servant church, Austin: Another Coffee-Friendly Congregation

On Sunday, March 13, I attended servant church in Austin.  Everly and I were staying in Austin at Ruth and John's house while they went on vacation.  I was glad for a weekend in Austin so I could go to another church and learn some more about Austin's eccesial communities.

I chose servant church because a friend of mine is the pastor.  Eric Vogt is a fellow traveler of mine.  We first met when I was passing through Jackson, MS, one summer Sunday, and he was the guest preacher at Voice of Calvary Church.  Eric had been in a summer internship with the CCD ministries in Jackson, working with John Perkins and others who had forged a new model of faithful church life among the poor of Mississippi.  It turned out Eric was a student at Duke Divinity School in Durham, where I also lived at the time.  Before going to Duke, he had participated in another creative experiment in church life in Austin, TX.  A small start-up congregation had at that time been meeting in the building of First Baptist Church, where another friend of mine is pastor, Roger Paynter.

As our life stories had already intersected in many ways, eventually Eric enrolled in a class I was teaching at Duke Divinity, called "Church and State:  Modernity, Liberalism and the Nature of Political Engagement."  My friend Willie Jennings thought up the title to make it grab the attention of Duke Divinity students.  But I digress.

Church growth technocrats would be happy about at least one feature of servant church:  it is not hard to find.  A few blocks into residential neighborhoods on a street that has an exit from the interstate, I found my way straight to the location.  Signs outside assured me that I was at the right location, a Methodist church site where two congregations are meeting.  Without difficulty, I parked and made my way to the location.  I stumbled into a prayer meeting already in progress, but was greeted warmly and located the coffee without difficulty.  Yes, it was another coffee-drinking-allowed-and-encouraged congregation.

Wearing my standard uniform (guayabera and jeans), I was a little overdressed for this crowd.  Besides a couple of women in what my gramma would have called "everday dresses," jeans and t-shirts were the rule.  Oh, yeah--one guy had khaki pants on.  At 53 I would have to say that I was the senior adult of that Sunday's gathering.  As my daughter Naomi loves to remind me, I was probably at the distant end of the "cool" continuum as well.  Not being clued in to much of the Austin culture, I learned during conversations that the insider's way to refer to the big music festival is the shorthand "South By."  I was proud to know that later in the week when a NC public radio broadcaster, in a halting voice, called it "Ess Ex Ess Double-you" (SXSW--South By SouthWest).  Again, I digress.

I was blessed to sit next to a young woman who grew up in Austin and had recently married in servant church, with Eric officiating at the ceremony.  She was warm and sincere, and worshiping alongside her and her husband made me right at home.  I could tell I was in a university town by the sound of the congregational singing.  My experience in Waco, Austin, Durham, and other university towns is that there are an abundance of people who have vocal training, and with the Austin music industry that gets magnified.  Lots of folks were willing to cut loose and experiment with harmonies, exactly how I like to sing.  The guest worship musicians for the day were two young women.  The lead played acoustic guitar and the other played soft percussion.  There was a kind of Emily Saliers feel to the singing.

The music impressed me, as it had at Ecclesia Church in Houston.  Many familiar hymns formed the core of the singing, along with some contemporary worship songs (but not the mindless repetition of emotive states).  The lyrics were posted to help the uninitiated.  The rest of the liturgy may have relied a bit too much on a single projection screen, and sometimes there were too many words on the screen at once, meaning the font may have at times been too small.  That sort of minor issue goes with the territory of being a very new congregation, still charting its ways. 

Eric's sermon addressed the lectionary text from the Gospel of Matthew, the narrative of Jesus' temptation.  The central theme of the sermon was that Jesus did not choose the easy way, but was willing to suffer for doing right.  It was a respectable interpretation and reflection, so his Duke teachers should be satisfied.  The call for a response to the Word included coming to the Lord's Table, bringing prayer needs to the altar, writing letters to leaders about the state or national budget as a moral document, using art supplies to explore one's faith response, or looking for ways to become more part of the life of servant church.  Tables with appropriate materials were strategically located around the room, with paper and "talking points" for letter writing, a place to write out and place prayer requests or to light a candle in prayer, announcement boards and sign-up sheets, and art supplies.

This congregation is definitely on the youthful side, as congregations go.  Young adults, married and unmarried, with and without children, and a children's area for smooth movement in and out of the formal worship made this a comfortable setting for those who find certain patterns of traditional worship unnecessary or out-of-date.  Yet it was not a rush to contemporaneity for its own sake.  The traditional liturgy remained the backbone of the service.  Biblical and theological texts shaped the sermon and reflective conversations.  Ancient symbols of the faith remained prominent.

