Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Trappings

What do your trappings say? We rang in the New Year with one more step away from ‘typical’ church trappings. We have never had a pulpit and we have been using a nice stand. We rang in the New Year with the removal of the stand. The stand is now a small table that allows for my notes and Bible. We will add an area rug as soon as I find the right color. We have no pews, no ties and now no stand.

What do you think of trappings? I wonder what impact if any this will have. We are a church that has always been willing to do things differently so I doubt if it will matter much but I wonder what message it will send.

It has been an interesting experience living in the Bible belt these past few years. People seem to place a lot of stock in trappings. I had a woman who visited say that she guessed it was okay to laugh during church. If she doesn’t like to laugh she certainly came to the wrong place. It seemed that the experience wasn’t churchy enough for her. For her church should look like church if you know what I mean.

This is hard for me because I think church should look less like church if you know what I mean. As a child raised going to church I wanted nothing to do with the experience. I spent years living in the world before I discovered it was a relationship my Maker desired. As a minister why would I want to recreate something that seemed so pointless, so drab, boring and lifeless? What I find interesting is the number of people who come and because they don’t experience church as they see church want nothing to do with it and even question its validity.

How fascinating. Maybe someone can explain. Do you realize that a way of doing church has in many peoples mind become church? How sad and ironic that one expression of how a church functions is actually viewed as being what the church is.

The big question in my head is will this always be how it is? Are there people disenfranchised with church, meaning that brand of experience, that might find our experience more meaningful or not? If there are how do you let them know that your church experience is unlike the picture of church in their head?

It would seem the only way is to get to know people. Get to know people who you wouldn’t normally get to know. The nicely dressed churchgoer isn’t really interested in rocking that boat but who wants to attract people who simply want the carpet changed and kids ministry tailored to their liking?

All I can say is that in 2007 I will learn more about what it means to be an unchurch or boutique church as I like to call it.

6 Comments:

Blogger preacherman said...

Darin,
I want to thank you and your family for you their thoughts, prayers and gift. It feels good to be back blogging. I always enjoy reading your blog.

Did you eat your black eyed peas New Years Day?
If you didn't I ate enough for both of us. :-)

Trappings can be very dangerous. I am blessed to be at a church that seems to be not trapped to much. We are flexable. We have be flexable enough to change times of service, cancel service for christmas party, allowing me to preach short sermons (10-12min) from my wheel chair and have men feel in for as long as need to give me time to heal.

I hope that more and more churches will more in this direction not being trapped.

Great post and thank you so much again for everything.

1:37 PM  
Blogger Darin L. Hamm said...

Preacherman, what a guy.

7:44 AM  
Blogger Falantedios said...

PM brings up a REALLY interesting wordplay!

How many congregations ARE trapped by their trappings?

Jesus went to synagogue like a good Jew. He went to temple and to the festivals at the appropriate times, as well.

But his suggestion to the Samaritan woman leads me to believe that he expected Pentecost to burst the bars of all such traps.

I hate pews.
I like ties, but that's just me. Something about being colorful, I guess.

On a related note... do you think the 'mega-church' movement will struggle with their trappings, too? Or will gravity continue to have its effect? A large mass attracting other bodies around it?

in HIS love,
Nick

9:33 PM  
Blogger Darin L. Hamm said...

Good question. What do you think?

9:05 AM  
Blogger Falantedios said...

Probably gravity will continue to have its pull as long as the center remains hot and magnetic.

Nick

4:27 PM  
Blogger Darin L. Hamm said...

Nick,

I agree. I have been thinking about this and you have two types of people, those who like things the same and those who like change.

The change person is needed to get something done but the keep the same are needed to maintain stability and move forward.

In the end you have more stay the same then change people and the stay the same come in and take over the system.

They then begin to defend against change. The irony is they wouldn't even be there without change but that is how it works I think.

People will defend the mega-church way of doing things because that is what people do.

Thanks for the stimulating thoughts.

7:30 AM  

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