The heart itself is only a small vessel

I went to a church that I quite liked yesterday. It was beautiful and simple. The worship was deep and reverent and yet, joyful and casual. The people, the sermon, and the service as a whole seemed to find its place within the walls of mystery and grace. The pastor used this quote and it was meaningful to me.

The heart itself is only a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and lions, there are poisonous beasts, and all the treasures of evil, there are rough and uneven roads, there are precipes; but there too is God and the angels, life is there, and the Kingdom, there too is light, and there the apostles and heavenly cities, and treasures of grace. All things lie within that little space.

-Makarios the Great

Thanks to Dayspring Church for giving me a small glimmer of spiritual beauty.

Microchurch - The Grove is born

A while back I posted a pretty vitriolic diatribe about my search for a church.

A short time after posting that, I was talking with my wife about how we had such a positive experience at our previous church which was a church plant. (In fact you can see me and my bald noggin sitting at the computer on their homepage). So, I decided to search for any church plants in the Waco area.

I Google'd "Church plant" and "waco" and I found the blog of a guy who (with another guy) was going to be starting a new church in Waco in 2008. I liked what I saw on his blog. He seemed bright and passionate, not entirely ensconced in traditional church paradigms, and not emergent church faux-edgy. So, I wrote to him. He seemed excited to hear from me (as any church planter is excited to hear from prospective members). And he told me he'd be moving to the area in November (07) to a neighborhood called "Sendero Springs". I live in Sendero Springs! So, I asked him where exactly in "Sendero Springs" and he told me "Crystal Ct" which is my road!

We arranged to have dinner with he and his wife (who happens to be a professor at Baylor) and we really hit it off with them. We came back to our house for dessert and they pointed out which house is going to be theirs. It's practically across the street.

We were all struck by the movement of God. It's hard to think of it as otherwise. When you accidentally meet your new next door neighbor on Google... it's a sign. Anyway, we later got to meet the other half of the Grove pastoral staff and they are fantastic as well. We've formed fast friendships with both couples and our kids all have a blast together.

We have church on Sunday evenings across the street from my house (and although the services are very informal, they have asked that I at least put on pants). I don't know how long God will have us in this place, or what role we'll play in this infant church, but right now, we're rejoicing in what was a miraculously quick little community of believers practically knocking on our door when we needed them most.

Find out more about The Grove and my new neighbor Shane (who participates regularly in my Limerick contest.)

Church Theatre NOT Cutesy Church Skits

I've been pretty immersed in the intersection of the Church and the Arts for some time now. I have directed a large church's Drama Team. I have taught theatre at a Christian School. And I have written articles about arts and faith and the church drama team's purpose.

And yet, I have yet to be involved in a situation where a church is making real theatre art that isn't ultimately limited to the service of illustrating the sermon. This is an okay use of drama, although perhaps a bit limited and not one I am interested in creating.

I had recently resigned myself to the idea that REAL theatre could only exist outside the church (even if the intended audience is Christians). There are just too many forces exerted by a traditional church congregation that make artistic exploration of truth near impossible.

But... I just found a theatre that's doing it! It's called the First Pres Theatre in Ft. Wayne, IN (of all places).

Their website is a bit sparse, but all indications are that they're doing real theatre and have been doing so for 30 years! They've tackled challenging works (that might not sit well with church-folk) including Equus, Jesus Christ Superstar, ART, Agnes of God, The House of Bernarda Alba, Doubt, and The Shadowbox. Their purpose statement page is downright inspiring. Here's a taste:

Strong dramatic presentations are a revealing test of those who call themselves Christians, especially when the presentations occur in a church theater. They test whether we, as Christians, really believe what we say we believe. If we have the faith that we say we have, we can expose ourselves to a cynical play without becoming cynics, to a nihilistic play without becoming nihilists. And we will not need first to have someone "safe" explain away the pain of the recognition and make just a nice little logical exercise out of the play.

