Hybrid worship

A few years ago, the mother of a little girl with cerebral palsy contacted the New York City Ballet and asked if they could run a workshop for her daughter. The little girl loved music and dancing and all things related to ballet - and the mum figured if her daughter felt this way, then others with physical limitations probably did too. 

The ballet school factored in the complications of wheelchairs, uncoordinated movements, muscle spasms and leg braces and said Yes. The professional dancers designed a programme, publicised it, ran the workshop and got the kids to put on a show for the parents afterwards. 

The parents obviously loved it. 

Some of these kids could hardly walk, but for that show on that particular evening - these children were ballerinas. 

The parents didn't sit in the audience to critique - to notice the flaws or judge the glaring lack of technical competence or physical perfection. The beauty in the performance ran way deeper and overwrote all that stuff. The little girl's mum looked at her daughter on stage and saw a dancer.

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So... church is back on after 5 1/2 months of lockdown and like everything in the post Covid world, traces of the virus have seeped into the corners here, altering the way we do things for the foreseeable future. There's booking seats in advance, 2m social distancing, sitting in your family bubbles, wearing masks, hand gel dispensers at every doorway, a one way system throughout the building - all the usual stuff. Oh - and the Not Singing. 

Not Singing is kind of the default in most places. You can get through many situations in life complying with this one without even noticing. 

Not Singing in church though? That's kind of a bigger deal. It's notable and disorientating - even when you accept the rationale, have got your head round the theology, read a few articles and done virtual church for so long that any semblance or corporate togetherness would be welcome with no problem whatsoever. (Although getting unexpectedly emotional at Dance Monkey performed live should have been a giveaway).

As guidelines stand, for now only the worship leader can sing and we can participate by clapping, raising hands, kneeling, thinking, praying, silently singing - any way we choose to except to join in and sing. This is fundamentally weird and feels wrong. 

But it's the way things are just now. And God is still God and there's stuff to learn. 

• You can worship worship, and that's idolatry. I don't want to do that.

• In other parts of the world, people of all faiths are oppressed and tortured for their beliefs. We have freedom in this country. We enjoy benefits other people can only dream about. Recognise it and pray for those who are genuinely persecuted.

• The worship leader is like our appointed representative. Our voice. Like someone you'd vote into public office. I can listen to him/her and make their words my own. I can be grateful that they're singing them for me when I can't. (Although watching telly as an armchair politician and getting cross when they're ballsing things up isn't half as frustrating as agreeing with someone but being unable to verbalise it in real time. Isn't that weird?)

• God doesn't need volume. He senses worship from the soul. I don't know how that works or what it even really sounds like. I doubt we have the bandwidth to comprehend it. I Only know that if parents of kids with profound, physical impairments can look at them and see dancers, God can decode the silence of censored songs and hear them at whatever deafening volume we mean them.

• Angels are probably pretty busy right now. They are joining in amd always have done. So the real thing is pretty loud.

Turn your ear
To heaven and hear
The noise inside
The sound of angels' awe
The sound of angels' songs
And all this for a King
We could join and sing
All to Christ the King
(David Crowder)

Ballet

We have 2 teenage boys and one incredibly non-girly girl. I have spent zero hours of my life ferrying kids to and from ballet lessons and have little insight into the world of points and tutus and everything that goes along with it. Then, a few months ago, I was the stand-in parent for my best mate's daughter who was about to sit a ballet exam.

I witnessed a very intense 40 minute lesson from the perimeter of the room surrounded by other ballet mums - some of whom were taping their daughters' performances on iPads so they could later critique performances around the dinner table and work on improvements before e-day.

The teacher, Miss Diana* clearly had a mission to have every girl pass the exam the following week and was taking no prisoners. Everyone had to get with the programme. She controlled the class in a sing-songy yet strangely threatening voice that suggested Bad Things would happen if her instructions were not followed. No one else seemed freaked out or offended by this. She also used lots of French words that I'm about to horribly misspell because I left school nearly 30 years ago and never studied French. They included:

Bat mon gleesay
Sourire
KEEP SMILING
Bay mon dong
Bronda charloh ten
Rondeh joh n
Don't murmur
You can breathe and you can blink
Ballet second ton dew
Demi plee ay
No willy wonkeys
Plee ay
Gleesay close back
YOU'RE NOT SMILING
Grande gleesay close front
Aw fondew
Dev le pay du von

I had no idea what this woman was talking about. And I was genuinely uncomfortable by the way she spoke to the kids.

