I did not want to go to California. I wanted to stay home. That desire hit me hard over Christmas break as I watched people in the church I had grown up in come forward for communion. As the line walked by me, I realized that I knew almost every single person. Their stories were woven into mine. I watched children walking up with their parents and marveled at how fast they were growing up. I saw peers and  mentors, people who had shaped, encouraged and challenged me in my faith. These were people who loved me. These were people I loved. This was my family. This was my home. These were the people who I wanted to serve over the summer as I completed my Jubilee Fellows internship.

I had applied and been accepted into the Jubilee Fellows program , a year-long program for students discerning a call to ministry. Part of the program consisted of a 10-week summer internship which allows students to gain hands-on experience serving in a church. I wanted to complete this internship in my home church, Redeemer Christian Refofmed Church, in Sarnia, Ont. But the program coordinators advised me to go to Granite Springs Church in Lincoln, Calif.

In the end, I heeded their advice and went to California. I got on the plane and flew farther west than I had ever been, prepared to spend the summer living with people I had never met and working in a church I had never been to. On my first Sunday it was a little intimidating to look over the congregation as I was introduced and see only unfamiliar faces. It forced me outside of my comfort zone to consciously move from group of people to group of people after the service, meeting people and starting to get to know them.

Because I am a music in worship major, I hoped that my internship would allow me to gain practical experience planning and leading worship at Granite Springs. However, I quickly realized that before I could plan or lead worship effectively for this congregation, I needed to get to know them. Who were these people who gathered each week to worship at Granite Springs Church? Where were they from? What were their stories? What things were important to them as individuals and as a community?

Ultimately these more surface-level questions led to deeper questions what thoughts would be on peoples minds when they walked into church? What concerns would they have faced over the week? What kinds of things would they want to say to God? What might God be trying to say to this community?

By the end of my internship I had the opportunity to plan four services and lead two of them. Before I did that, however, I spent some time reflecting on the community which I had been called to lead in worship. Ive planned services before for both my home church, Redeemer CRC, and for Calvin Colleges Sunday night LOFT (Living Our Faith Together) services. In some ways worship at Granite Springs Church was similar both to worship at both Redeemer CRC and LOFT. In other ways the context was different. Every place has a culture of its own, and things that work well in one context dont necessarily work well
in another context.

In order to better understand the context, I had conversations with the music director and the pastors at the church about their views on worship. Understanding also came naturally as I also got to know people while serving with them in various ministries. Out of my reflections I created a short document outlining some of the things that I thought made worship at Granite Springs unique.

This document, and the thinking that went into it, was helpful as I worked on putting together services. It allowed me to think about aspects of the service and whether or not doing certain things would be distracting or help the congregation worship well. For instance, Granite Springs is a church plant, and they strive to be very welcoming to people who have never been to church before. This requires extra sensitivity when planning to ensure that everything is explained clearly and thoughtfully.

One of the last Sundays that I was in California, we celebrated communion. Once again I watched as a line of people formed to take the bread and wine. As they came forward, I was startled to realize that in 10 short weeks I had come to know and love these people.  I knew at least part of their stories. I recognized kids who had come to music and drama camp and enthusiastically learned the songs and dances I taught them. I also recognized junior high students who I had gotten to know as I participated in various junior high events, people from praise team, friends from the college-aged group, people who had let me borrow cars and had me over for meals, and others who I had just gotten to know from conversations after church. I realized that this too had become home, and that these people were also my family.

ONLINE EXTRA

Check out a short video of Nicole Veenkamp talking about music and worship

Posted by Betty Grit.

Posted by Betty Grit.

On a Wednesday evening in late September, 2011, Kent Lutheran church hosted a worship renewal workshop for church leaders throughout the Seattle area and beyond. Project Director Debbie Hunt reported on their project and described ministries that are growing since their year of worship renewal. She notes that the anticipated renovations may be pursued someday but that the grant brought renewal in unexpected ways. Today the congregation is active in service to the homeless in their neighborhood and are making plans to travel to Sudan to provide water purification equipment and  build a school. Pastor Jane Prestbye observed, “The Worship Renewal Grant transformed us. We will never be the same.”

Posted by Betty Grit.

Carlos served as conference coordinator at the recent “Conferencio de Teologica de la Adoracíon” (Conference on the Theology of Worship), held in El Salvador at the Universidad Evangélica de el Salvador. This worship conference was the 19th international symposium in 16 different countries co-sponsored by the Worship Institute, and the first one in El Salvador. Staff members Emily Brink and Kathy Smith participated on behalf of the Worship Institute.

Despite shooting rampages and extreme heat this summer, we at Calvin and Calvin Seminary live in stable, safe, and small world. We are in one denomination with very little exposure to strong theological beliefs from vastly different denominations. Outside of campus there is a bigger world full of Christians who profess different theology and different Christian beliefs. Having grown up in the Presbyterian and Christian Reformed Church, witnessing and participating in such an ecumenical conference such as the Hymn Society Conference was an eye-opening, incredible experience.

