THE FIFTH DAY OF RETIREMENT

Today brings me to the fifth day of retirement. This week wasn’t typical of the weeks to come since I have had lunch with people three times. That won’t be happening regularly. 

One thing everyone who is retired has told me is that you wonder how you ever had time for work before you retired. This has quickly proven to be true. Monday the new management at my apartment complex reached its first day of collecting rent. It was utter chaos. I spent hours trying to find the new online portal. (It seems the name of the complex has changed as well as the management, but nobody told us that.) Then I couldn’t register so I could pay my rent online. Tried at least ten times, but it wouldn’t work. The leasing office finally opened and they told me you have to put a 1 in front of your apartment number to make it work. How was I supposed to know that? Now if I had been working, I wouldn’t have had time to get this sort of thing done so I might have been evicted for non-payment of rent. 

It is strange only having four keys on my key ring. For years I have been dragging around keys for all sorts of places, but no more. I could cut it down to three keys if I removed the one mystery key. I fear, however, that as soon as I discard it, I will encounter the lock that it is designed for. 

It is also strange not going into the office every morning. You’d think that would give me more time, but it so far has given me less time because my old morning routine is disrupted. I don’t have to have things done by a certain time. I suppose I will get a new routine established soon.

I suspect the real issue for me will be Sunday morning worship. I will be in the pews and not up front leading. Actually that may take awhile to sink in since I am scheduled to supply at churches four Sundays out of the next two months. I am aware of the difficulty, however. This past Sunday I was in Orlando and went to a Lutheran church there for worship. Very big, impressive place. They have four services on weekends. The liturgy was traditional, just what I might have seen 30 years ago. The sermon was sound. The problem? It was a festival, The Holy Trinity, but there was no Communion nor did the sermon or hymns fit with the festival. Everything was part of a series that had been running since the beginning of Easter. I missed something important. God doesn’t care if we observe the Holy Trinity on the First Sunday after Pentecost, but I have lived by the liturgical year for a long, long time. At least from Advent through Pentecost it shapes my devotions and to some extent the way I live. I feel the loss when that disappears. 

Most of the Lutheran churches here in Ocala won’t present this sort of problem–now. However, I know all too well how a change in Pastoral leadership can cause radical changes in worship styles. Saw it happen years ago to one church where the pastor effectively drove out all the “traditional Lutherans” in favor of Charismatics. 

At least this past Sunday there was a redeeming grace. At 4 p.m. I attended Evensong at the Cathedral of St Luke with the Orlando Deanery Girl’s Choir and Boychoir participating. A couple of sections of Vivaldi’s “Gloria," Bach’s "Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and a setting of the “Magnificat” by Samuel Webbe (a new piece to me) made it wonderful service. Add to that some incense and singing two Trinity hymns “Holy God we Praise thy Name” and “Round the Lord in Glory Seated,” and I was at peace–except I had missed the Eucharist for the first time in years. 

Listening to the choirs also gave me a pang of regret. I have missed working with a children’s choir for the past 40 years. Singing with the Carol Choir and the Choristers in my youth helped to cement me in the life of the church. After graduating from college I directed a children’s choir for a year and a half. Then the responsibilities I had as a seminary student made me leave that behind. It is a truism that saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to something else. There is no way to go back on this. I don’t have the musical skills anymore. I haven’t kept up with the repertoire (although I do know that “Firefly” by Andy Beck is a must). More sadly, children’s choirs at churches are largely a thing of the past. Oh, there are groups that get up and shout songs at congregations, but not children’s choirs that learn hymns, learn anthems, learn how to read music, learn how to use their voices well. That’s gone. The days when a large church would have three or four children’s choirs is past.

Time moves on and sometimes leaves good things behind. It’s not always for the better. It’s like the moving van that somehow leaves a box of old photographs behind. You have memories, but how much better it would be to have the actual photos. I suspect retirement is a time for nostalgia.

The Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

ALL THE CHURCH IS A STAGE

More than 25 years ago I attended a conference “Designing the Worship Environment” sponsored by the University of Florida College of Architecture and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture. It was a tremendous event. The best features were presentations by the late Nils Schweitzer, probably the number one church architect in Florida, and an intriguing lecture on historic synagogue design by Benjamin Hirsch. One presentation was slightly disturbing to me: “Worship–Evangelical Distinctiveness.” I wasn’t aware of what bothered me until the panel discussion that followed, but looking back even these many years later, I can see what troubled me.

