Perceptions from a Pewboy

A United Methodist church member said something to me recently that inspired a time of pondering. “You know,” he said, “I’m getting a little bit tired of hearing about this whole ‘Imagine No Malaria’ thing.”

“Why do you think that is,” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “it seems like we’re being coerced to give a whole lot of money to people who are a world away instead of using that money to help the people who are right outside our doors.”

I asked him what his church was doing to help the people “right outside [their] doors.”

“Well…uh…um…well…we hold a great Vacation Bible School every year.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I’m glad to hear that. What else?”

“Well…uh…hmmm…we collect food for the local food bank every month.”

“Excellent! You’re helping to feed the poor. What else?”

Silence. Followed by more silence.

Then, this response: “I’ll have to look at our church’s budget or bulletin for the specifics. But I’m sure we do a lot.”

That conversation reminded me of how compartmentalized and myopic the Church can be in its ministry and mission. We often fall into the trap of believing that our mission is to reach THIS person or THAT person instead of embracing the biblical mandate to go into “all the world” with the Gospel—not to mention the Wesleyan idea that the entire world is our parish.

Those who have a genuine heart for the church’s mission already know that the church’s mission field is always “both/and”—it is both the house next door and the house on the other side of the world, and both houses are inseparably linked in the beautiful and mysterious unity of the Holy Spirit. The body of Christ, in other words, cannot afford to be territorial in its mission and outreach.

This became clear to me a few years back when I had the opportunity to visit and pray with patients in a hospital in the village of Ankaase (Ghana, West Africa). On that day, I prayed with a mother and her small child, both of whom were seeking treatment for malaria. We did not speak the same language, of course. However, in those sacred moments, we found unity in the shared vocabulary and intonation of prayer. The mother wept during that time of prayer. She wept, I assume, for the sick child that she held in her arms. Her tears became something sacramental for me—a baptismal water that flowed into the depths of my soul.

When I think about the ministry of “Imagine No Malaria,” I don’t think first of dollars and bed nets (as important as they are). Rather, I think of that mother and child in Ghana. I think of their faces and souls. I think of their tears. Most of all, I think of the truth that, if one person in the body of Christ suffers, then the entire body of Christ suffers.

As a District Superintendent in that portion of the body of Christ called the United Methodist Church, when I speak with excitement about a ministry like “Imagine No Malaria,” I have found that some people are eager to assume that I am doing nothing but towing the party line or kowtowing to an Episcopal leader who happens to be passionate about global health. Such assumptions are particularly common among those with a proclivity to cynicism (and there is certainly no shortage of those in the contemporary church). While I appreciate the opinions and convictions of my colleagues, it saddens me that some will dismiss this blog post before they even finish it, seeing it as more of a commercial than a personal testimony. “Sure, we get it. You’re talking about ‘Imagine No Malaria’ because you HAVE to.” (wink, wink)

The fact of the matter, however, is that my passion for “Imagine No Malaria” has far more to do with personal conversion than it does with episcopal mandate or ministerial responsibilities. After a recent presentation on the suffering caused by malaria among our sisters and brothers in Africa, my wife Tara and I were inspired to enter a two-week period of prayerful discernment concerning the issue of how best to support the ministry of “Imagine No Malaria.” When we spoke about the matter after that two-week period, I suggested to Tara that we become a part of the “Impact 100 Society” (a plan to save 100 African lives by giving $28 per month for the next three years to “Imagine No Malaria”). As is often the case, Tara pushed me on the issue. “We have the wherewithal to do something more than that,” she said, “and I can’t shake the feeling that God wants us to risk a deeper investment with this ministry.” As a result, we became part of the “Impact 500 Society” (a plan to save 500 African lives by giving $83 per month for the next five years to “Imagine No Malaria”).

Are you put off by my eagerness to report the specific numbers related to our decision? Don’t be. The numbers simply help to clarify the nature and depth of our personal conversion. The numbers, in other words, serve to add a sense of concreteness to the personal testimony I am offering.

I do not share this information with you for the purpose of patting myself on the back for my good work. (Believe me, the evidence of my own shallowness and selfishness could occupy the next thousand blog posts.) Nor do I share this information for the purpose of manipulating sentiment for another denominational effort. Rather, I share this information in order to help you to understand that I am a frail and feeble Christ-follower who has been brought to his knees and completely undone by the realization that millions of our African sisters and brothers are suffering with a disease that is perfectly preventable and treatable.

I am grateful to be part of a church that dares to see the world as its parish, that dares to see Africa as being more “here” than “there.”

“Sing aloud to God our strength,” proclaims the psalmist in the 81st psalm. “Shout for joy to the God of Jacob.”

In this directive moment of Scripture, the psalmist, of course, is demanding a particular kind of worship from his audience—passionate and vibrant worship; worship that involves loud singing and shouts of praise; worship that can be rendered only by people who are deeply invested in the One whom they are worshiping.

