 6 years. Seeing the look of dejection on my face, Mike’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.

“She said no?!” he cried, before peppering me with questions about the trip, all of which were designed to infer that I must have taken some wildly wrong-headed approach and ruined a sure thing. But I had an alternative explanation.

“So much for your vibes,” I spat. “And I hope you like peanut butter.”