One topic covered in the presentation dealt with elements of Evangelical worship.  First off was “The Centrality of the Spoken Word.” Had it said the Centrality of the Word, I as a Lutheran would have agreed immediately. In Lutheran understanding Word means first of all Jesus Christ. Secondly, it means the Scripture. Thirdly, it means the proclaimed Word. Because of the first meaning we Lutherans would included the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion as expressions of the Word. They are sometimes called visible Words. Both Sacraments were instituted by Christ, commanded by him, and have a promise attached to them. If only the spoken Word is central to worship, my feeling is that the worship is impoverished.

Furthermore, while it is not impossible to have public worship without music, Lutherans would feel that such worship was quite strange, missing something almost essential.  There is the famous quote from Martin Luther: “Next to the word of God, only music deserves being extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart.”  And often the lyrics to what is sung during worship is taken straight from the Bible so that the Word of Scripture is sung as well as spoken.

This different view of what is central or important to worship dictates different expectations for design of the worship space.  The triple foci of pulpit, altar, and font have to be taken into account. Provision has to be made for music, especially singing which leads to the architectural nightmare of designing a space that is dry enough acoustically for speech and lively enough for music. (Haven’t you noticed how much better your voice sounds singing in shower that elsewhere in the house? That’s the advantage of a live acoustic.)

During the panel discussion following the presentation, someone made a remark suggesting that the church building itself in some way communicates what worship was about. The presenter objected to this idea. I understand why. He was very much fixed on a rational understanding of the Word, so the possibility that the Word would be communicated non-verbally was foreign to him.

This brings me to something that has come up in several blogs lately, church as theater. This refers to both a concept of what the people of God at worship are about and what kind of building communicates what they are about. Let us say for a moment that worship is theater. Who is the audience? This is a critical question. If the audience is the congregation, then worship is primarily an activity in which some people perform while others watch the performance. But what if in worship God were the audience? Wouldn’t then the whole congregation (not just a select few) be the performers? Of course, that cannot be literally true because God does not need to be entertained. Maybe it would be better said that worship is an act (still a theatrical term) performed in the presence of God. If this is true about worship, then none of the people at worship are mere spectators. They are all performers, and the whole church building is the stage. That reminds me a bit of Jaques’ speech in As You Like It

    All the world's a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players.

This is why I am sold on liturgical worship; the very word “liturgy” means “work of the people.” Worship is not something that is done on stage by a few, but is done by all who have gathered. When I was a choir director, I insisted that the primary task of the choir was not to perform anthems, but to support congregational song. The instrumentalists do not lead the singing, but support it. The pastor does not lead worship, but merely presides at it. I cringe when a worship leader invites me to join him or her in singing as if they were doing the singing and we are welcome to come along for the ride. The attitude that worship is being done “up front” arises in traditional and contemporary worship, in free worship and even in liturgical worship, although in that case I would insist it has ceased to be liturgical–the people’s work–at all.

What does this concept say about the worship space? For me it means that the worship space should communicate that worship is indeed the action of all people. One of the best examples I have seen of that is the Benedictine Mission House in Schuyler, Nebraska, designed by Astle, Ericson and Associates.

The congregation sits in a semi-circle around the altar and pulpit so they can see each other. The cross over the altar forms a focal point so that even when no one is in the building, one gets a sense of what this space is for. The whole design suggests community at worship. Of course, this is only a small chapel, but the basic plan can be used in a larger setting.

Here is St. Nicholas Church, Venlo, Netherlands, designed by G. J. Van der Grinten.

Straight off, I admit it is an ugly interior. It looks like a warehouse, but it is the seating that interests me.  Here is the floor plan.

This building seats 800 people with no one more than 60 feet from the center. Maybe the greatest short-coming is the dreadful partial partition wall behind the altar. It reminds me of a badly done theater flat that makes you wonder what’s going on back there. Nevertheless, it isn't bad at including everyone as part of the worship

Why am I so concerned about how people worship and what the space is like? I’ll give you the Latin explanation. lex orandi, lex credendi, the rule of prayer is the rule of belief. How we worship shapes what we believe. If worship is done by a few people with everyone else as a spectator, then Christianity itself may become a spectator religion. It implies that a few people are supposed to be the “real” Christians while everyone else watches.

