Cult Following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 3)

My third and final submission to the discussion that ensued from the article I circulated a while back and the continual thinking I have done on the matter is going to be what I call “the wild card”

 

Too often our debate about our corporate worship experience between those who are for it and those who are against it happens within the context of a predominantly Canadian-thinking culture. I use “Canadian-thinking” with reference to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and so on, generations of Canadians that are representative of the dominant social culture regardless (somewhat) of the individual ethnic heritage.

 

However as a person that identifies more with immigrants because I myself am one and has become very much aware of the changing demographics of society, I think that our debate has to take into account the fact that with the sustained and continued increase of immigrants in Canada, the debate about who we seek to influence as a church has to take on a completely different tone.

 

Pastor Mark will tell you that a significant portion of the growth of Woodvale has been through people that have recently immigrated to Canada. Woodvale is not just multi-generational; it is a truly multicultural church and even though we have had a historically homogeneous sound and worship experience, we have to, in humility, recognize that the various cultures and ethnic groups in our church have been gracious in their expression of appreciation for what we do to facilitate worship… but if you talk to them and get below the gracious expression of appreciation, you’ll find that for the most part they seek an even more passionate and exuberant worship experience than what we currently offer.

 

You’ll find that they seek a worship encounter that pays tribute to more than one cultural heritage… but most of all, you’ll be surprised to find that the ones that come through our doors that are not even Christian are not freaked out by our worship services as we might think they are. The dancing grandma at the front of the church does not bother them because many come from a culture where dance is part of worship. The babbling in strange languages does not bother them because there are many languages of this world that sound like unintelligible babbling and exposure to many languages makes you less prone to being freaked out when somebody starts doing it seated next to you. Most English speakers do not realize that English sounds absolutely strange (meaningless bable if you will) to somebody that does not speak or understand it. Because I have made it my business to seek this information out, I can say with growing certainty that you will find just as I have found that they are more open to debate, explanation and even a second visit.

 

Consider also, that the student enrolment (in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions) has an ever-increasing population of immigrants or children of immigrants living in a largely immigrant community in the city. Or that the recent explosion of growth in the suburbs is driven partly by the demand for houses by recently immigrated families.

 

Last summer, I got to visit a church called “The Meeting House” that is a growing church in the GTA and recently planted a location in Ottawa. Instead of having their usual speaker Bruxy give the message, they had an interview with a gentleman called Jay Smith who lives and works in London UK and has a specific ministry to Muslims. During the question and answer session, somebody asked him why he chose to have such an aggressive approach (He basically stands on a soap box at the speakers corner and challenges anybody within earshot to a debate… he’s been assaulted several times while doing this, by the way) when reaching out to the Muslim people in his area and his answer was an unbelievable eye opener for me.

 

He said that many Muslims have lost their respect for Christianity because of the pussy-footed approach that Christians have when dealing with culture and other religions. They say that Islam is for MEN and Christianity is for women… meaning that Islam is powerful and Christianity is gutless.

 

He said that many – especially the growing number of radicals – are unresponsive to us because they cannot respect a spineless religion. He said that in trying to reach out to these new immigrant cultures, the church was forgetting that you do not reach out to them the way you would do for a post-Christian European. The tactics would have to dramatically change if you were to even get them to listen to you.

 

He basically picked the words out of my mouth when he said that the church has to be less Canadian and be more Christian. The church should not find its identity first in its ethnic heritage, but rather in Christ so that like Paul, you can become all things to all men – speak with relevant authority to a multiplicity of cultures – so that some may be saved.

 

This spoke deeply to me because one of the fundamental questions I have had lingering in my mind for the modern church in North America is what they are doing to reach out to the growing population of immigrants in their neighborhoods. Most of these people are not afraid to have discussions about spiritual issues because many of them come from cultures that are deeply religious. Most of them are not threatened by passionate expressions of worship because they come from cultures that are comfortable with passion and expression. Most of them do not need the bible to be overly explained because their native languages share a lot in common with the symbolism with which much of scripture was written. This, therefore, means that the ways you would craft your services or gatherings to meet the needs of a primarily Canadian-thinking (defined above) group of people would have to be altered if you said you really cared about making your worship moments accessible to more than just one culture.

