When I sent in my application to seminary last July, I didn't know where I wanted to go with it, but I understood that I didn't feel like I could be the minister in front of the congregation. Today, I am excited to have a field education placement in a wonderful church where I can learn about doing exactly that. I am looking forward to creating my own worship experiences to share with other people.
When I moved into our studio apartment in Berkeley, I felt overwhelmed by the lack of experience I might have relating to church. Today, I still feel that lack of experience, but I see it as an asset. It's easier to look towards something different in the future if I'm not rooted in traditions of the past.
Traditions are good. Traditions allow us to relate to each other and to our pasts in ways that we couldn't find in other avenues. There is ceremony and ritual in tradition that can still great feelings within us of comfort and familiarity. Breaking tradition can be intensely scary, especially if we've followed those traditions our entire lives. If we're not careful, people are left behind when we change a tradition, let alone eliminate one.
Nebraska is built on tradition. I have never been a part of traditions more than the time I spent in college at Doane. It in the DNA of the state, and shows itself to the world through the football team. I remember when they changed the uniforms while I was in college by adding a white stripe under the arms. I don't think I met a single person that supported it because it wasn't what we were used to, and neither was the losing we were experiencing that year. That season was the first time in my life that the team did not win nine games. I even called a radio show once to blame the struggles of the team that year on the stripe. We couldn't handle the losing that we were so privileged to avoid for so many years, and it was easy to blame it on the break of tradition.
But what if the traditions don't work? I left church for over a decade because the traditions of the church didn't speak to me in any way. Even now, as I continue my journey though seminary, I haven't found a church that really, truly speaks to how I want to worship. New Spirit Community Church is doing it a lot better than any other churches I've been to recently, but it still doesn't fully feed me how I want it to.
I attended the Annual Gathering of the Northern California-Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ. I walked away inspired in many different ways, but I think I am most fired up about the future. I didn't realize this when I got here, but we can change everything about how we think of worship in progressive Christianity, and we can start today.
Why not? Why can't we? What is standing in our way? We are only limited by our lack of imagination. There are churches out there that fill stadiums. There are churches out there that feed the lives of youth and young adults in massive numbers. I went to a church once in Denver that was a converted grocery store, and the sanctuary was full of young people (with plenty of older people as well). We may disagree with how other churches do theology, but that doesn't mean they are doing something we can't.
One of the important lessons I learned from my training at Walmart was how we examine the competition. We can spend all day ripping them apart for all the things they are doing wrong, and we can revel in all the things we are doing better than them, but if we don't look intently for the things they are doing better than us that we can learn from, pretty soon they'll be passing us by.
So I'm ready. I'm fired up. I'm getting started now. I want worship for me, and for people in my generation. I haven't seen it yet, but I know many things that it is not. I'm ready to start with a clean slate, try any ideas people can think of, and learn from whoever comes across my path. I want to hear from all facets of society to see what works for young people. There are plenty of questions involving church functions, but I want to know about the secular world, too. Why do we, as young people, flock to concerts? Why are we, as young people, so passionate about sporting events, especially when they involve the colleges we go to? Why did we, as young people, take Barack Obama from a politician and turn him into a rock star and help him become President?
This is the tip of the iceberg. I don't know the answers to these questions and countless others, but I'm going to start asking. I don't know where this journey is taking me, but I'm ready to receive it with arms wide open. I don't know how this is going to work, but I know that it will work. I have faith in that. After all, when I quit my job a year ago, I didn't know how anything was going to work in my life anymore because I couldn't see the future. But faith put me through it, with a healthy amount of support for my journey from my wife, my family, and my friends. I'm the ever the optimist, and I have faith that this, whatever this is and wherever this goes, will work.
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