The church is only ready for religion, only ready for drama, when it can open itself to the implications of dramatic revelation; when the congregation can accept the world of the imagination and can risk being excited, risk being frightened, risk being changed. Such risk is near the very heart of the Christian message.

I got a chill, did anybody else? Anybody?

May I just offer a THANK YOU to 1st Pres Theatre of Ft. Wayne. Thanks for encouraging me in my belief that Christians CAN encounter theatre art and that the Church can have a role in that exposure. I know you've been doing it for a while, but may God bless your every production for many years to come.

The Church You Know

The awesome thing about having awesome professors is how awesome they are. Check out these awesome videos my awesome professor just showed me.

Check out these and more at TheChurchYouKnow.com.

Theatre - What Church Should Be

When I went to Baylor to interview for my graduate assistantship the faculty recommended I poke my head in for the workshops occuring that Friday afternoon.

The undergrad directing class would be presenting their Shakespearean scenes and, they said, it'd be a good chance for me to get to experience a class in action.

To be perfectly honest, my primary reason for showing up was to impress my eagerness upon the professors of the class, who were a part of the committee that would give me the thumbs up or down.

I expected 12-15 students gathered in the black box theatre space to see these scenes. So I was quite surprised to arrive to a packed house of 150 undergrads, grads and professors.

Students and faculty had come to support their friends and students, and to see what other classes were doing. The place was abuzz with enthusiastic greetings and shouts from the house to the catwalks as students acknowledged their friends who were assigned to tech for the impending scenes.

By the time I was seated, a student was announcing the "student of the week" and the "faculty member of the week" for whom everyone applauded. The professor asked if anyone else had announcements. A young man jumped up "I've got two spots left for concessions this week, if anyone's interested in helpoing us out let me know." [The following weeked was the opening of Annie Get Your Gun, a large-scale musical production.] Then, a young woman popped up and added, "And we'll be in the costume shop pretty much all night tonight and a lot this weekend. If anybody can use a sewing machine, we'd be glad for the help."

I was witnessing community.

The professor welcomed everybody, and the director of the first scene gave a quick introduction and reminded us to turn our cell phones off.

Then the lights went down. And like any good blackbox when the lights go down, its dark to a degree that's difficult to describe. Let's put it this way, closing your eyes doesn't impact the visual experience. The music fades up nicely, a smoke machine is effectively adding a misty mysticality to the space, and the lights come up.

There was not a whisper, a murmur or even a cough. The importance of the event occuring before us was palpable. The scene was from one of the less exciting scenes of Julius Ceasar, but I didn't sense I was in a room full of people fulfilling some sort of duty to the art. It didn't feel like the dentist waiting room, where people give half smiles to each other as if to say, "Gosh I dislike this, but... I guess it's inevitable." They were enraptured. And even more amazingly, it wasn't just the sotry that held their attention, but the WORK. The wrestling with this masterpiece was the main event here. How would their peers set their teeth to this piece that they'd all seen attempted and maybe attempted themselves? The room was electric, and it was a love of the art and each other that was conducting the charge throughout the space.

I thought, "this is almost like church." And then I thought, Wait a second! No it's not! I really want to be HERE! Why isn't church like this? Why isn't it a place wear I'm dying to reconnect to the members of my community, where calls to service don't need clever skits or marketing to drum up interest, where worship is approached with a sense of awe, and where the audience/congregation is as enraptured by the people tackling the subject matter as they are the content?

I have no doubt that I'm idealizing the experience to some extent, but I think the point is valid. And perhaps it's more an indictment of my own feelings about church than it is of the Church. I'm certainly not conducting electricity in my sanctutorium (we meet in a school's lunch room) . Where is my reverence? Why do I lack that palpable sense of importance to what's occuring in church?

I don't know the answer to this, but I do know I saw God in those Friday afternoon scene workshops. And I'll be looking for him again there.