 

It is a tough cookie to swallow, but the truth of the matter is that for many churches like ours that are situated in communities like the one we are in, there is a significant number of songs, worship tools and methods of communication that have to be abandoned in the pursuit of an increasingly multicultural church. These changes have to be systemic and not just a re-dressing of a community that remains at heart fundamentally homogeneous because a culture clash is inevitable and the leaders and facilitators of worship have to be prepared to navigate these treacherous waters. This is the wildcard in the discussion that has come out of the article that I shared because Mr. Holock represents a post-modern, post-Christian Canadian. However both of these are terms that are irrelevant when you try to speak about sociological, cultural and spiritual shifts in countries/continents that are not Europe or North America (US and Canada specifically) and therefore represented by the growing immigrant populations in our churches and communities.

 

 I once sat under the teaching of a gentleman I consider to be a great visionary and a deep thinker about matters concerning the church. He said that Canada is rapidly approaching a tipping point where demographically, we shall have moved from the concept of being a mosaic to actually living it out and this is going to affect politics (because of the immigrant representation and voting power), suburban culture (because of the increasing wealth and growing population of recent immigrants in the suburbs), and cultural and financial trends (because of the shift in dominant representation from a largely Caucasian representation to a multi ethnic first and second generation of Canadians not familiar with previous trends). His charge to us was that we had to stop being a reactionary church and recognize that this tipping point is imminent and therefore make changes within our corporate worship encounters and general church business with this in mind. From the kind of examples he was giving, it was clear that there would have to be a re-writing of pretty much every program in the church (children, youth, young adults, adult and seniors ministries… in evangelism, discipleship, worship and fellowship). But not just the programs, but the DNA (NOT doctrine!!) of the churches.

 

Most churches are forced to change their modus operandi when it is undeniable that contemporary culture has moved on and that their current tools are useless in connecting to it because they were afraid to rock the boat when change SHOULD have been made. Many churches sadly do not survive this (either because they refuse to change or because they change too late) and the shrinking of the evangelical church in Canada is a testament to this unfortunate truth.

 

I am therefore convinced that the discussion about improvements or alterations to our worship service/corporate worship moments cannot happen within the bubble of a culture that is ethnically homogeneous because that bubble is not truly representative of the multiplicity of cultures in which we exist. One culture might be reserved, while another is expressive. One might have deep spiritual roots, while another may have forgotten its spiritual heritage. One culture may embrace moral relativism more freely than another and one culture may have a totally opposite take on social justice than another. In one culture, women may be the heads of society while in another, men dominate the women.

 

Try as we might, the truth of the matter is that we all interact with Christianity, matters of faith, and general spirituality through the paradigm of the culture that we represent. As facilitators of worship at Woodvale, therefore, we have to be wise in our pursuit to create moments that more than just one cultural or ethnic group can feel comfortable in. Part of the reason I am increasingly selective about the advice that I receive about how things should be done at Woodvale is because I have started to see that most times, the so-called “advice” I am receiving is based on a preference that might alienate a significant section of our congregation or visitors. As such, I have started to ask these advice givers about how they think their suggestions might affect the worship experience of more than one cultural group in an attempt to show them that the family to which we belong is no longer homogeneous.

 

So I would like to invite more discussion about how things could improve here, but I would like all responses from this point on to take into account the real and present multicultural situation we find ourselves in – not just as a congregation that represents over 60 nations, but as a church existing in a community that is increasingly representative of the nations of the world. You have to ask yourself whether the things you think should be altered, discarded, improved, or changed shall be relevant in a multicultural Woodvale or not. One last thing… I am looking for discussion that goes beyond tokenism and novelty.

 

Let’s talk! 

Cult Following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 2)

Part of the reason that this article has proved to be a hot-button issue is because of the spiritually-seeking people that many have claimed to be concerned about. There are 2 main schools of thought that I have heard on this issue

 

1. We should not change who we are because spiritually seeking people need to know what we are like. This sometimes does not take into account the fact that the methods of communication and the general corporate worship experience may or may not be relevant (need improvement, etc…) in contemporary culture
   
   
2. We should change, remove, mask or hide everything that would make a spiritually seeking person uncomfortable in our corporate worship gathering and in the event that we are not able do remove everything (like singing a bunch of songs, praying or giving an offering), we shall apologize profusely for it in the hope that our apology will be accepted and that the seeker shall overlook these shortcomings

 

 This second entry is going to be about a couple of things that I have been forced to increasingly wrestle with over the past few years as I have sought to find ways to relate to the culture in which I now live.

