I’m learning that I need surprise in the Church, little unexpected signs that there’s a rhythm of grace and redemption that is moving this Body along to try some new moves. I was on a women’s retreat recently with mothers, grandmothers, women who have run businesses, women who command auditoriums full of people – a classy group of well-mannered gals. After a weekend full of honest prayers, soulful reflections, real tears and belly laughs, we were ending our session for Saturday night. In the meeting room, some ladies were snacking, others were adding finishing touches to their pottery creations from the day. Crafty, I am not. So, I gave up my sad little attempt at pottery and decided if I couldn’t be artsy I could add some tunes to the moment.
I walked over, plugged my iPhone into the speakers and gave us a little mellow music. Then, I decided we needed a little pep for the evening.
I clicked on a different song, a personal favorite for my family’s kitchen dancing: Taylor Swift “Shake It Off.” I worried for a minute that this pastor’s wife may have shocked the whole bunch of ladies when I looked up to see a DANCE PARTY going on. These (seemingly) well-mannered gals were breaking it down. Naturally, the only appropriate song one should play next at a church women’s retreat is Beyonce’s “Love on Top.”
This is where it got real, folks, with real-live, soul-train style dance line. I was almost in tears at the delight of this surprise, when I looked to see one of the grandmothers in the group walk back in the room to see our dance party. She didn’t miss a beat . . . sashayed right into the dance line . . . and shook what her mama gave her. I mean, this lady can dance.
We rocked out for a little longer, and then this grandmother and our preschool minister showed off their fancy footwork shagging, Myrtle Beach style. This party was not on our weekend itinerary at all. But it was just what we needed.
The delight of that moment resonated deep in my soul. I still felt like I didn’t know them all very well and I couldn’t anticipate exactly what would happen when the music turned up. But that’s the beauty of surprise.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ways I have been surprised and the ways I haven’t. Church being what it is, a beautiful collection of humans, I’ve been reminded that sometimes the moves people make look more like selfishness and less like kindness and grace. That doesn’t mean grace and kindness aren’t there, it just means that sometimes they aren’t the beat we are jamming along to.
I said this to my friend, as we talked about some circumstances facing a couple of congregations we love dearly. We talked about how the disappointing thing was not the comments made or who said them. “It’s that I had some hope that I’d be pleasantly surprised, but I wasn’t. The exact people we thought said the exact thing we thought they would say like they’d been working on that script for a while.”
After this talk, I let that idea simmer with me. The scripts frustrate some of us. I’m frustrated that I hold up a certain expectation of people, anticipating their actions and watching my ideas of church be influenced by the expected conversations. I hate it when my expectations turn into something formulaic. It makes ministry tedious. It makes us prepare for frustration instead of transformation. It uses up our energy in the wrong ways and wastes the Church’s time.
So, how do you drown out the tired, unimaginative voices that frustrate us?
You turn the music up, listen, and get ready to dance.
I decided that I would listen for the beats that sound like Good News, and ignore the ones that sound like car horns in a traffic jam.
I listened for the Good News, and heard my friend from an Atlanta church tell how they CHANGED their tried and true Fall Festival plans THIS FALL to meet the needs of their neighborhood school. Let that sink in.
I heard my pastor friend describe how her church is experiencing a first: they will soon ordain a deacon who is gay. She told me how she is not fearful but hopeful to lead this church in a conversation about the ways we love our brothers and sisters who are gay.
I listened to my friend share a fearful request for prayer for her nephew in New York City. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was heading to the ICU. He’s not a regular church goer these days, but I wondered if there was something the Church could do to care for him. His aunt said that’d be great. So, a few phone calls and texts later, I heard an old seminary friend say he knew an NYC Pastor who might be able to visit the hospital. I was pleasantly surprised when two separate pastors in NYC responded to me: they interrupted their daily schedule to meet this young man’s need. I heard, “Yes, of course. That’s what we do, and we’ll be glad to do more, too.”
I listened in the tiny Sunday school room in the back of a little white church last Sunday. One of our former youth group kiddos is now teaching – brilliantly and faithfully – the current high school youth. This was not at all where any of us expected to find her, but hearing her teach in that room sounded a lot like Good News to me.
These little moments of holy surprise remind me why I love the Church. Surprises remind me that God is up to some clever creating and shifting things around. For all of our missteps and lame attempts at looking cool on the dance floor, we really can be something amazing when we get going. We can change in ways that let us show up to care for our neighborhoods. We can welcome hard conversations, because we trust that love is bigger than fear. We can show up in a stranger’s hospital room saying, “yes, of course. That’s what we do.” We can let the girl who never thought she’d be teaching the youth, teach the youth. We can turn up the sounds of good news.
I’ve had enough sounds of tedium, frustration, even prejudice and selfishness. I think we’re all ready to listen for a new sound and get ready to dance. More than ever I’m praying “Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.”
In other words, in the words of Saint Beyonce,
Bring the beat in . . .
***************************************
What “scripts” are you tired of hearing for the Church? Where are you ready to see us bring the beat in?