Well, this has gone on far longer than I originally intended. It’s something to think about next time you are at worship. Am I worshiping God or only watching others worship God?

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne








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LET US SING POWERPOINT SLIDE 2567

Well, I stuck my foot in it this time. Whether that means my mouth or something else is for you to decide. At a recent clergy meeting, one of the pastors remarked that they had stopped using bulletins and were using a screen instead. This means projecting words on large screen in a church. I just had to say that was too bad because now I wouldn’t be able to go to that church when I retire. I hate those screens in worship. It turns out most of the clergy present either used screens or wished they could or are planning to do so. This desire is in spite of the fact that many of the church’s members dislike the screens as much as I do. I guess this is one more sign that I am a dinosaur in the church. I suppose many are just waiting until I and my species become extinct so they can bring things up-to-date in the church.

Some of my objection to these screens replacing bulletins and hymnals and Bibles is practical. The durned screens are hard for us old fogies to read. I was at a service once where the “praise team” (that’s the neologism for combination worship leaders-musicians) blocked the screen on my side of the auditorium. I couldn’t read anything that was up there. When several of us mentioned this afterwards we were told out inability to read didn’t matter.  I got the sense that our participation was confined to listening rapturously to the praise team’s performance and putting enough cash into the offering plate to pay for the show.

The practical problem is compounded for musicians like me. When we sing something, we like to have the music with the words. We’ve spent a lot of time learning to read music, after all. The screens never have musical notes with the words. And nine times out of ten what we are singing is unknown to us. Once again it seems to me that we are being discouraged from participating.

And then there is the problem of making the technology work right. Computers crash bringing everything to a halt. Or somebody pushes the button at the wrong time and you’ve got the wrong words.

But I have a more deep seated objection to the screens. They are out of place in church, at least churches with a liturgical tradition. Liturgy means the people’s work. It assumes that worship is something that worshipers do as active participants and not passive spectators. As best as I can determine, the use of projection screens for song lyrics first arose in mega-churches which are designed to look and function like theatres. As a matter of fact, it was in theaters as far back as magic lantern shows that words were projected for sing-a-longs. Even I seem to recall a projected version of “Let me call you Sweetheart” being sung in some auditorium with the words projected on a screen. Now as I learned from the book When Church Became Theatre there has been a 200 year tradition in American Protestantism of designing churches like theaters culminating in Willow Creek Church. There is absolutely nothing in that church to make it look like a place of Christian worship. It is devoid of Christian symbols or altar or anything that would suggest a traditional church. Projection screens are a natural for these settings which seemed to be aimed at entertaining or perhaps teaching, but certainly not worship in a context where the Word and Sacrament are central and worship really is the people’s work and not the paid staff’s work.

The picture at the head of this blog shows what happens when a screen is thumped into a liturgical church. The stained glass window is covered over and the altar and cross are overwhelmed. Frankly, it is an eyesore rather than an aid to worship. The screen becomes the focal point.


It’s worth paying attention to the observations of Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. A medium affects society not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. In other words, what is communicated is the video screen itself, not what’s on the screen. What is the effect of putting our song lyrics on the ephemeral medium of  a projection screen? As soon as the image changes to a new lyric, the previous one has vanished, disappeared into cyber space. And what about putting Bible texts up there. At least with a book in your hands or even a piece of paper you can go back over something. But with the screen, it is gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for . . ."  Oops! File deleted.

How different is that from a book that will last 20 years or more? Isn’t it strange that we can read manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls written 2,000 years ago, but the information from the 1960 census is largely unavailable because no modern computer can read the old data formats. I can sing the songs I learned in Sunday School and choir 50 years ago. They are lodged in my memory. I can pick up a hymnal prepared in 1960 and sing anything written there. Anybody out there got a collection of songs on eight-track?  How about a good movie on Betamax?

A good screen and projector would be a wonderful adjunct in teaching, but as a worship aid it may prove counter productive. I think churches are being sold a technological bill of goods. I’m not buying.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne






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