 

The expression that I have heard – an expression that I think accurately describes the cultural state of affairs with relation to Christianity in our country – is that Canada is a post-modern, post-Christian society. If post-modernism and post-Christianity mean nothing to you, please google both terms and you’ll find a plethora of information on both topics.

 

While the church may have had a large part to play in the formation of contemporary society, the truth is that over the years Canadians have turned their back on the church and in large part become suspicious of it. This is obviously not without the help of the church, the misuse of its (the church) power and influence and the growing disconnect with contemporary culture because of a refusal to recognize the times and adapt to them. Obviously there is more to it than this and I have read literally HUNDREDS of articles and books on this movement of culture into a post-modern, post-Christian state. You should too!

 

My personal experience has shown me three predominant groups of people that belong to the mission field that we seek to reach out to and that we hope would walk through our doors.

 

1. The indifferent and disinterested group (with or without prior experience with the church)
2. The cynical, hostile and suspicious group (with or without prior experience with the church)
3. The group that are on a search for an authentic spiritual experience (with or without prior experience with the church)

 

I am sure that we could add to these groups a host of other groups, but these are the ones I will choose to speak about from this point on.

 

Groups 1 and 2 mentioned above will most likely not darken the doorpost of a church unless they are dragged or somehow forcefully coerced. Heh! We all know this, don’t we? It is even more unlikely that they will walk into a worship space like ours because of the pre-conceived negative connotations that the word “Pentecostal” has.

 

Because these groups (1 and 2) of people are highly unlikely to come to our worship services, even when they do they view everything through the tainted lens of cynicism. This means that just about every experience in the church is going to look staged or reek with a lack of authenticity. The corporate singing is going to look like mindless chanting and the message and ministry times are going to look like hypnotic suggestion more than an authentic take on spiritual and contemporary issues. I believe that this is the category to which Mr. Holock who wrote the article that I circulated belongs. If we try to make changes to our corporate worship gatherings with these 2 groups of people in mind, we are wasting our time.

 

My personal belief is that these 2 groups of people can only change their attitude about the church when they become convinced that our walk matches our talk. Our worship services are a mockery to them because our high-flying rhetoric about being the change in the world we want to see and other such stuff is just that… empty words. Our songs are meaningless and repetitive because we are singing about being salt and light and yet in the world today, the salt and light are severely lacking. 

 

Outside of a personal miraculous intervention from God, such people will only change their mind about the church and about Christianity in general when they see a sustained, different approach by the church to issues OUTSIDE of the four walls of the church. Not one that seeks to forcefully influence contemporary culture and speaks down to it from a higher moral vantage point, but one that becomes a true advocate for justice and mercy down in the trenches in a world that severely lacks it. As I said earlier, there is nothing that our corporate worship gathering can change to influence these 2 groups because who we are inside the church is not who they see outside it and so everything that happens inside – from the greeters, to the guy with dreads, to the oh-so-enthusiastic pastor Mark looks extremely ridiculous.

 

The third group of people, who are on a journey seeking an authentic spiritual experience and connection with God (regardless of the definition they might have of who that God is at the time) are the ones who may wander into our doors uninvited, or accept our invitation to church. These are the ones that I have found are more willing to come again even after a less-than-perfect first encounter with the corporate worship experience because they may sense and even experience something more than just a staged weekly gathering.

 

We are therefore faced with a dilemma when they walk in. Do we hide who we really are so that they are not put off by the strangeness WE THINK they may have a problem with when they first encounter us? Do we hide the things we ourselves are personally wrestling over assuming that these spiritually seeking people shall experience the same battle? However, if we adjust our corporate gathering so that it is less “scary” what authentic, passionate, transcendent experience are we left with? We have to assume that we are going to be one of many stops (both denominational and religious) in this person’s quest to find a meaningful encounter with God (ambiguous definition at this point of course). How will we make the experience memorable and not bland then? We also must ask whether what we are currently doing actually DOES NOT harm us in the eyes of a true seeker… because we who are on the worship team are not really seekers in that sense. 

