|
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Different
Yesterday someone left a flyer on my porch about an Easter service to be held at the amphitheater at Old Dominion University a few blocks from here. The flyer suggested a website for further information. Two hours later I was still reading the huge website about this church's school 'system', it's home for pregnant girls, programs for every age and every problem. The black pastor has a B.S. from M.I.T. of all places...then some more degrees from other places having to do with religious studies. I guess that one fact intrigued me. What kind of person would be smart enough to earn a degree from the top technical/scientific school in the USA and would then leave that behind and become a minister? Another website listed this church as one of the megachurches in the US. 15 years ago it was 20 people meeting in a rented room.
Obviously, I thought, someone very dynamic was at the top of this organization. I called the church and was told there are three services each Sunday A.M....7/9/11:30. So Lydia and I took the kids and visited the place. I will be all week getting over it. It was astonishing. The sanctuary holds 3,000 and it was packed for the third time in one morning. The joint jumped. Explosively rythmic music, dancing, rapping, comedy, a drama presentation, a story for the kids. Benny loved it. He beamed from ear to ear, clapped and sang. Sadie did little baby dances out in the aisleway and no one minded a bit.
The pastor's message was re. parenting; funny and original, but very sternly old fashioned at the same time. You could probably summarize it by saying, "Be what you want your children to become." No, I'm not going to attend the Easter service they plan to hold at the University. Just one time of a service like that and I'm exhausted.
However, I was impressed.
The congregation was so big that it filled the parking lot and also filled the parking lot of the mall across the street...several city policemen were on hand to get worshippers across the street from the mall parking lot to the church. A great big church dedicated, according to their slogan, to "Changing the world one life at a time". Some time this week they will hold an outdoor service at one of the worst local housing projects with a big team of rappers, dancers, comedians, dramatists, singers, instrumentalists...all pushing a positive message of forgiveness and hope for people with ruined lives. Nothing wrong with that. Darn, if every church went right at bad things in that way, this would be a better world. I wish they'd choose the yellow apartment area of 38th Street as one of their targets for a good influence. As far as I could tell, they are doing God's work in the world, and I wish them well.
At the end of the service, the pastor asked all young parents among the congregants who had been raised in a home with drugs/violence/alcohol dependency/crime to stand while he said a special prayer over them. At least half the church stood up. He prayed that they would be strengthened to take a new direction from their pasts, to break the vicious circle of bad parenting behaviors. I thought it a very good thing.
One awkward note from their website. The pastor stated that the constitutional principal of separation of church and state has never met with much agreement in the black community, that black churches believe in doing all they can to push politics in their direction. Give him credit for saying what he really thinks, but I wonder about the continued tax-exempt status of a "white" church making such a claim. I do recall the case of a white Presbyterian Church somewhere in New Jersey where the pastor took strong public positions on all the issues, told his congregation how to vote, etc...and the church DID lose its tax exempt status at least for a while.
Personally I think a minister should be able to tell people to vote for chihuahuas if he wants to. Government should stay out of religion, but the religion in people's lives requires them to act in certain ways and voting in support of certain positions would be a logical extension of religious belief, I think.
Anyway, this was a different kind of Sunday. Pork Chop and I are going to take a nap.
View Latest Entries
|
