After my last post, I received some ideas to address in a follow-up.
If you haven’t read that post, you might want to
head over there first, as these responses make less sense without that context. Thanks for all for your questions, and feel free to add more!
As my last post was a summary designed to engage the positive things I could learn from the experience, some of these topics didn’t really fit, but they were nonetheless often part of my original observations that I have expanded some upon reflection. Often, the lack of mention of certain aspects of my journey in my original post meant that I didn’t feel a way to learn something new that I might be able to incorporate into something new, instead reflecting what I thought of as what not to do. So, to the questions:
What are the signs of emotional connection? I think to help with this I need to establish a baseline of connection in my normal worship experiences.
In the past, as I have attended UCC churches, there is a variety of expression from the congregation within the service.
That is in no way a comprehensive experience, and indeed due to the nature of the UCC, each UCC church is different from the last.
But the common sense I have gotten in a UCC service is a calm demeanor from the congregation, with limited interaction between congregants and/or pastors within the service.
At the most basic, the service involves a very short time of greeting between congregants, and all other movement is based on standing or sitting at the appropriate time (hymns, calls to worship, offerings, blessings, etc.) but not often extended to lateral movement.
Additionally, there may occasionally be a music selection that includes some clapping, but not as often as weekly, or sometimes even monthly.
There is little to no response to the actions of the pastor, particularly during the sermon.
My own church (
New Spirit Community Church) is expanded much beyond that, incorporating lateral movement for longer periods at various points in the service, and more energy-inducing music that contains clapping or even dancing at multiple points during a service in a mostly weekly basis.
Both of those situations do not necessarily mark the amount of emotional connection within a service, as emotion can often be inwardly expressed, especially in a group where the norms are not an open to movement, but they are not as readily apparent to a visitor.
In all of the churches I visited this summer, there was no question in the heightened emotional connection of the congregation through physical movement and vocal expression, far more than any church I have regularly attended. Though lateral movement was not often apparent, vertical movement was. During opening music, everyone stood, often with arms raised as a praise motion to receive the inspiration of the Spirit. Singing was a primary expression of emotion, with volume of voice and extent of physical movement and dance increasing with increasing awareness of emotional connection. In one church, I was particularly amazed at the volume increase of the congregational singing after an emotional and energetic sermon over the level established before the sermon. There was also encouragement of emotional expression from the congregation by the pastors. For example, if the pastor noted a particular reaction from the congregation he thought of as positive of expressive (in terms of emotional release), there would be a kind of pause in the service as that moment was stretched to heighten the experience. Music from the band or choir would increase in volume, as would the singing of the congregation. From this, I could see more hands in the air in praise, more swaying or dancing from the congregation, and sometimes some form of speaking in tongues.
Other forms of emotional connection throughout the service included shouting and crying. Both of these were very common in all the churches I attended. Shouting would occur at any point in the service as response to the music or the sermon. Sometimes it was in response to the encouragement of the preacher (“Can I get an amen?”), but there were also plenty of moments of improvisational, inspirational shouting of praise. If the music or the sermon touched a particularly strong nerve, the ultimate response was crying. Some churches offered tissues by passing them, or by stocking them in pews, showing recognition of the power of emotional connection within the church. The avenue of connection for this expression varied from church to church based on the theology of the sermon or music, but it was prevalent throughout the churches as a whole.
In summary, the emotional connection had a wide range of expression, from more movement in a stationary position (swaying, dancing, arms raised) to increased volume (shouting, singing, music) to cathartic release (speaking in tongues, crying).
What is the make-up of the congregation? This was certainly something that varied by church. One church I visited was mostly African-American through historic tradition. The rest seemed to be mostly Euro-American in make-up to varying degrees, some having much more diversity than others. Some churches offered services in languages other than English. However, I do not recollect any mention of race, even within the church predominantly African-American. Every church had a wide range of age groups, but I particularly focused on the large amount of inclusion of families, children, and young adults. There was a specific focus of engagement to many different age groups, especially youth and young adults. I also had a sense of middle to upper class engagement in every church except the African-American church, reflecting the geographical location of the churches (downtown Oakland versus Bay Area suburbs). No church engaged sexual orientation or gender identification as a positive way of inclusion, and some were, to me, offensive in their opposition to that inclusion.
I did not feel that any church truly reflected diversity in terms of percentages of population in the area across a number of different demographics, but I did feel the diversity of congregational make-up was greater than most of my previous church experiences, both outside and within the UCC. However, this diversity of congregational make-up was not reflected in the church leadership. Every pastor (except at the African-American church) was Euro-American. Every pastor was male. Every senior pastor was older, though some had guest preachers that were much younger. Diversity was never a topic of music or sermon in any church.
How did the preacher use scripture? This was one of the largest difficulties I had with the churches. Most churches did not have a separate reading of the scripture; it was folded into the sermon. Within those sermons came some different uses of scripture. One church used John 11 as a scripture, with the sermon as first-person perspective from the viewpoint of the writer of John witnessing the events of raising Lazarus from the dead. Another church had ten different scriptural references, one or two verses apiece, within the sermon from six different books of the New Testament and the Old Testament. Another church had six scriptural references from six different Old Testament and New Testament books, one to seven verses apiece. At no point in any church did I feel the sermon was used to critically examine scripture, instead the scripture was often picked out of context to serve the needs of the preacher, including sometimes skipping lines within the same pericope to only use the verses that served the preacher’s needs.
How did these churches address social justice? Most of the churches had some sort of outreach to the poor. This seemed to mostly come in a way to feed the hungry in the local community once a week or once a month. There may have been more efforts beyond, but they were not advertised within the service or other media present. The focus for most churches was on prosperity/personal liberation as well as salvation. Therefore, there wasn’t much of a social justice aspect of the church or worship, which I found highly disappointing. I considered what one might be able to accomplish with so many people working towards one goal, and realized there are certainly very positive and very negative results that can come from that. I would have been very interested to see what social justice might look like in a mega-church setting, but it just wasn’t there.
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