The weird thing was, the little girls appeared unfazed and were happy to comply with the French orders. And the mothers surrounding the room were totally comfortable with the arrangement and were paying for it to happen. There was an agreement in place that I wasn't quite getting.

It was a disconcerting experience. Everything about the environment was alien and unfamiliar. And even though a couple of the ballet mums smiled and chatted before the thing started (we were NOT allowed to talk while Miss Diana ran the class) they had a common interest in this whole thing that I didn't share (and had no desire to). I was a temporary interloper in their world, conspicuously standing in for a real ballet mum.

Which got me thinking about social situations in general and how tribal these things can be. New school. Leaving school. College. New job. Joining a gym. Becoming a parent governor. Joining a political party. Going to church...

Each sub culture has its own set of norms and habits that those who belong to it take for granted. There's familiarity and history and acronyms and an understanding of what to expect. Which is great - when you have a little inside knowledge.

But what about those on the fringes? What about those who want to join and start building history? Relationships? Bonds that really matter? Maybe that's asking a lot of your governing body (You only signed up for 3 meetings per year for the next 4 years - just explain your zillion acronyms to me) but churches - surely they should be among the most accessible places on earth?

Our church has an entire team of people who's primary focus is on welcoming people at the door, chatting to visitors, connecting them with other people and having really good quality coffee in constant supply. From a logistical side, the entrance is street level and there's loads of parking. All good. The whole thing works well for those who are already primed and ready for that kind of interaction.

But what of those beyond the fringes? The interlopers. The conspicuous ballet mums and the slightly freaked out? The ones who know this is a valuable resource of some kind for some people, just not them (yet)? What about those who want to observe from the sidelines then grab their borrowed child and leave before they get into conversation with anyone (possibly in French)?

This is where other ballet mums come into their own. The ones who make eye contact and smile. The ones who ask which kid you've borrowed and point out their own. The ones that are friends with your best friend and ask how she is. The ones that laugh at your unease about Miss Diana's voice and make you feel less uneasy about her. The ones who help you see that Miss Diana comes alive when she teaches other people's daughters to dance.

So, to all:
Regular ballet mums
Experienced governors
Veteran churchy people
Smiley duty reception staff at the gym
And anyone else who can make interlopers walk away from you, smiling and thinking,  'Je pourrais appartenir ici...' ** -  Merci x

*Pseudonym used
** 'I could belong here' (Hopefully - I googled it)

Distractions and dress code

We are creating a culture of distraction (Joe Kraus)

Unless I'm at the beach or away with work I pretty much live in denim. My jeans are assigned their very own drawer and I wear them in rotation to prevent jealousy in the ranks and maintain an evenness of wear and tear. Slouch, boyfriend, bootleg.... I love them all - jeans are comfy, can be accessorised up or down (mostly down) and don't show the dirt.

Like all things denim, churches come in different varieties too. And like my oldest, comfiest jeans with the hole in the left knee and enough give in the waist to be pulled on / off without undoing the zip, you get comfortable with what you know. There's an expectation and familiarity with favourite jeans. I know how they fit and find comfort in the way my phone fits in the back pocket without either digging into my bum when I sit down or threatning to tumble onto a tiled bathroom floor when I pull them below my knees.

Jeans just work, you know?

But, like wearing a bikini at the beach or a trouser suit while on conference, it's appropriate to wear something different on occasion. And it's probably good to NOT go to your own church on occasion too. Different can be good. Different can teach you what familiarity can't. Having been away from home for 5 weekends in a row and mixing with a wider selection of God-type people than I normally do, I have (re) discovered the following:

• Worship is about glorifying God, not about my preferences

• Lack of responsibility for any part of the meeting is quite liberating

• Even when most elements of a church service are not familiar, the unchanging nature and goodness of God is

• It's quite hard to offend genuine followers of Jesus who welcome honest enquiry

• If God's family can be so diverse within the limited expression of church that I can experience in my teeny tiny lifetime within a finite cross-section of Christendom, then heaven will be indescribably eclectic. (I can just about get my head around people from every tribe, tongue and nation, but talking / singing lifeforms with wings and lots of eyeballs may be a bit distracting for a while).

