The Welcome Center is back at church this weekend. It is comforting to see little vestiges of normalcy returning after two years of Covid-Winter. At our church, the Welcome Center is two 8-foot-long garage sale tables set up in the Fellowship Hall and spread with tablecloths. People can help themselves to a buffet of homemade cookies, brownies, sometimes pimento cheese and crackers, and coffee or juice to be enjoyed between services or the Sunday School hour. Even though I feed my children semi-nutritiously at home, they act like ravenous monkeys when bellied-up to the Welcome Center. They’d put truck drivers at a Golden Coral to shame. Although they can be quite undomesticated (running in the hallways, playing hide-and-seek between services, and partaking of any unattended sweet treat they find), I am grateful that they feel comfortable at church, that they feel like they belong.
I let them take a few snacks into the Sanctuary (because it helps with the squirmies during services), but I also worry that they treat the Welcome Center like a Concession Stand at the movies. Isn’t the point of movies at the theater the inevitable tub of popcorn? I pray the snacks are a conduit for The Word, and not the main attraction. My oldest can be an acolyte soon. Hopefully, he’ll behave without snacks if he sits up front near the pastors. Lighting candles during services and assisting with offering and communion should help cure him of the need for baked goods during a sermon. Plus, he likes uniforms, permission to use fire, and appearing to be responsible. I’m optimistic.
I grew up in church. I didn’t always like going, in fact I know I fought my parents about it and even got a weekend job as a teenager to try and avoid it, but some of my favorite childhood memories are of playing with the blue worm-like veins on the top of my mom’s hand while she sat next to me singing hymns, going to VBS and church camp, being in Christmas Pageants, and undomesticatedly running the hallways and playing hide-and-seek between services with my friends. When the hymn numbers would correspond with a song prompting my mom to comment, “Oh, I love this one!,” I’d pay extra close attention.
My husband likes to tease me about “showing off” during services if the songs listed in the bulletin are ones I think I can sing without a hymnal-assist. “Earth and All Stars,” “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky,” I’ll sing all of those and many others sans-hymnal because I paid attention when my mom said she loved them. The organ will sound a familiar couple of stanzas and I’ll exclaim, “Oh, I love this one!” and promptly close the book. I may not get all the words correct, but I can definitely make sounds with my mouth in close proximity to the melodies. If I’m unsure of a word or three after the first verse, I’ll just dial back the volume and hope for the best. I’m confident God approves.
I draw on my memories of sitting next to my mom in church when I sit with my own kids. I read somewhere that it’s important to physically touch people you love at least 10 minutes every day. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but I know I fall short of that small goal on most days. Between rushing to get off to school, carpooling to activities, and fighting about taking the dog out or nightly showers, I don’t think I get in nearly ten minutes. But I know I can get way more than ten minutes in a church pew. For now, we bank time from Sundays for the rest of the week, and I still tolerate early-morning requests to “snuggle.” My youngest will still sit on my lap or curl up in the crook of my arm, and my oldest—the soon to be acolyte—will play with the blue worm-like veins on the back of my hand while I sing. I’ll miss that when he starts sitting up front.
Sometimes, when the boys and I drive back and forth to church, they’ll ask me to “drive the car in spaceship mode.” This just means to open the sunroof and let them pick the music which we (of course) turn way up loud. I’ll do just about anything to help my boys look forward to attending church, Spaceship Mode and Welcome Center snacks it is. Occasionally, depending on which service we attend, and how late we’re running, we’ll get stopped by a police officer in the street directing traffic coming and going from another church we pass along the way. My kids asked me once why our church doesn’t have a traffic cop. At the time, I answered because we were too small to need one.
Although my kids love jamming out in the car, they’ve grown savvy to my pushing classic rock, outlaw country, and KidzBop versions of pop songs on them. They figured out the KidzBop ruse because the words are different. I assume, since they’re attuned enough to recognize that lyrics like “bite that tattoo on your shoulder, pull the sheets right off the corner of the mattress that you stole” are not the same as “brush that stress right off your shoulder, pull the sheets right off the corner of that notebook that you stole” that all it will take for them to also connect to traditional church music is to sit next to me while I sing audibly. I hope someday, when they’re next to their own kids in church, my sons will hear a familiar, comforting melody from the organ and look at my grandchildren and say “Oh, I love this one!” But in actuality it was because their Great-grandma did, too.
One of my favorite hymns is “We are One in the Spirit.” This hymn was written as a contemporary Christian song in 1966 by a Chicago Priest named Peter Scholtes who was looking for a guitar-accompanied folk song to inspire the youth members of his congregation during the Civil Rights movement. It’s no wonder it is one of my mom’s favorites too, since she came of age in the sixties. The words are all about unity, being one in Christ, and working and walking side by side, how Christians should relate in relationships with other people. In writing this, I know I will hum the chorus the rest of the day:
And they’ll know we are Christians
By our love, By our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians
By our love.
I think sometimes about the big church that we pass on our way to our little church with the Welcome Center and the familiar faces, where I refer to my boys as “feral church children” because they’re quick to dart into a Sunday School classroom looking for crayons or help themselves to the costume closet when the Christmas Pageant rolls around. Many of our friends go there. Reservations for seats are sometimes necessary, and they have a full band with stage lighting and electric guitars. I’m sure the folks who attend love it; it’s just not for me. We sit in the same pew every service–no reservation required–and I prefer my church music to feel like roots and tradition. I get enough electric guitar and stage lights from being married to a musician. Plus…directing traffic flow on city streets between services, it just doesn’t feel authentically Christian to me. Or at least how I think of what being a Christian means.
I hesitate to be too critical of traffic management by mega-churches, as I do believe that people practicing a faith—any faith, Christian or otherwise–is good for society. This is more about my questioning how it aligns with the teachings of Jesus. A very common phase with Biblical origins is “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” It is most frequently attributed to Matthew 20:16, however, the concept appears four times in the gospels of the New Testament. That verse, that idea, essentially means that in the Kingdom of Heaven, reward comes to the humble. Those who prioritize an earthly station or consider themselves first in privilege, may be the last to realize that they need a Savior, because Grace cannot be earned. In the contemporary vernacular of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?): I just don’t think He’d stop traffic to relieve Christians from the inconvenience of patience.
After all, patience is one of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 says But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Patience speaks directly to relationships with other people and includes components of restraint, modesty, and graciousness. Things which are incongruous with the practice of hiring agents of authority to alleviate congregants from the disadvantage of red lights while other people wait. I may not be the world’s best evangelist, but “these people first” doesn’t feel that welcoming to others.
My sons recently mentioned the mega-church’s off-duty officers again in the vein of “Maybe if our church had police, more people would know about it.” Before I answered them, I thought about homemade baked goods and pimento cheese, children knowing where the Pageant costumes and crayons are, and congregations small enough that greeters can recognize new faces with a handshake and helpful suggestions about the order of the service. It’s a far cry from a neon safety vests, orange pylons, and police waving cars through against stop lights. I regretted my prior explanation to them about being too small to need one, and I thought about the call to love buttressed by the virtue of patience and the concept of Christian humility.
“The song says ‘They will know we are Christians by our love,’ boys.” I said. “It doesn’t say anything about traffic cops.”
Then I sang the chorus I knew well. Loudly. Intentionally, and much to their horror.
I’m optimistic they’ll remember.
The Venn Diagram between performative Christianity (which infests mega-churches requiring off duty police for traffic control) and performative nationalistic patriotism in the US is nearly a circle.Report