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We prayed for twelve.
I felt like with twelve adults, we could begin the revolution that would be Catalyst Church. Twelve, a sound biblical number.
If you go to Bruegger’s Bagel shop and order a dozen bagels, you actually get thirteen. It’s called a “baker’s dozen” and it is a measure of the baker’s generosity.
This past Sunday, God’s dozen gathered in our home for the very first Catalyst Church worship service. Thirty-two people, from toddlers to grandparents, constituted God’s dozen.
Luke 6:38 (NLT)
“If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over."
Well, okay, the twelve was about adults, particularly. We had seventeen if you include me. And two teenagers, and thirteen children. Talk about a full measure. God rocks.
The service came off like a dream. Everything checked out from the tech deck (a laptop running a projector and two large Peavey speakers via a 260 watt amp) to seating (we didn’t even need our two reserve seating sections in the kitchen and balcony) to nursery (not needed, as everyone wanted to be in God’s Garage, which was where all the older children were).
People started arriving, and Tasi, one of our Duke Interns, stood in the driveway and greeted them and helped everyone park. They came in the house through the dining room, where we had set up an info table with flyers for small groups, FAQ sheets, brochures, ferns, bulletins, and nametags. My new neighbor and girlfriend Melissa greeted people as they came from the dining room into the kitchen, where there was plenty of fresh hot coffee, orange juice, and bagels. Then we got a surprise.
As we planned worship, we expected that the majority of people who came would be preChristians (very little or no previous contact with the church), so we came up with multiple ways to help people connect with God during the worship service. One of our central ideas was what we began calling “stations.” Like the stations of the cross, only...
Well, for example, we had an intercessory prayer station, where people could use a slip of paper to write the name of a person they were lifting up before God. They could then fold it and put it in a clear glass bowl we had sitting in a wrought-iron stand (I bought the bowl originally thinking of it as holding baptismal water...). They could also use a taper, which was standing in a tall, clear glass candle holder (very last minute; thanks, Melissa) to light one of 30 tealights, which had been arranged on the kitchen counter in the shape of the Jerusalem cross. A sign was present on the counter explaining the station.
We had a scripture table set up, with six open Bibles and handful of cards by each one with scripture verses for people to look up. All of the references were related to the theme of the day, which was “The Reason for Everything.” We had the Bibles flagged with post-its so that those unfamiliar with them could easily find the suggested scriptures. The table (our kitchen table) was decorated with candles, smooth stones, and ivy.
Also in the kitchen was an offering station. It consisted of a card table (covered with a cloth remnant I got cheap at Hancock Fabrics -- it was green with tiny ferns all over and I used it in other stations, too) with an offering basket. In front of the basket I had printed small sheets of notepaper, folded in quarters, which said on the front “From me to God.” It looked like a note you might pass in high school algebra. Opened to the first fold it said in simple handwriting, “Dear God, you loved me first. You gave me some awesome gifts. Now I have something for you...” Opened the whole way, it read, “I can serve your church with the gifts and resources you have given me,” and I listed about 45 things that people could check off. Things like “I can make good coffee,” “I have a digital camera available,” “I can fix cars/cut hair/run a website/speak Spanish,” etc. At the bottom it quoted 1 Peter 4:10, and then said “Love, ______________” with a space for the person’s name. I had no idea people would fill them out on the very first Sunday, but most did.
Anyway, it had been our thought that beginning with the Eucharist we would open the service and encourage people to move around from station to station. In addition to the three described above, we had the back deck, (which looks out over woods, a tiny spring-fed stream, and a cow pasture) set up as a meditation station, and we had a prayer station set up and led by David -- our other Duke Intern -- and me, for people who wanted prayer for themselves. This was distinct from the intercessory prayer station. We had carefully selected about ten prayers which were projected on the screen during the stations time, which we hoped would help people to pray, too.
Back to the surprise....
Prior to the beginning of the service, people were checking out the info table, having coffee, chatting, and looking around. The mp3’s were on pretty loud, because those of us leading the service were nervous and figured everyone else was, too, and we didn’t want a big silent unfamiliar what-on-earth-is-worship thing to overwhelm anyone. And you know what? People began doing the stations! Some started reading the Bibles, and quite a few went immediately to the intercessory prayer station to light candles and leave slips of paper. It was weird and cool and wonderful! Worship actually started before worship, and it was at people’s own initiative.
I realized too, that it was helpful for people to have something to do in a new and unfamiliar situation. And lo and behold, the “something” was worship! I have been to so many churches where you come into a lobby and there’s coffee and whatever, yeah, but the people are all in groups talking to people they know. It’s like being at a dinner party where you don’t know anyone and you hope they start the food coming soon and spare you the agony of standing there trying to look pleasant and not left out.
A related surprise....
We had no idea how well the stations would be received, so I planned to have them following the Eucharist for only about ten minutes. In fact, I thought ten minutes was pushing it. I had two mp3’s set up which would give us about 9 minutes of music before fading out. My husband Lance suggested during a run-through that we have one more song, just in case. So in addition to “Come Just As You Are” by Joseph Sabolick, and “Give God a Chance” by Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys, we added “Call On Jesus” by Nicole C. Mullen.