 

This, I think, is where the real debate lies because there are 3 key things all going on at the same time in our worship services

 

1. Communion with God – which has to take first priority in our service and so everything, from a worship facilitator’s standpoint, has to be done with this as priority number 1 and so we cannot strip away the things, the moments, the churchisms that facilitate this.
   
   
2. Communion with each other – because the second most important purpose of the corporate worship gathering as we have defined it in this community is actually NOT evangelism – even though it can serve that purpose – but rather fellowship as we find extensively through the psalms and a poignant piece of scripture in Hebrews 10: 25. Our thinking is that evangelism should actually happen OUTSIDE the corporate worship gathering… the act of bringing people into the family does not happen AT the family gatherings, but rather outside the family gatherings. This therefore is priority number 2 of worship facilitators and so we have to walk the tight rope between keeping the things that enhance this “communion with each other” and ensuring that we are not making relics out of things that were useful in the past, but not relevant to the growing fellowship with ever-changing generations and ethnicities
   
   
3. Connection with the previously churched/un-churched spiritually seeking person.

 

What, therefore, is the way forward?

 

In order to have any meaningful dialogue about this, we have to step out of the kind of thinking that makes our viewpoint right and all other opposing or differing opinions wrong. I would like to hear your thoughts about adjustments, changes, improvements to the corporate worship experience… not just things that PASTOR PAULO AND PASTOR MARK SHOULD DO, but also things that affect more than just the paid staff.

 

While this conversation should include comments about stylistic elements – vintage VS contemporary, old VS new, exuberance VS quiet meditation, one form of communication VS another, etc – I would like to hear some thoughts that are more than just re-dressing, because no matter how many times you change my clothes, I am still fundamentally the same person… the same goes for our corporate worship gatherings. Our continued discussion about improvements/adjustments to the worship gatherings has to go deeper than the dressing of the gathering. It has to be more than what the pastors should do and include what we who are part of the worship facilitation team can all do together.

 

Lets talk! 

Cult following - An Appropriate Response? (Part 1)

It is four in the morning and all I can think about at this moment is the article that Mr. Holock wrote about Woodvale. The reason I have devoted a ton of thought to it recently is because I have been trying to find in my mind what an appropriate response to this article would be moving forward because the memory of it is going to undoubtedly shape the forward momentum of this worship ministry either overtly or covertly.

 

I am going to cover my thoughts on this topic in three or four separate blog entries and I hope that you are able to read them through to journey with me and hear my thoughts as the lead facilitator of worship at Woodvale.

 

This first entry on the matter is going to be about the responses that I have heard concerning the article.

 

Most of the responses I have heard (and I identify CLEARLY with all of these responses) fall into one of the following categories

 

1. Some of us thought it was a hilarious article, clearly embellished and just a casual read. When I first read the article, this is exactly how I felt about it and thought nothing of it for a while. My sister, on the other hand, thought that it was not very good and slightly reminiscent of the “Exposés” that have been done on many of the large churches in the US.
   
   
2. Some of us felt offended by the article because of the sarcastic tone and the ignorance with which he wrote about our worship experience. My guess is that those of us in this group (I am one of you) were offended, not just because we are personally responsible for the success or failure of the corporate worship experience, but because anything derogatory was not just aimed at us but at everybody with whom we share these corporate worship experiences.
   
   
3. Some of us felt like it was a long-overdue license to talk about the things that we have issues with concerning our corporate worship experience at Woodvale. Some of our comments were masked behind our concern (real or so-so) for “Spiritually seeking people”, but if you are like me, you know that the real issue is not so much concern for those that are not yet at part of our fellowship; instead, it is things that we (I) have found wrong with the current establishment… things that we (I) may feel powerless to change.
   
   
4. Some of us, by nature, choose the middle-of-the-road approach. On one hand sympathetic to the church because we just happen to be members of it even though we position ourselves as objective outsiders; on the other hand understanding of the issues that Mr Holock had with our service either through personal experience, or just because we see ourselves as being in position to bring balance to the conversation.

 

Each one of us undoubtedly found ourselves in one, two or all of these categories and I have something to say to all of you… well, those who thought it was hilarious, I have nothing to say.

