And Now for Something Completely Different

Church can sometimes feel like a Monty Python sketch. You show up one Sunday and everything looks as you expect it. The Choir is singing, the sacraments are celebrated, the Pastors are in their robes, and preaching and everything seems decent and in order. The next Sunday there is one service instead of two, there are balloons everywhere, and a pot-luck after the service. Come back the next Sunday and everything is just as it was the first time. The Sunday after that they are back to one service but it is at a different time then it was two Sundays ago, there is no choir only a couple of singers leading music, the bulletin is different, the robes are gone and one of the pastors isn't even wearing a tie, communion is every week and the services are a little longer. Just when you get used to it all it changes again. The choir is gone but so are our music leaders. In their place is an amplified band with guitars and a bass. They are playing "contemporary" music - some not even expressly Christian - and it is loud. The pastor isn't preaching, a member is, and when it was all said and done there was cake. Next Sunday, you ask? Oh, we are back to our normal Summer worship.

Some might say that it is too much. Too much change. Too much experimentation. Too much like the normal 11:15 AM service and not enough like the 9 AM service, and visa-versa. Some might say that it puts people on edge - never knowing what service they are going to walk into - and others might say that it keeps folks on their toes. Two sides of the same coin I suppose. Yet it forces us to confront something very important and usually not very popular. It provides a space to ask why. Why do we do it? Why do we invite a band to worship? Why do we change the time? Why do we have members preaching when we have pastors? Why is there different music? Why no choir? Why do any of this at all? Why?

There is this hot new workout routine that I have been hearing a lot about. It's secret to success is apparently something they call muscle confusion. Meaning that their workout is constantly changing exercises and motions so that the muscles do not get into a habit and plateau. By changing motions and exercises, muscles don't know what is going to happen next and thus have to work. What might be good for the body is difficult for the Body of Christ. We have been exercising for so long in one way that the muscles of the church know the motions and what it can bear without much true exercise. Incorporation of different exercises feels funny & it requires our muscles to go in different but still very beneficial directions. In the end, the "new exercises" help make us stronger because they show that we are strong not just in one way but strong throughout. New ways of worship, new ways of church, new ways of community life force us to exercise muscles long dormant so that we may be fit for all expressions of what it means to follow Christ in the current age.