Brown Sludge

The Father’s Hand On Your Shoulder

May 1st, 2006

I still attend the small church that I grew up in.

When it was first built, a half century ago, it stood amidst a large tract of farm land in what was then a rural community. In the years since those days, that rural community became a bustling suburb, and is now more urban than it ever was sub-urban. Strip malls and banquet centers and Big Box Marts have sprung up around it, subdivisions have sprouted, flourished, and then died and gone back to seed and it has remained, virtually unchanged as the neighborhood around it has cycled through the seasons and the blight like those time-lapsed movies that you see sometimes.

Now… I cannot lie. Although I was baptized at that small church, and have attended only that small church since I was a very small boy, there have been long, dark periods of my life that I *didn’t* attend. Any church. After the turmoil of my teenage years. After the long winter season that followed my divorce and the loss of my family. After a sad but necessary rip appeared in the fabric of my relationship with my parents.

But, always I return.

Sometimes the church has changed slightly upon my return. Sometimes significantly. A new Pastor. New Elders. A new congregation. New paint. New hymnals. New faces. Same church. Same ideals. Same unflinching Calvinist doctrine. Same… heart.

And there has always, always, always been this small flame of what I can only call “dissatisfaction” with the churches physical construction by those who inhabit it.

The church has an extremely odd architecture that you don’t often see. It has a concave roof that swoops upward several stories high in a great sweeping arc. This necessarily means that the inside is nothing short of cavernous, as it mirrors inside the great sweeping arcs found outside.

It is because of this odd shape that I’ve heard virtually every pastor and elder that the church has ever known grumble about it’s design.

The church is frustratingly hard to heat in the winter time, because all the heat rises into that great cavernous vault. It’s hard to cool in the summertime because the huge rows of windows along each side of the eaves super-heat the air inside that big vault.

It’s odd design also makes it almost impossible to find a place for the amplified speakers that project the voices of the Pastor and the piano. It seems that there is no place you can place the speakers that doesn’t set up an echo or a feedback and causes endless frustration to whoever the task of maintaining the sound system falls.

And the most common complaint I’ve heard from almost everyone is that it just isn’t a “modern” church, with modern amenities and modern construction that lends itself to the needs of a modern congregation.

Perhaps all these things are true. I’ve listened to these same complaints about that little church for decades, literally, and I suppose I just came to believe them. If every deacon and every pastor and every elder and member of Session you’ve ever spoken too tells you the same thing, you just sort of accept it on faith. No pun intended.

But this past Sunday morning something happened that I’m not sure anyone was expecting, and I have to confess it’s had an impact on me that I’m having a difficult time shaking.

Last Saturday evening a series of windstorms careened through our part of the country, and blew trees and power-lines down all over the Midwest. The high winds and storms made national news, and even merited a bullet headline on Drudge for a little while. It was only news to other people. We here in the Midwest accept high winds and violent spring storms as facts of life, and don’t scare easily.

The power in my house was up and down all night long that Saturday evening, and although it was up just before I went to sleep, it was out when I awoke and began to get showered and dressed for church on Sunday morning.

Not surprisingly it was out at church too (only a couple of blocks away) and I mentally chided myself for expecting the churches power to be on when my own wasn’t, but I grabbed my Bible, and my Westminster Confession of Faith and headed for the hymnals.

Inside, there was nervous laughter and good natured joking about the power being out, and the elders were explaining to the congregation that we were going to proceed in spite of the darkness and that the Pastor would try to overcome the conditions and give the sermon in spite of the lack of amplification.

Everyone settled into the pews, and the service began.

And that’s when something truly… spiritual…happened.

I’m not sure any one else there felt it. I’m not sure some of them would have admitted it if they did. But I did. And it was so moving that I haven’t yet been able to shake its effects from my mind or my spirit.

As the service began, it was still very overcast outside, and although the sun wasn’t shining, ambient light from outside filtered into the great cavernous interior of the church, and began to reflect off of the light wood that lines the inside of the great sweeping arc. And although there wasn’t a single electric light on inside that old church, or a single ray of sunshine outside that old church, it was just as clear and bright as if there were lights on, and the passages in my bible and in the hymn books were easy to read even for my middle aged sight.

It occurred to me the that original designer must have intended this, and that perhaps we as a congregation had lost sight of the idea that although they weren’t terribly “energy friendly”, they sure were “light friendly”, and when used as intended and allowed to let the light inside the church they did so with perfect efficiency.

As I was marveling over this phenomenon, the Pastor called us all to rise to sing, and I noticed that I could hear his unamplified voice absolutely perfectly, and that’s when we all began to sing.

What happened next is hard to explain. As the church piano began to play, the sound from the strings began to resonate into the rafters, unamplified. Without the funny electronic echo and unnatural redistribution of sound, and its amplified side effects, the sound of the piano seemed far, far deeper than I ever remembered it. It sounded rich, and full and coming down from those great sweeping rafters made the heart in my chest rattle and vibrate in a way that I forgotten from the days of my youth.

Then… the voice of the congregation lifted up, and began to sing, and again the unamplified sound swept up into the rafters, and resonated down unfiltered, and unaltered by electronics. Pastor Churnock once spoke about how Christians often develop a “sclerosis of the soul”. I assure you – after hearing that sound shaking down from the rafters in it’s natural state, my soul wasn’t nearly as hardened as it had been before.

Soon after… the sermon began, and Pastor Churnock’s voice began to boom from the pulpit. He’s been covering Roman’s lately, and always speaks with great passion and intensity. His love of Roman’s is obvious, and his great scholarship and vast wisdom on the passages even more so. That deep passion and that great wisdom combine with his fervent wish that we all understand the significance of what Paul was trying to say, and how it impacts our faith and on this Sunday all of that passion and all of that wisdom reflected off of those vast wooden beams and his voice was clearer and purer and impacted me more than it ever had.

I sat for a long time and contemplated the fact that the original architect of the church must have know all of this, and probably actually designed the church to be so easily lit by natural sunlight, as he must have known and probably actually intended the inside of that church to be acoustically perfect.

In every way it allowed the Father’s natural gifts of light and song to be seen and heard, and without man’s artificial help, amplified those gifts up unto Him.

It also occurred to me that maybe we as a congregation had forgotten that, and let a more modern and perhaps cynical way of thinking encroach on our understanding of what the original builder had intended.

Later, after communion and after we had received the blessing – the congregation rose to close the service by singing our traditional three-fold amen. At the precise moment that the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sound of our unaltered voices stopped resonating, marking the end of the service, there was a slight electric hum and the lights flickered back to life.

Now… I’m a darned Calvinist, and I know that Pastor Churnock would flat whoop the heathen HIDE off of me for suggesting that The Father had resorted to theatrics or outward signs to teach us a lesson. Over the years they’ve beaten the doctrine of “Faith Alone” into me so hard that it’s permanently tattooed on my soul.

I get it. I truly do.

But I can’t escape the feeling that He was trying to tell us all something, and trying to make us all see something that not only had the churches original architect wanted us to see, but that The Churches Original Architect had wanted us to see as well.

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Ephesians 2 : 4-9

Entry Filed under: Thoughts