I was proud to see what this congregation had done and what my friend Eric was helping to lead.  If you are in Austin on Sunday, don't be timid about "hanging out" at servant church.

Ecclesia Houston--What Would Dad Think?

I worshiped at Ecclesia on Taft St. in Houston today.  It has some of the expected features of emergent-type congregations: 

• a repurposed building, 
• a coffee shop and coffee drinking in the service, 
• people worshiping in casual clothes, 
• a worship band and large-screens for lyrics and video, 
• a slight techie feel combined with functional furnishings, 
• a sense that the setting is an impermanent stop on a longer journey, 
• an ambivalent relationship with popular culture, 
• one foot in the ancient Christian tradition, 
• a fair share of small beards and goatees, and 
• conversational worship leadership and preaching.

My dad (Rev. Dr. W. D. Broadway), aged 80 and a Texas Baptist preacher for over 60 years, would call this type of church a "Rock Church."  I'm sure that is language harking back to my teen years when a youth movement of evangelical Jesus Freaks and Catholic folk masses were challenging the fixed norms of worship practice across many denominations.  Dad still uses the term to refer to most "praise and worship" style worship services with a worship band, especially those that sing unfamiliar songs with indeterminate melodies, led by CCM wannabe soloists that seem to be imagining they are performing to ticket-purchasing fans rather than leading congregational singing (I agree that he is right to be disgusted by that kind of deformed church service).  But the latter does not describe the worship at Ecclesia.  Dad would probably have found this kind of Rock Church worshipful.

The first thing I noticed was that the worship band and read-along screens were leading the congregation in singing traditional hymns.  It was not just one hymn thrown in as a token for the old fogeys.  Both of the first two songs were hymns folks would recognize from baptist or other protestant hymnals, if not beyond.  Later, they introduced more contemporary songs, of a different type of lyrical and musical style.  What I noticed, however, was that plenty of people were singing along.  It was not a soloist blasting us out.  I suspect the songs were familiar to regular attenders.  Moreover, there was some theological depth to these songs rather than merely repeating statements of personal feeling ad infinitum.  So I suspect Dad would think that part of the service was acceptable.

The conversational preaching probably would have gotten Dad's blessing as well.  Chris Seay, the pastor, indicated that he was continuing a series of reflections on heaven in this sermon.  His opening discussion revealed that people in the congregation are perhaps wary of what heaven might be.  One of the great comments he made pertained to his 8-year-old son's reticence about growing up, since he loves playing with Lego's so much, but his dad is so busy with so many other things.  By comparison, adults who love what they are doing and people they share their lives with may not be so eager to change it for the unknown joys of heaven.

He focused a good deal around Jesus' words from Matthew 25, "Well done, good and faithful servant."  However, the text analyzed more carefully came from Hebrews 11:32-12:2.  His concern was to emphasize that heaven as a state of existence and a state of affairs is not some kind of narrowly religious place and activity, as much contemporary Christianity might portray it to be, but a place and activity of joyously sharing in the justice and mercy of God that Jesus proclaimed as the Reign of God.

To illustrate his argument, he showed a video clip relating to The Advent Conspiracy and their work to fund clean water for the people of Mt. Barclay, Liberia.  Many of the people, especially children, had been dying of water-borne diseases, gathering their water from a stream.  Clean water from wells turned around the health conditions of the community.  The ministers and others from Mt. Barclay who reflected on the work of God in their community included one who said that the clean water had brought heaven down to earth for them.  You would not be surprised, considering the name of this blog, that I agreed with Bro. Seay that those words will preach.

Finally, I should remark that although it is clearly a young adult dominated congregation, they are not merely detached and carefree.  I could go into a number of ways in which they show signs of taking their place in the struggles of human existence, but I will focus on only one thing here.  This sermon followed a day in which one of the young women of the congregation had been buried.  Without telling us a lot of details, it was clear that she had been facing a life-threatening disease and that her expected time to continue fighting the condition had been cut dramatically short. 

Under these conditions, Bro. Seay offered a hopeful reflection on heaven, in which those who have gone before us are watching and pulling for us in the struggles we face.  Heaven is not the same as our lives here, nor is it a locus of complete wish fulfillment.  It will take some adjusting to the differences, he said, but it will be better than we can imagine.  That is a pretty good riff on the biblical language, as I see it.  Dad knows good preaching when he hears it, and I think he would be passing on some things he heard if he had been there today.  Thanks to Curtis Freeman for telling me about these folks.