HOW RELEVANT IS RELEVANT?: FIRST BAPTIST ANYWHERE

I took my seat on the front pew, at the end of a long line of serious looking deacons in blue and black suits and newly polished Sunday shoes. This was an almost exact replica of he First Baptist Church where I spent my teen-age years: Downtown right off Main Street. Parking meters out front disabled on Sundays. Steep stairs stacked to front doors flanked by majestic white columns. Golden chandeliers illuminating the foyer’s marble floors and grandiose floral arrangements. A man in a suit wearing a name tag and tie handing out bulletins to people he welcomes by name. Another man, also in a suit, walking widows and the disabled to their seats.

This church exists in just about every town south of the Mason-Dixon. I knew it’s routine and ritual well.

The service began with a “call to worship” blared from a pipe organ played by a librarian-looking woman wearing bifocals that dangled around her neck by a gold chain until the moment she needed them to read her sheet music. During her performance the choir, robed in ankle length green silk gowns with yellow neck sashes filed into the choir loft. And after this the crowd and I sat silently as the music minister made his way to the pulpit. He finally arrived, smiled and asked us to turn to page such-and-such and sing the “timeless hymn” such-and-such.

The hymn was followed by announcements. The Education Minister walked to the pulpit and read to us from the bulletin we received just minutes before from the man at the front door: “There will, uh, be a meeting of the WMU in, uh, uh, the Fellowship Hall oooooon…Wednesday night at…6…and, don’t forget youth camp registration starts today and, um…the camp is called The Great Adventure camp and…Shaun Grooves will be doing a concert right here tonight and you don’t want to miss it…”

The Music Minister returned to the platform and asked us to stand and sing “All Hail The Power Of Jesus’ Name” and we did, followed by four stanzas of another hymn, and another hymn, and then an offertory prayer by an elderly deacon, and then “Special Music” sung by a woman with wide vibrato and accompanied by the organist who had stealthily switched to the piano during the prayer. “His eye is on the sparrow,” she droned, “and I know He watches me.”

Then the pastor, a man in his fifties wearing a double-breasted gray suit and his short hair parted to one side, climbed the stairs to the pulpit, opened his bible, thanked sister so-and-so for her “fantastic singing” and read from one of the Gospels. He reduced the chapter to three points he repeated as he preached. “My first point this morning was…then my second point was…and now my third point is…” His voice rose and fell melodramatically, undulating from whisper to holler and back again and again. His illustrations came from books and not personal experience. There was nothing to look at. No walking out from behind the pulpit. No humor. No cultural. No printed outline to help us follow along.

I kept a mental list of the top seeker-insensitive words of the morning: Offertory. Prostrate fall. Redemption. Salvation. Justified. Personal Lord and Savior.

I tallied the missed opportunities for relevance: A scene from Friends would have gone well with point one – I thought - and surely you’ve got a lost luggage story for point three.

My brain was on the verge of exploding, all the great ideas of mine and all the mistakes of his packed on top of each other in a potentially explosive cocktail. One more blunder by this guy and I might die of an aneurism.

He seemed unaware of my mental anguish when he asked everyone to stand and invited me to play a song. I slid onto the piano bench and waited. “If you don’t know Jesus this morning I invite you to come now and make him your personal Lord and Savior. Meet me here at the front. “We also invite you to come make this your church home by baptism or transfer of letter. Come now as Shane plays.”

This’ll work, I sarcastically sneered with my inside voice. I’d seen “alter calls” in churches like this one a hundred times. It would be a miracle if anyone was still awake, a double miracle if anyone walked down the aisle, a triple miracle if that someone wasn't a Christian already.

“Take me, make me all you want me to be,” I sang.

She interrupted screaming from the back of the room.

“Jesus! I’m coming, Jesus!”

I kept on, “Welcome to this heart of mine, buried under prideful vines…”

She answered. “I’m coming! I'm coming!”


To be continued…