 

However…

 

If you felt offended by the article, I want you to know that I understand how you feel. I believe that the Woodvale family is a group to be proud of and that through our fellowship we accomplish a lot of good. Not only that, but through our attempts to remain truly authentic (even though our attempts may seem staged to those that are cynical), people are inspired to make real life-changing decisions. More to that, people receive hope, healing, restoration and most of all a clear sense that God is in control of their lives. Mr Holock’s article need not offend us; rather, it should show us that there is still room for improvement and that there are ways that we can execute our corporate worship gatherings better so that while he (or any other visitor) may remain skeptical, the authenticity of each moment and the manifest power and presence of God is undeniable.

 

If you felt like it was a license to finally vent about the things you had issues with, I want you to know that I understand how you feel too. It is natural that our personal and spiritual journey makes us crave different things that what we may find at our corporate worship gatherings. The discussion to always improve things must continue, but we (the people in this category) have to guard against constantly focusing on all the little things that we have gripes with or else we become cynical about the worship gatherings and start to think of them as being disingenuous when in fact we have stopped seeing things objectively, but rather through the dark colored glasses of discontent. I have five questions for such people

1. Have you spent so much time focusing on the things you think should change that you have lost the ability to see God at work in our corporate gatherings?
2. Some people in this category have gone as far as stating that they too think that there is too much stuff about our services that is or seems staged and lacking in authenticity – fake if you will. If you are one of these, then you REALLY have to ask yourself whether you are right about this or not. This is not a defensive question on my part because I know that I have sat through services and started to smirk at everything that happens. However, I had to realize that I was passing judgment on a worship experience without really knowing whether it was truly deeply authentic and life transforming for its participants.
3. You may think of yourself as a voice for people that are not Christian, but you have to separate what you think you WANT in a corporate worship gathering from what would be useful in bringing somebody that was truly seeking along into a relationship with Jesus. It would be wrong of you to think that what you want as a churchgoer is what an un-churched person on an authentic spiritual search wants from a corporate worship service. You have to ask yourself this question: Have I substituted what I want in a corporate worship gathering for what I think a person that is far from God is really looking for in such a gathering?
4. You have to ask yourself why you continue to be a part of the group that is responsible for perpetrating the very thing that you find disingenuous. I believe you also have a choice to make – to be a part of bringing about real solutions to the things you think need change, or remove yourself from the team that perpetrates falsehood.
5. You also have to ask yourself what king of solutions there are to the problems that you see – real solutions and not band-aid solutions

 

For the objective, aloof observer, I would like to say that your voice is much needed in the passionate discussion that is going to continue over this topic. However, just like the group of people addressed above, you need to realize that you are part of the process and not a separate observer. If you are somehow able to see and appreciate both sides with clarity, then you should become more involved in the discussion about ways to improve our corporate worship gatherings so that they are meaningful to both groups of people – those that have been at this Christian walk for sometime and those that may be checking us out.

 

I am going to end this entry with something that sounds completely unrelated, but I think that it is actually related to this discussion.

 

When I invite people to visit my family – both my Ottawa family and my Uganda family – I always give them the inside scoop about it. I let them know that there will be times when they will not even understand the language that is being spoken; I let them know about the quirks of my family and the family members that they should not be too worried about or those that they should watch out for; and I let them know that there will be times when we shall have inside jokes to which my visiting friends shall not be privy. However, when it gets down to it, I am PROUD of my family, I love my family, and in spite of all the weirdness of the first encounter, the reason I am bringing my friend along is that I know that in time he or she will start to love them as I do and may even become a grafted member.

 

I find that this is a useful parallel to Woodvale because this church is my family. The first time you meet this family, you run into the crazy people, the ones who have a weird smile plastered to their face, the ones that treat you like trash… but eventually, you start to see that pretty much EVERYBODY is an awesome person. You start to see that being a part of the fellowship is better than sitting on the sidelines pointing fingers and making fun and most importantly, you come to LOVE the family. I am not ashamed of my church family. I know that we can be weird sometimes and that there is DEFINITELY room for improvement in our corporate worship experience, but I have learnt to not be bothered by those that would seek to make fun of us because the good in this family far outweighs the superficial quirks that you encounter when you first meet us. There is substance, authenticity, love and friendship… sometimes hard to see because of the old woman shampooing the spirit through her hair, but it IS THERE! We could do better to illuminate it, though, couldn’t we?