And there were people talking quietly on the deck, people reading Bibles, candles still being lit, offerings being pondered, people watching the prayers up on the screen, and in fact I was praying with someone when I realized the playlist had just started to repeat itself. It was one of those “Ack!!” moments when the perfectionist in me hated the repeated song, the leader in me leapt up in astonishment at having predicted incorrectly, the God-follower in me shouted thanksgivings, and the pastor in me struggled to continue my prayer. After amen-ing, I tried to walk slowly to the unmanned tech deck to fade out the song (my intern was, I don’t know, worshipping at a station...!), then I gathered everyone back for the closing prayer and benediction. Next week, a longer playlist, and we’ll see what happens.
Incidentally, I was a teensy bit worried over the fact that I wasn’t going to have the standard praise band, or even a vocalist. No live music at all, in fact. I didn’t want to risk singing if we had a tiny group who didn’t know any of the same songs. I sure wasn’t going to go the hymns route with people who I expected were going to largely be unconnected with the church. And while I can carry a tune, I am no music leader. So I took my inspiration from the clubs I loved (in my life before children) and even the raves which have been such a popular phenomenon (um, without the related and also popular drug phenomenon). I knew how easy it was to download and play mp3’s on my computer (only 99 cents apiece on iTunes). I knew that many clubs have great veejays (video jockeys, who have superseded disc jockeys, or deejays) who can rock a house with music and an accompanying video show. So I figured to build on that idea and create an atmosphere with music and visuals which would support worship. It was a lot of technology to master, and it took several of us learning different aspects (video formats, compilation methods) and multiple run-throughs to get everything smooth. And it worked.
The nicest music-related moment of the service was the end. Before Eucharist, I had told the story of my friend Mary, a recovering alcoholic who found her way into the church when she was in her sixties. She had gone to the pastor of a nearby church and asked him to do the funeral service of her long-time life partner and friend. Neither had ever been a part of the church. She just wanted one thing, Mary said. She wanted the pastor to play her partner’s favorite song at the graveside. It was Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville,” not a particularly traditional graveside choice in the eyes of the church. Duke Divinity would have flunked him for it, but the pastor agreed, and when the time came he reached down, punched the button on his boom box, and lo: middle-aged America’s favorite drinking song. Because of that act of kindness, Mary became a Christ-follower. So I told the story as a way of letting people know they too were welcome, and had a place to belong at Catalyst. Right belief, right behavior, those can come later, but first, be welcome in this place.
Well, that was all fine, and everyone came to communion, and then we did stations, and closed with prayer, and I benedicted, and the instant (well-rehearsed) I finished, David cued it, and Jimmy Buffet sang it. The gathered congregation started in surprise and a great wave of smiles and laughter and hugs and back-patting ensued. Thanks, Mary.
Okay, here’s another surprise.
My bulletin looked sharp. That’s not the surprise. I mean, I was a graphic designer in my life-before-seminary, and this was my dream bulletin. Full color, about the size and shape of a CD case when folded, and with a perforated flap to serve as my “connect card” inside. Listed the order of worship, showed the layout of the house, had all the small group offerings, very nice.
Nobody cared.
Nobody took one, even though they took everything else on the info table. I realized this as I began the service, and so I passed them out, but nobody filled out the card, and nobody even referred to it. Except me, of course.
When I got over my moment of professional startlement (hey, it looked nice, okay?) my brain began to churn over the “why”. I realized that as an overchurched person, my whole corporate worship life has been spent chained (um, glued?) to a piece of paper. I mean you don’t get into the sanctuary without that little piece of paper in the churches I grew up in. I think it’s a law or something. And the whole service revolves around it. Well, that and the hymnal. So with this church start I had made the leap from hymnal to mp3/video/etc., but missed this one. Duh. Do you know that if anyone had read the bulletin, they would have known about the Jimmy Buffet song? Sigh.
Something in me is still suspicious, however, so I’m doing another bulletin (modified, with different contents) for this week. Rest assured it will look sharp.
Okay, I still haven’t celebrated God’s Garage.
This was what we thought of for the kids. We had a nursery set up in the guest bedroom (I don’t have a bed in there, just a mattress, so we shoved it into the closet and put up a crib, rocking chair, reading corner, etc.) but it was strictly for infants and toddlers. Everybody else (we said ages 2 to 10) was invited to God’s Garage. Obviously we cleared out our own cars and bikes, and put dangerous stuff (hedge trimmers, poison ivy killer, the old drum set awaiting it’s resurrection, and so on) up on high shelves. Then we set up a fort-making area with two sawhorses and blankets, reading spaces, art tables, Brio train spaces, and everything else our own three kids -- aged 8, 6, and 3 -- love. We hung a ten-foot banner of white butcher paper along one bare sheetrocked wall, wrote “God’s Garage” in huge letters on it, and invited kids to color and decorate. My eight-year old had worked for hours creating playlists of his favorite music, and burning them onto CD’s for the group to listen to (thanks Canaan, you were da bomb). He had everything from WOW worship to Christian rap. Thirteen children grooved. Well, and the two adults. And the two teenagers, one of whom we planned to help out in there, and the other who showed up for worship and just enjoyed helping out. Okay, and the one toddler, who liked it better in God’s Garage than the boring old nursery. Um, and the toddler’s mom (it’s her first child, okay?).