For five days I had the opportunity to attend the Hymn Society Conference, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Hymn Society Conference is an annual conference that meets in a different location every year. It draws people who love hymns and the history of hymns.

The people attending the conference were from all different parts of the world from all different denominations. Together we sang hymns and talked about hymns. The amazing thing about this genre of music is not only the impact on the hearts and souls of people but also the theology that is conveyed through the texts of the hymns. However, the breadth of theology present in the texts at Hymn Society was deeper and wider than I’ve ever experienced. As we sang songs and prayed prayers I began to realize how ecumenical this conference really was—and at that, how big the story of hymnody really is.

For an hour we sang together the story of the Spanish Catholic church, singing through the new hymnal Flor y Canto recently released by Oregon Catholic Press. For two days the plenary speaker was Dr. I-to Loh, and with him we heard a small fraction of the story of the Asian hymnody and the Asian church. With these songs we sang of the poverty and opposition the Christians of Asia have felt over the years. While in Colorado, I attended many hymn festivals; one of these festivals told the stories of hymns that had a “Colorado connection”; another told the story of the earth through hymns. I cannot begin to recount all the experiences that stretched me and made me question not only what I was hearing, but what I believed as well.

Yet, bigger than any song we sang last week were the individual stories. The best part of the week was the meals, not that the food was spectacular, rather, it was the conversations over the meals that were truly spectacular. These are the stories that will forever impact hymnology for decades to come: the retired school music teacher who loves hymns and loves her church; the hymn writer whose texts will impact generations to come; the professor whose reputation brings students from around the country. These are the stories that might not make the next history hymnology textbook, but these are the stories that will influence the people for years to come.

There is a board range of stories and theology present in our world today. The simple differences in theology that started back in the early church and have continued to divide the church at an exponential rate are reflected in the hymnody available to use in worship. This huge range was presented in one week at hymn society—a unique feat that caused to examine and reexamine every text that I read before and after the texts were sung. Even though I may not believe that all the theology and beliefs are correct, they are someone’s theology and beliefs, and therefore, someone’s story. We all have theology, beliefs and stories—what matters is what is in our hearts. It is up to us to tell the stories and share our theology with our congregations and with each other through what we sing in worship.

Psalm 19 tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” If nature can proclaim without words the glory of God, so surely can we, humans with voices to sing and hands to write, can proclaim the truth of God through the words we say, the poetry we write and the melodies that make our hearts soar!

For me, this summer seminar has been all about evangelicals and their quest for power, fame and glory. To be quite honest, I have found most of this quite disturbing. From two books on “Christian ambition” and how it is redirected and expressed within Los Angeles churches, to a lecture on the strength of the “erotic,” “communal,” and “connective,” within megachurch environments, to long discussions about the prosperity gospel, to  James Davidson Hunter’s latest meditation (descriptive as prescriptive) on how Christians ought to theorize their quest for power, what has stuck out resoundingly for me is how much evangelical Christians seek power, and how little Christian Scholars like to critique this.  ”Churches are always adapting,” I am told, and it is “unhelpful” and even “irrelevant” to critique modern-day Christian movements as unorthodox, heretical or misled. “Sociologists don’t evaluate theology,” I am told. “It is not our job to judge,” I am reminded. “Churches are always embedded in their culture,” we repeat back to one another.

However, I have wondered more than twice whether the scholarly enterprise of ethnography and careful tabulation does not sometimes distract us from a truth we do not want to critique– the fact that lots of Churches–in fact, Christian communities at large–are hungry for power. And not just spiritual power–real worldly power.  And they are not going to apologize about it.

Reading book after book on megachurches and missionaries, I often uncomfortably conclude that this evangelical quest for power is Machiavellian. It is rationalized by the fact that worldly power wields influence, and influence leads to Christian witness, and Christian witness leads to “hearts and minds transformed for Christ.” The logic is utilitarian–we do what it takes to get power, as long as that power leads to “Christian ends.”  However, blame it on my scholarly expertise or my Christian faith tradition, but I am just not convinced that the ends justify the means.

I am not convinced that the “positive good” of increased  membership in a megachurch warrants a Public Relations department, complete with bait-and-switch advertising and lots of money spent on emotionally powerful props. I am just not convinced that cultivating a powerful “brand” for a megachurch pastor is a “necessary evil” that sustains the long term health of a church plant. I am not convinced that we should be comfortable with such a term as “necessary evil.” To me, Christianity is not about reaching goals. If cultural transformation and influence happen as a side-effect of the deeper mandate to love God and serve one another, then praise God. However, the cultural mandate to transform society ought not displace the mandate, spoken by Micah, “ To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” To act justly and love mercy requires a deep love of other people and a willingness to put others before ourselves. I am just not sure this can be accomplished at the same time as seeking worldly influence.

