This is a copy of my latest post on the Communitas Collective blog
A couple of weeks ago, in the foyer of a chapel, I met Pete Rollins for the first time. “I’m here today because I really want to hear you speak” I said to him “but I’m not going into the service because I don’t do worship”.
“Neither do I, usually”, he replied with a friendly smile as he went into the service. Along with everyone else except me.
I loved his response. In effect I’d said “I’m an outsider here” and he’d replied “me too.” There’s nothing more reassuring an outsider can hear, especially if it’s from a ‘leader’ who surely is as ‘inside’ as it’s possible to be! In fact my picture of Jesus (perhaps imaginary) based on the Bible stories about him has him responding exactly like this to outsiders.
But would the leader of a faith community ‘bend the truth’ in order to be relational? That didn’t seem right even though it would be very kind. Perhaps he was simply being honest. Yet how could it be true that the leader of a faith community didn’t (usually) do worship?
I definitely don’t do worship. The main reason is that it feels like a ‘lie’ to say things implying I love God and believe in God when I’m far from sure God even exists. A few days before I met Pete I remembered another reason. Even when I did believe, my memory of worship is that it made me feel happy while I was participating in it and I believed I was doing something beneficial. Yet it didn’t actually change me. So I was deluding myself. I would rather spend that time doing something which demonstrably made the world a little bit better. (I’m sharing my own experience here. I’m not saying worship is that way for everyone)
Pete’s talk followed immediately after the chapel service. When I heard him I understood he really had meant what he said about worship. At least, worship as it is often engaged in in contemporary evangelical circles.
Pete began by quoting Marx’ comments about religion being the opium of the people. Approvingly! Then he explained, the problem with the way worship is often done is that it becomes an escape from the suffering in our lives, rather than helping us confront it and come to terms with it.
Pete talked about what he thought worship should be and do. It should express the full range of emotions (not just “Jesus is my boyfriend”) so people can confront the trauma in their lives in a safe, ritualized communal way. When the emotions are overwhelming the worship leaders can express the emotions for us. Ministers and priests need to be honest about their own crises and doubts otherwise they help us ‘run away’ from ours.
Pete validated doubt as part of the Christian experience. He also said if you believe, it will show because God will be transforming your reality, your material existence.
And he said people find God (and are helped in coming to terms with their own suffering) through sharing stories with each other.
The last thing I expected when I decided to go hear Pete was that he’d agree with some of my concerns about worship. That was awesome. I’m very glad I went!
I am a fan of Pete’s. I am fan of yours. And I do do worship, although I’m trying to do it in a honest, facing-the-darkness way that is real. In fact, I am so traditional I like the “Kyrie” the part where we say, “Lord, have mercy” over and over again.
Gulf Coast oil spill
Times Square terrorism
2 American wars
Demonizing TV, radio, and media
Haiti
Iceland volcanoes
the young widow who buried her husband last week
the kid who is being bullied at school
the wife who is being battered by her husband
the businessman who is cheating his clients because the “bottom line” is getting rich
I lay the darkness out there. I beg for mercy for everyone. I must say that this “worship” is changing me because of these words. I’m seeking to be a person of mercy in a world that isn’t that into mercy.
Thanks for listening,
One of your fans
P.S. Isn’t it funny? I am a fan of both you and Peter, yet I continue on the “inside”. Weird.
Hi Tim, thanks for your comments.
Maybe it’s not weird in that ‘insiders’ define what inside means to them and who’s in it. If yours is big enough to include me and Pete (I think it has to be bigger to include me, by the way) then – great 🙂
I appreciate your desire to be merciful and the humility implicit in what you wrote. I used to think a person on their knees was always showing humility but then I became disillusioned when I realized some people who prayed still seemed to hold attitudes of superiority regarding others. Maybe I’d paraphrase John’s first letter and say “If you aren’t humble towards your fellow person, then you’re not really humble before God either”.
That wasn’t to you – it was just a general lament about the way some praying people seem to be. In my experience.
I think practicing compassion towards others does make us more compassionate, for example, and that begins with thinking about others with compassion, and I can see how prayer could be a vehicle for that. But, given all my other issues about worship (and prayer) I’d rather just think about others and not bring God into it. Again that’s just me.
Helen, as you describe your vision, I’m probably much closer to your spirit than many of my co-praying-worshipers. And I’m not really into insider and outsider language at all. While the some of the Bible can be read that way I am often surprised at how often the text subverts these boundaries.
For example, in many churches we will read Lydia’s story from Acts 16 on Sunday. In the story, Paul runs into a road block. Then he runs into another road block. Then he hears a man praying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Then nothing much happens. Paul and his friends go down by the river and run into Lydia, not a man, but a woman! And while she receives Paul’s message, she ends up blessing them rather than the other way around.
So what I see is that the “outsider” blessed the “insider” even though the “insider’s” plan was to go over to Macedonia and help “those people.”
I hope your vision is big enough to include people, like me, who worship 🙂
Whatever faith/worship/piety/spirituality I have, I hope it is for the advancement of kindness and mercy towards all.
Quiet night and peace at the last to you, Tim
I have lots of friends who worship – that’s fine with me as long as they don’t try to push me to join in!
I think that story in Acts is quite funny. It seems to me that it’s easy to find places in the Bible where God messes with human insider/outsider boundaries and presuppositions. (Especially in the gospels :))
(Taking it as written and not getting into whether God actually exists or not)
I was probably out there with you! I know what you mean…
Thanks Adam! I see you were at Transform. I don’t think I would have felt like an outsider there. Brian McLaren and Kathy Escobar (amongst others) also don’t make me feel like I’m an outsider.
Guess what? I was @ Transform, too. It was totally awesome! There was the most holy song at the end of Peter’s talk. Go to about the 1 hour 20 minute mark…
http://www.transformnetwork.org/video/transform-east-coast-main-1
Peace, Tim
Thanks again Tim – from what I’ve read it sounds like Transform was very much enjoyed by those who went.
I’ll check out that song but I can’t promise it won’t push my buttons…
Pete’s Insurrection Tour came to Chicago a couple of weeks before the talk I heard but I was out of the country then. He was touring with a musician whose latest album is ‘Hymns to Swear By’ – true in both senses of which that’s meant, Pete said!
Helen, excellent entry. Like you, I also have no emotional connection to the idea of “worshipping.” I don’t even know what it means. How absurd would a “God” be who needed everyone sitting around telling him how wonderful he is?
I was raised in the Baptist church and fell far, far away from it in my mid-20s. Then, 25 years later, after I wrote some inspirational songs about living with AIDS, I was invited to sing at churches. At first, I refused, because I didn’t want to be a hypocrite — singing in front of people who were worshipping something I didn’t believe in.
But, then, after being coaxed, I said yes. So, I began my concert by saying that I didn’t think I actually believed in God, but that I would “sing” my story.
The sheer numbers of people who came up to me and said how much they needed to hear what I was singing about, and how my “confession” of doubt actually gave them strength to voice their own doubts about how God was being presented to them actually made them even stronger in their faith. IOW, they were being given the space and the permission to be truthful.
Imagine that. Being truthful in church!
Thanks Steve. It sounds like Pete Rollins would like what you’re doing – sharing doubt that helps others feel they have permission to voice their own doubts.
Yes, truthful in church – what a thought 🙂