The way our house is laid out, you have to go from the back of the great room -- i.e., the central worship space -- through (uh...) God’s Laundry Room to get to God’s Garage. We had absolutely no sound bleed-through, thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow. However. We’re going to need a second God’s Garage soon, thanks also be to God from whom even more blessings flow. And Melissa (new neighbor and girlfriend) volunteered! First we’ll see how next week goes.
I guess the last surprise was the nature of the people who came. Outside of the worship leaders (me and and intern in worship, my husband and an intern in God’s Garage), there were only three adults I’d call “churched.” Two (the grandparents) had been a part of several big thousand-member type Baptist churches, but since moving to North Carolina to help out a daughter going through a separation and divorce four years ago they had not been connected with a church. We met one day when I was canvassing their neighborhood for folks to help start this church and we ended up talking in their backyard for about half an hour. They came and brought their daughter and three grandkids. The other churched person I met through a clergy friend who knew I was planting a new church. She knew a woman in the area where I was planting and we set up a coffee to meet each other.
Now, we expected most people to be unconnected, or only loosely connected to a church (that’s who we were looking for), but we worried that it would be hard for a non-churchy person to overcome the intimacy factor and fear of the unknown to come to worship in some stranger’s house.
And that was the case (i.e., they didn’t come), except where there was a personal contact. In other words, we publicized and marketed (no mass mailings: just door hangers, flyers, newspaper ads, website, and so forth), but everyone who came was someone we had spoken to in person. It was the door-to-door, person-to-person stuff that worked.
When we started this I knew I was going to go door to door. My interns heard this and I know they cringed. They knew they would do it (I’m writing their performance evaluations), but they cringed. Jehovah’s Witnesses, carpet cleaner salesmen, that’s who goes door to door, and we have this idea that people totally hate it. We tried, believe me we tried, to get people to help us do this, but you would have thought we had the plague. Not a soul could we convince to do it with us, not a soul. Okay, not true, my new neighbor and girlfriend (unchurched, incidentally) Melissa signed on. I just had a gut feeling about it, so we did it.
And it was okay. No, it was good. Great, even. We had exceedingly few ugly rejections; I’d say 99% of people smiled and talked with us politely. My husband Lance got more ugliness from a few hours of putting invitations to church on windshields in the grocery store parking lot. Had one guy threateningly tell him, “Never put that @*#% on my car again, buddy,” and a couple of others like that.
We noticed another interesting phenomenon going door to door: we got the best reception in middle and lower middle class neighborhoods (we haven’t been to any poorer neighborhoods yet). We went to one wealthier neighborhood and people were not verbally ugly but they wouldn’t come to the door (even when we had made eye contact with them and there were kids playing outside in the yard) or they lied. They sometimes cut us off to tell us they already attended a church and when we asked where, they would stutter and stammer and try to come up with an answer. It was kind of discouraging to be there and we left after about an hour.
One thing we pretty much figured on was the casual clothes issue. We’ve already seen this banner raised in most new worship services (“Come as you are!”), but we were surprised at how much power it really does have. Lots of people told us that they did not attend church because they didn’t know what to wear, or did not want to dress up. We found ourselves picking up someone else’s expansion of the come-as-you-are mantra: “Come as you are -- leave different!” And yep, it worked.
So, most of the people were unconnected with church, they had received us kindly when we knocked on their doors, they appreciated the invitation to dress casually, they responded incredibly well to stations worship, and the last two things were that they expressed great surprise and pleasure over the music and video choices (I think secular music really can be a bridge to people outside of the church), and they had a lot to say to me during worship. I invited their participation, and they took me up on it. There were no long pauses while I waited for their answers. They even had things to say during spaces I wasn’t expecting it. Of course, this was a small group, but still.
We received a full measure, God’s dozen.
I am not easing up on the efforts to invite new people; I plan to continue to go door to door. And I still have a zillion questions. I’m nervous about who will come next week; will people really return or were they just being polite? Will I be able to bring them all along on the Christian journey quickly enough (i.e., before my financial support runs out)? Will they get bored with this after a few weeks? Can I inspire them with the vision God has given me? This is like the best, scariest, ride at the fair. Love it, hate it, wouldn’t miss it.
Lisa Creech Bledsoe is Trail Boss of the effort to bring together a community of people called Catalyst, who had their first home worship service on Sunday, November 2, 2003. This is her tenth year in full-time ministry, and her first endeavor as a new church planter for the United Methodist Church in the North Carolina Conference; she's mildly surprised that the Methodists haven't thrown her out yet. Lisa grew up in Memphis, saw Elvis dead, and now lives just south of Garner, NC with her husband and three boys. You can check her rock-n-roll bio at http://www.catalystchurch.net
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