In case you haven’t been paying close attention, I have been joined here by a co-blogger, using the pseudonym Out of the Mainstream. I’ll call him OOTM for short. Actually, I’ve opened up the blog for anyone to submit posts. All you have to do is register. So you folks who know me and are tempted to say “you should post something about ‘x’ on your blog” can have at it for yourself. Email me at my-screename{at}this-web-address with any questions on registering or posting.
I go through phases. There are sometimes long stretches where I can’t muster the energy to care much about public affairs. My job requires that I be engaged on some level during working hours. But, being the kind of guy who is guilty of watching C-Span for fun doesn’t mean I don’t get burned out.
I have been recently. Sometimes all the talk shows, the columns, and the blogs just seem like noise — like the adults on Charlie Brown. When that happens, I have to think about unimportant things and withdraw for a few weeks to decompress.
Despair and disillusionment have set in.
Maybe it’s because Bush is on the same side of the immigration debate as International A.N.S.W.E.R. As Laura Ingraham pointed out yesterday, these are the same folks who were calling him a murderer and a terrorist. Nah, I knew he wasn’t a conservative when I didn’t vote for him in 2000.
Maybe it’s because I’m tired of hearing and reading the unending and unfair criticisms of conservative, rural congregations. These were the sort of folks who reached out to me as a teen who wasn’t “raised in the church” and adopted me into a new, larger family when I needed one the most. And it’s not just coming from outsiders like Nancy Grace. This comment from Leanne on Mike Cope’s blog makes the point rather well:
I too am saddened and frustrated by all the whining I hear (mainly from middle-aged adolescents) about our parents and grandparents efforts to live godly lives. Of course, that’s not the way it’s usually couched: rather, they are called legalistic, narrow-minded, and inflexible.
What we seem to forget is that they lived and worshipped in ways indicative of their time, experiences, and cultural influences. We have an opportunity to live and worship in ways congruent with our time here on earth, and we don’t have to do it by bad-mouthing or making fun of the way they did it or the way some conservative churches still do it. I hear far too many middle-aged folks still rebelling against their parents’ brand of church rather than just doing the Lord’s work. And what is all that criticism and “making fun of†behavior modeling for our children?
I attend a large liberal congregation in a southern city and I love my church family there. But I am equally at home in tiny rural congregations or congregations in other locales around the world where a 24-year military career took me. Finding common ground rather than nit-picking differences is my understanding of Paul’s lesson about unity. I think we could all benefit more from extending respect to others rather than demanding it from others.
Rubel Shelly did a great job on the Nancy Grace Show tonight. He was exactly the right man for the job.
Maybe it’s because I keep trying to formulate a post about how introverts and extroverts see worship differently and how those differences lead to conflict and division — but I can’t seem to get it quite right. Instead I’ll just quote what Patrick Mead said recently:
Interaction with God’s people is good for me and I know my soul needs it… but it has never felt natural. I don’t get excited about church events and I struggle to fit in.
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During the day I will be reading quietly, walking around, calling to check on my wife, son, daughter — my family. I WON’T be hanging out with the brethren or doing all that other preacher stuff. I’ve tried to…but it comes off as fake to everyone around me, because it is.
I don’t know Patrick Mead personally, but I’m honored that he comments here from time to time. That post resonates with me because “fake” is the one word I would have used to describe what I thought of religion, and why I wasn’t interested in it, before I became Christian. It is how introverts feel when extroverts want us to act like them in church, and it is how we describe extroverts when we’re being overly judgemental of them.
Another quote, this one from an email my wife sent to someone at church recently:
[We] have discussed a couple of times in the last few months the trend of extrovertedness in worship. I’m an introvert. That doesn’t mean I don’t like people, I just don’t get energized from being around others or from being in a loud or especially busy environment. My impression of worship services in the last decade has been of a three ring circus. There’s always something going on. Announcements, prayers, songs…those are to be expected. Greet the people around you, scripture reading, more songs…fine. Learn a new song, stand up, clap, turn around, watch a video, see the new babies, hear from the elders on this, watch a video, watch the power point presentation during the sermon…it just seems a bit like edutainment. It’s not a time to reflect and focus on God. Extroverts seem to appreciate all the activity and they generally call the shots. Is it a bad thing? If it works for them I’ll live with it. I don’t know. Ever heard of the scripture, “Be still and know that I am God”?
So forgive us if we sometimes get tired of all the ruckus. Whatever has caused my current malaise and withdrawal, I’m sure I’ll snap out of it eventually. Apathy will turn to outrage and lead to outbursts.
{ 5 } Comments
Ex– Count me among those who hadn’t been paying close attention–OOTM’s posts are so well written that I didn’t even notice the “seam.”
As to your “Dark Night of the Soul” blogging experience, it seems perfectly reasonable and natural to me that someone who is wading into the trenches of so many “hot-button” issues would need a little R&R now and then. I hope you’re getting that. May the despair and disallusionment lift soon.
BTW, the extroverts rule the roost at our church too. As a fellow introvert who struggles to tread water in such an environment, all I can say is hang in there, for this Hour of Powerpoint worship craze(hat tip to Bill Gnade for that one)too shall pass. I hold to the hope that to “be still and know that I am God” will one day once again be “cool and hip!
Ex- Thanks for your support and for your comments. I appreciate your point of view and can understand the malaise brought on by overload. You’re fighting in the trenches for many of us and I, for one, appreciate it. About worship, I wish more people understood the introvert/extrovert angle and how so much of that “stand up, sit down, turn around” activity can be exhausting, even for some of us extroverts. We get so much noise in our lives, modeling how to do some reflective/meditative space in our worship would be a good thing both for the time itself and in helping us see the need to develop quiet meditative time outside the building too.
I couldn’t agree more that there needs to be more meditation/reflection time in our churches and alone. Presently working in a church has opened my eyes o just how much thought can go in to the three ring circus on Sundays and how so much of it is deliberate in the hopes of reaching out to the uninterested by entertaining them. I certainly think that a shift back to the holiness of God and being silent in His presence wouldn’t be a bad thing. Especially for the teens I work with.
Today’s program is sponsored by the word, “reverence” — yet another one of those areas where our high-church bretheren have some lessons to teach us.
Thanks to all for your comments. I didn’t mean to sound whiny. Hope it didn’t come across that way. I’m blessed in a million ways beyond counting. I just get in a crotchety, hang-it-all, what’s-the-difference mood sometimes.
It didn’t wound whiny to me; just a bit exasperated maybe, which is certainly understandable.
There are some interesting (as well as some very shallow) comments on this subject on Mike Cope’s blog. Read it only if you are ready to stomach both. I like your reference to the word reverence. Maybe we need to use it more…
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