“Raise a song,” writes the psalmist, “sound the tambourine, play the sweet lyre and the harp, blow the trumpet, for I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”

Part of my personal fondness for the psalmist’s vision of worship in Psalm 81 is due to his conviction that all musical instruments are to be used in the community’s worship of God: not simply the voice, but also the harp with its seamless flourishes; and not simply the harp, but also the lyre with its sweet intonations; and not simply the lyre, but also the tambourine with its unsettling percussion; and not simply the tambourine, but also the trumpet and other wind instruments with their unparalleled brightness.

We could add to the list without changing the meaning of the text. God is to be praised not simply with the organ but also with the keyboard. And not simply with the keyboard but also with guitars and drums and clarinets and flutes. God is to be praised with traditional hymnody. (Yes! Absolutely! We jettison the theological poetry and evocative arrangements of traditional hymnody at our great peril.) But God is also to be praised with contemporary and meditative praise choruses.

Dare I say it: God is to be praised both by people who like to hold a hymnal and people who prefer looking at a screen!

In the 81st Psalm, one encounters a worshiper who advocates using every possible musical expression in the worship of God. It is an advocacy emerging from the psalmist’s conviction that the God of Jacob deserves something more than a single kind of music or a single kind of instrument. In fact, as the psalmist makes clear, the God of Jacob is so vast in nature and so majestic in sovereignty that the only worship that will ultimately suffice is the kind of worship that utilizes every portion of the music that God makes possible: the harp, the lyre, the tambourine, the trumpet, the voice, and every other musical expression that humankind can possibly render.

“Bring it all,” says the psalmist, “for we are worshiping a God who deserves all the world’s music.”

Therein lies the theological foundation upon which the psalmist’s liturgical framework stands. He seems to be absolutely convinced that authentic worship is far more about God than it is about us—far more about God’s creative glorification than it is about our musical preferences and proclivities. If this is indeed the case—if worship is indeed more about encountering a vast and unsettling Creator than it is about catering to the liturgical whims of a particular congregation—then how can worshipers spiritually afford to settle for anything less in their worship than creativity, artistic diversity, and a stubborn resistance to liturgical myopia?

A few years ago, the church to which I was appointed sent a mission team of 15 youth and 11 adults to the gulf coast in Mississippi. I was privileged to be part of that team. We worked hard to help people to rebuild or repair their homes. We established relationships with the homeowners, thereby helping them to understand that we cared about them and not just their property. Then on Friday night (our last night there), we held a closing worship service.

Interestingly, the worship service was held, not in a sanctuary, but a dining hall. There were no bulletins. No organs or keyboards. No shirts and ties. No liturgical garments. There were just 26 tired but spiritually attentive souls making themselves available to the presence of God in worship at the end of what had been an important week of ministry. We sang some familiar hymns and choruses. We talked about the things for which we were grateful that night. We heard from Scripture. And then we shared the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper, both of which tasted particularly sweet that night.

At some point during that worship experience, we sang a version of “Amazing Grace” that that particular group of worshipers had come to treasure. When it was finished, one could have heard a pin drop in that large dining hall. It was a reverent silence into which we had been ushered by the Holy Spirit, the kind of supernatural silence in which the still small voice of God often makes its way into the deepest chambers of a human soul.

Following the worship service, I sat down beside one of the youth who seemed to have been very moved by the experience. “Wow,” he said. “I wish that every worship service could be like that.”

“What do you think it was that made it so special,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it was like Jesus was here—right here—and nobody wanted to think about anything else but him.”

I decided to take the risk of asking another question:

“What do you think it would take to make every one of our worship services like that?”

His response was as heartfelt as it was insightful: “I’m no expert,” he said, “But maybe it has to start with people believing that Jesus is really here. Maybe if we really believed it—maybe if we REALLY believed that Jesus is showing up and paying attention to what we are doing— then worship would always feel like something big and important.”

In some ways, that young man was giving expression to the very same message that the psalmist articulates in Psalm 81, and the message is this: If we really believe that God is the recipient of our worship, and if we really believe that the presence of God is manifesting itself in our worship (in other words, if we really believe that Jesus shows up and pays attention when we worship), then worship is always something big and important—something deserving of every musical instrument that we can fit into the sanctuary! If we really believe that we are glorifying the majesty of the triune God and not simply going through the motions, then worship is always something that deserves quiet lyres and loud trumpets!

“Sing aloud to God our strength,” writes the psalmist. “Shout for joy to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, blow the trumpet—use every musical instrument you have!” To read these words as Scripture is to come to the conclusion that the discipline of worship is God’s ordinance and God’s timeless decree. Authentic worship ushers us into the presence of God in ways that are particularly transformational and revelatory. In fact, the psalmist would have us believe that the discipline of worship is to our soul what breathing is to the body. It is just that urgent and just that essential.