• I am too easily distracted

Expanding further on this final point (because it's an increasingly prevalent first world problem, plus 5 weeks away gave me lots of material), here are some of the distractions that might get in the way. There are lots more. Please feel free to add your own. The sharing of knowledge is power and all that.

• Unfamiliarity with whole thing

Stupid stuff that regular attenders take for granted can make a visitor feel like an observer rather than a participant. Is there a dress code? What's the order of the service? What expectations or limitations are there that are different to what I'm used to - not because God is limiting or expecting anything necessarily, but the culture within a church is shaped by encouraging / normalising certain things. Or not. Also, under normal circumstances I can plan a sneaky coffee / pee break according to what's coming up next, but as a newbie this is not possible. 

• Feeling conspicuous as a visitor

Especially as several members of our extended family belong here and as such, lots of people already know who I am and some want to speak to me afterwards and I can't remember ANY of their names. That's a fair bit of pressure if you think about it too much. So I don't.

• Arrive late and end up sitting at the front
Rookie mistake. Visiting AND sitting at the front? Forget the bikini- you might as well be naked.

• Worship songs are from a bygone era
This awakens childhood memories, both good and bad, of services dominated by counting the ceiling tiles, doodling flower patterns on the notice sheet and trying to make one packet of wine gums last the whole sermon.

• The worship material contains lyrics which raise theological ponderings

Hmmm - Do I believe in singing to Mary? And if not then is the polite response to sing anyway, not sing at all or just mouth the words? That last one seems like a lie really, so I don't.

• Songs presented in a different style than whe one I am accustomed to 
I shall build my church and it shall involve drum and bass or one of those little church karaoke machines or an 80's electric organ or re-worded Abba lyrics or one man and his acoustic guitar. Oh yes.

• Songs presented by the tone deaf a musician of lower ability
But that's Ok - Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Even if you're at the front. With a mic. And singing in a different key to everyone else in the room. That's absolutely fine.

• No words on the screen for whole songs at a time

Did Windows decide to update just before we got started? Or was this one chosen at the last minute and the techie can't type it in fast enough? Or maybe he's asleep, slumped over the desk at the back. Sometimes it's because the song actually finished a while ago, but the musicians are engaged in free worship between themselves and the first 3 rows. Either way, regular guys here know what's going on but newbie's mind is wandering now...

• And I'm feeling anxious that all the roller blinds down one wall are at different lengths. And the one behind the speaker is squint...
I am not obsessive. I am not obsessive. I am not obsessive.

• Working / hovering at back of big top with radio and ear piece so I can instruct the stewards on when to open which doors or help the medics reach anyone having a panic attack, if required.
So now I'm being paid to be distracted. How do pastors get through a Sunday morning with all these balls in the air?

• Those nearby messing around / not singing / chatting to each other

OK - this affects both home and away games. Rightly or wrongly I am distracted by the behaviour of others. We can help each other to connect with God or make it more difficult for them. Our willingness / unwillingness to engage with what's going on impacts those around us.

• There are no kids in this church and therefore no kids session. And I've brought 2 of mine today. Including the fidgeter.
Oh dear. As the minutes tick by they are increasingly bored and restless. One of them is blowing spit bubbles. I can't work out if it's more distracting to allow this to continue or to ask her to stop. I let it continue as I'm kind of mesmerised by them. Some take ages to pop.

• There IS a kids session (Yay!!) and even though it happens next door, there's colouring in and games at the back of the room from the start.
And kids can access it whenever they want. And they are. No one has to sit with a parent if they don't want to. Kids older than mine are chattering loudly and colouring in and my youngest is distracted herself as she wants to join them. So now I'm distracted because she is.

Missing my church family. I've been in unfamiliar clothes too long and need my jeans with the hole in the knee. (But good to know the bikini still fits).