According to some, for example James Davidson Hunter, it is not a problem for Christians to seek power and influence, fame and glory; we need only do this in a responsible and self-conscious way, and give the glory to God. Part of our mandate from Heaven, says Hunter, is the calling to improve and transform Creation, and one cannot do this without exercising some power. Knowing this, he encourages Christians to become a faithful witness of Christ within worldly networks of influence. Since here is where culture is harnessed and transformed, here is where Christians ought to be. As long as one is self-conscious about one’s positionality, he infers, one can remain a faithful witness.

However, have Christians ever really done this effectively? Is it consistent with the ethics of Yahweh to be powerful in a worldly sense? Is it consistent with the approach of Jesus to be powerful in a worldly sense? I have noticed that evangelicals love to see themselves in the story of Daniel. They like to identify with those out of reach of official leadership, and instead see themselves sitting in the court of the Kings as a persecuted minority faith. But once again, I am just not convinced. The more I read, the more I learn that evangelical self-narratives of impotence serve particular ends of revival and mobilization within the churches. Evangelicals are everything but impotent in modern American culture. Just turn on the television. Or the radio. Or look who is running for GOP nominee.

Maybe I am a especially concerned with the corrupting power of fame, glory, and especially money because this is what I study. I am, after all, a scholar of labor and working class history. My research examines poor Christians and their frustrations with churches as towers of  Mammon, and I trace these gripes with mainline churches over three generations in the United States (1880s-1930s). I’m especially sensitive, I suppose, to the ways that Christians have wielded power for evil, and as a Christian I find these aspects of our history as important as they are troubling.  Or, maybe it’s “just” that the theological traditions I have been most drawn to have overwhelmingly discussed the problems with worldly power (Mennonite, Quaker, Catholic, liberation theology, etc).

But Seminars in Christian Scholarship, I am quite honestly surprised. I know “Churches are embedded in their culture,” but should that excuse all of their behavior as Christian?

The disciplinary background of the seminar participants is this:

• 9 sociologists
• 3 historians
• 1 art historian

As a result I’ve had ample opportunity to learn from my sociologist colleagues. I’ve picked up two things in particular from them. The first is a detailed understanding of how congregations (or social groups more generally) actually function. A sociologist’s understanding is different, though, than the way a historian gets an understanding of a group interaction, which tends to be focused on the role of individuals. Sociologists tend to have a much keener sense of the structures that influence groups. (The best historians have picked up on this as well, starting most notably the social historians of a generation or two ago.) That kind of understanding is shaped by the second thing I’ve learned from sociologists: their use of theory as a heuristic tool for investigating social groups and processes. I’ve come to appreciate ideas like Weber’s “routinization of charisma,” Randall Collins’s “interaction ritual chains,” and Erving Goffman’s “frames” as a way of investigating historical sources. (I’ll let my better informed sociologist colleagues talk me down from any of those ideas next week, if necessary.) On the first day of the seminar, Gerardo Marti encouraged us to think through three questions: (1) How is my work significant? (2) How do certain ideas focus my observations? and (3) What are the implications of my ideas? My benefit has come in great deal in thinking more carefully about the second question and how I can use sociological ideas as a lens when I approach historical sources.

I don’t want to give the impression, though, that the seminar has been so profitable because it has discussed theories alone. In fact, most cross-disciplinary discussions that focus on theory or on the presuppositions of the disciplines fall flat. The disciplinary assumptions that we all bring to the table are rather diverse. A caricature might look like this. Sociologists, speaking to historians: “Do you all do anything besides tell stories?” Historians, speaking to sociologists: “Do you all really think that you’re scientists?” That caricature (which isn’t so far from actual conversations I’ve witnessed elsewhere) by no means represents the discussions that we have been having. The difference is that our seminar focuses on particular questions within the broad rubric of congregations and social change: megachurches, worship, racially and ethnically diverse congregations, and the like. By narrowing down on these specific questions, we have been able to bring multiple disciplines to bear—the sociologists adding their detailed ways of thinking about how social groups work, and the historians adding a somewhat longer perspective to the question of social change.

This week we have investigated this question through discussion (continued from last Friday) about evangelicalism and congregations—many of which happen to be in California—and why place and location matter in the study of congregations.  I should add that many of the seminar participants visited a local megachurch on Sunday, an occassion that provided additional reflection and prompted rich conversation.  Then we moved from a study of localities to the consideration of macro-level dynamics that issue forth changes in varieties of Pentecostalism and immigrant faiths (e.g., a Hare Krishnas/ISKCON in Chicago).  And tomorrow we are excited to discuss megachurches.

As our conversations have traversed multiple social, cultural, and historical terrains throughout this week the disciplinary distinctives of how sociologists, historians, and art historians approach congregations, their leaders, and the stark reality of change have manifested clearly.  Equally clear are the committed, passionate perspectives each seminar member brings to his/her subjects—particularly as we offered individual reflections around dinner tonight at the Prince Conference Center.  Despite these differences it is also exciting to notice a unifying principle of critical inquiry alongside a quest for analytical precision that in turn highlights the committed engagement represented around the seminar table. 

The first day of the seminar we met as colleagues.  The days and hours we’ve spent together since then have birthed friendships.  And tonight as we broke bread together community flourished.