Having a Cow, Dude!

My ears ring and a smile crawls a slow retreat as I begin this piece. The causes of those conditions have a produced a God thing.

The ears ring because of a Christian concert we took in Sunday night at the local civic center headlined by a group called “The Newsboys.” The event was not for the faint of heart, the tender of foot, or the sensitive of hearing. Aided by two lesser known but, in their way, even rowdier bands, the concert was a rock ‘em sock’em blast of high energy spiritual party music. With loudspeakers set at “sonic boom,” an array of dazzling, at times hypnotic lighting effects, and a youth-oriented crowd ready to dance at the slightest invitation, the night was a festival for the senses....

Except if you wanted to understand the singers. I think it’s generous to estimate that I made out twenty percent of the lyrics delivered amidst screaming guitar riffs and thundering drum lines. Even in songs I knew and loved, I missed most of the words.

And it wasn’t such a festival if you prefer to watch musical performers from the comfort of an assigned seat. Aside from intermissions, we stood for the concert’s entire two and a half hours. Every act. Every song. But we didn’t just stand. We clapped. We jumped up and down, thousands of us, almost in unison. We raised and waved our arms in rhythmic response to songs’ beats. The night was, at least for many in the arena, a body, as well as spiritual and sensory workout.

Due to exposure to all that sound, at the moment my ears still hum at fever pitch, as if to offer a belated ovation for the audio avalanche which so delightfully damaged them.

This piece is not a concert review, but a description of the scene is needed in advance of a portrait of the night’s most moving experience. During The Newsboys performance occasionally I scanned the hall to look at faces and check for body language, evidence, I expected, of how people were reacting to the sensory onslaught. What I discovered was that the crowd – probably 5,000 strong – was like a collection of unique fibers all interwoven into the same pliable supporting fabric.

As mentioned earlier, nearly everyone in the house stood, waved, and clapped as occasions invited. There were moments when a third to a half of us jumped in unison, our feet pounding rhythmically and simultaneously in lockstep expression of the Spirit’s mighty wind.

Among the young and coordinated, as well as the...not, I saw countless closed eyes, broad smiles, and raised arms operating at the joyful behest of their owners. I saw people offer hit songs as personal prayers. I heard crowd members encourage the lead act’s lead singer in the same way you’d expect an interactive congregation during a sermon to shout “Preach it!” or “That’s right!” I felt the pulse of sound waves beat against my chest and flail at loose fabric on my pant legs. But more, I felt the power of God pulsating in 5,000 people. You couldn’t hear yourself think in that room, but you didn’t need to think in order to be convinced God was everywhere in that house.

After the drive home it was time for my nightly back rub — the one I give and Shari, graciously, receives. During those rubs I watch an episode of “The Simpsons” from my DVD collection. From season eight, the episode on tap for Sunday night just happened to be about church (you gotta know the God thing’s getting close!). It begins with the Reverend Timothy Lovejoy preaching on “constancy, sweet constancy.” Homer’s “Ow!” in response to his sleepy and nodding head’s sudden impact on the back of the pew in front of him causes the preacher to lose his place and start the sermon over. By the end of the sermon’s second go-round, everyone in the room is asleep — mouths open and drooling, bodies angled and disheveled, attentions long since spanned.

Later in the episode, Marge is in Lovejoy’s office when distressed parishioner Ned Flanders calls, deep in personal crisis. The pastor’s remedy is that Flanders read the Bible. When asked for a particular verse, Lovejoy tells him, “It’s all good.”



One night. Two visions of the church. Both very real. Which do you relate to?

I didn’t ask which you prefer. I know which you prefer. I asked which you relate to. Or, which more accurately reflects the congregation you currently call church?

In the privacy of this inconspicuous blog, honesty’s a virtue, but I’d grant you accountability immunity if you could deliver honesty from mainline America. I’d do that because mainline America — the older, established denominations — is dying, and the pace of its/our decline is increasing.

Our worship is boring. Our preaching is irrelevant. Our congregations serve personal needs before personal mission. Our counsel to people in search of truth or hope or purpose is no more inspired and instructive than the Springfield pastor’s “It’s all good” (to which Flanders replies, “Well, thanks anyway.” Hint. Hint.).

Don’t take my word for it. Extract any five people from Sunday night’s concert hall, drop them faith first into a typical mainline congregation, let them steep for a month, then ask for a report. If you can wake them from their ecclesiastical slumber, if you can pull their faces off the back of the pew in front of them, what you will hear may be more diplomatic, but its core message will be the same as mine.

What’s got, and won’t release, my craw here is not an institutional church issue; it’s faith issue. There’s a scene at the end of John’s Gospel in which Peter and company have fished through the night without catching a thing. The resurrected Jesus instructs them to cast their nets on the right-hand side of the boat.

TIME OUT FOR TRANSLATION: Cast your nets where the fish are.

They do so, and the result is a catch so large they can’t retrieve it.

If you can predict the result had Peter & Co. decided to continue to cast on the other side of the boat, you have a grasp on the issue mainline America faces. Jesus commands us to go where the fish are. The fish we are called to catch are not swimming in our lifeless waters. If we’re to be faithful (I told you this wasn’t an institutional church issue), we have to move our boats, or, at minimum, shift the location of our nets. If we don’t, we will die, but more important, we will have earned a name badge whose heading is “Hello, my name is... (unfaithful).”

How do we have to move? What do we have to change? Worship styles. Organizational structures. Resource distribution. Loyalty to denominational hierarchy............. But that’s all fine print. The first move we have to make is one of attitude. We have to decide Jesus intended the church to be a living, pulsating, magnetic fishery, not a stilted, self-consumed bunch of fishers more loyal to a side of the boat than to the targets of our fishing trip.

We have to decide that our calling as followers of Jesus compels us to endure, even encourage, unclear lyrics, sonic sounds, and noisy jumps to and from the creaky floors of our creaky churches, if that’s what it takes to bring in the catch.

We have to decide that the fish we seek are more important than the boats from which we seek them.

We have to decide we’d rather worship with The Newsboys than with The Simpsons.


Pray with me:
Help me figure out what kind of church you want, Lord. I already know what kind of church I want, so I’m only asking you to help me understand your desires. Once you accomplish that feat — and I apologize in advance for how long and arduous a task awaits you — help me replace my vision with yours. One thing I have figured out is life looks better through your eyes than mine. In the name of Jesus, Amen.