Opening worship at GC2012. Worship center design by Todd Pick.
Screen graphics by TripleWide and Marcia McFee
This post, also appearing on the emergingumc blog, is a bit of a departure from my usual contributions to this blog.
Today, I
want to bear witness to ways I saw the Holy Spirit move among us at
worship as I experienced it from my peculiar vantage point as one of the
developers and co-laborers with the General Conference worship team.
In
doing so, I do not wish to come across in any way diminishing those
occasions where it seemed General Conference was in the grip of "another
spirit." There is good reason that so many commentators and
"post-mortems" on this General Conference describe it with words like
"tough," "cantankerous," "mean-spirited," "fear-motivated,"
"untrusting," and even "traumatic."
But I bear witness to this.
I have never before encountered the Holy Spirit moving as dramatically,
powerfully, palpably and in so many different ways as I did at this
General Conference, especially, though not only, through worship. Often,
I came away simply astounded.
At opening worship, the Holy Spirit brought order out of chaos.
Chaos is the only word to describe where worship seemed to be heading 30 minutes before it was to start.
A
full-day delay in installing the rigging put every other element of our
work more than a full day behind. No rehearsal of any element of
opening worship worked properly the first, second, or even the final
time. Sound, lights, graphics, video-- everything was consistently off,
and even into the final cue-t0-cue-- often off by a long, long way. We
were seeing the very real possibility that over two years of planning,
gathering video and graphics resources, creating a band, developing
musical repertoire, designing liturgy-- two years of work and solid
preparation, plus the hours of rehearsals on site-- could turn into a
complete disaster. Every indication was that it could.
I
remember saying to Marcia and a few others of us after we got backstage
after that "cue-to-cue from the nether regions," "We're going to have to
walk by faith, and not by sight." That
is what
we did. It was truly our only choice. If we were to walk by sight, we'd
have to consider cancelling the service. Really. Things were that
bad. Anyone who was at the cue to cue or the previous rehearsals could
tell you that.
We had to walk by what we trusted the Spirit
could do as we offered it, despite what we knew it was just 30 minutes
prior: chaos, still.
For
those of us on the worship team, it meant simply letting go, trusting
the Spirit to do what the Spirit could do, and running with it, come
what may. For those in the sound, lighting and graphics teams, it meant
running their scripts with the tools they had, focusing on trusting the
tools and their skills the best they could, moment by moment (and, I
presume, for some of them at least, trusting in God!).
And the outcome was--
beautiful, remarkable, moving, powerful. Perfect, no. There were still
glitches here and there-- but nothing, nothing to the degree that we had
encountered every prior time we tried to rehearse any of it. It was
indeed order out of chaos. The call to discipleship was sung, spoken,
heard, embodied, felt, celebrated and tasted, clearly and richly, even at that
chaotic place we call "shoreline."
The
next night, the Spirit brought life and joy out of a fearful and
emotionally flat-lined assembly-- dramatically and immediately."Immediately"
(euthus in Greek) is a word that shows up a lot in Mark's gospel,
indeed with greater frequency than in any other gospel or book of the
Bible.
I have to admit I was always a bit skeptical of all of
the "immediatelies" Mark claimed. Immediately, Peter, Andrew, James and
John responded to calls from Jesus, left everything and followed him.
Immediately, storms were stilled and calm reigned. And on and on.
Immediately.
But in what I saw happen with the assembly on Thursday night-- immediately is the only right word I can find to describe it. In what I am about to say, I am simply trying to recount what happened and how the
body language and posture of the plenary session indicated the people were
responding. I am not trying to offer any judgment-- negative or positive-- on the presenter or the value of the content presented. The
business agenda that evening was a presentation about the necessity of
passing a particular plan for restructuring and overseeing the work of
the general agencies of the denomination. The presentation recounted
many statistics pointing out the dramatic declines of the denomination
in the United States. It stated that failure of this General Conference
to take the kind of action suggested by this restructuring plan at this
session would lead to an even more rapid demise of the denomination. One
of the final illustrations in the presentation was a video telling the
painful story of a congregation that had failed to seize its
opportunities for change and had closed.
The presentation was intended as a sobering wake-up call. It did have a sobering effect on those in attendance. There was nearly zero positive energy left in the room just before worship was to get underway. I
need to say that in planning worship for this night, we had known that
something would be said about restructuring, but we had no idea what
kind of effect it would have or affect it would leave people with.
But the affect was obvious when it was over. It was like a darkness had descended on the crowd.
And
worship then began in near actual darkness, with a slow dance to the
Queen's Prayer by Pacific islanders moving toward the center table,
bringing with them with tropical fruits to cover it. That opening synced
with where many people were emotionally at that time. If we would offer
anything to God at that time, it would be done slowly.
And then
everything turned-- dramatically-- in the course of a prayer offered by
one of the Pacific Islander delegates. The "pitch" of the offering of
worship shifted from somber in the course of a few words, boldly prayed,
so that by the end of it everyone was not only ready, but bursting, it
seemed, to sing with joy, "For Everyone Born."
It was a joy that
only continued to build-- through the verses, through the elements of
worship that followed, and then taken to new heights by the sermon of
Bishop King who greeted us all with the words, "Beautiful people!"
From
a place of uncertainty and darkness-- emotional and physical-- to a
continuing and increasing release of joy. I had never before seen a
whole room of people make that kind of dramatic turn with that kind of
authenticity more rapidly and completely-- ever.
It was the Holy Spirit, bringing joy out of uncertainty and pain... and doing so immediately!
There are more stories I can tell.
But this post is long enough already. I will spare the details. But I
will say that the next night, a healing service, was a time of profound
healing for many of us, myself included. The night after that, the
Spirit came with convicting power in the Act of Repentance, and
particularly (though not only) in the words of George Tinker, who spoke
hard, painful truth but with a loving spirit that never inflicted harm.
In both cases, we had hoped in our planning that we had made room for
the Spirit to act in such ways, but we had (and could have had!) no idea
just how powerfully the Spirit would actually move.
It was beyond, far beyond, what any of us could have asked or imagined.
That is why I speak of these happenings as the visitation and work of the Holy Spirit.