I Need Better Parties

​‘We should do this more often because, like, people are happy,’ I overheard after our worship gathering the other week. It’s a shame that we don’t say it every week, or even most weeks, and that it’s a surprise when we walk out of worship muttering 'well, that wasn't as boring as usual.'

A couple of times a year ten of the local United Methodist Churches get together for joint worship. About half of each congregation shows up, but it’s enough to fill an entire sanctuary and leave the stragglers searching for parking. For others, it's a free Sunday off. I get it, because it’s tempting to wake up and smell that coffee and then remain in pajamas. Life is busy. You can get more done if you stay home. I’ve heard that voice before, too. The leaves will get raked, groceries bought, and you’ll still have time to catch the Panthers game.

And yet I have a lingering sense that half of our congregations missed out on something:
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A celebration.

​Methodists usually teach that church is a verb. You don’t go to church; you are the church—go, do, be. “The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning,” says Emil Brunner. I think that’s right, but there’s still a sense for me that church is also the place where we intentionally participate in the God who is where we live and move and have our being. Worship is the center of our life together—an event where an ancient book of stories, myths, poems, and angry prophecies becomes a vessel for the risen Christ to walk among us, up and down the aisles. A meal of bread and wine reveals God’s presence among us as Christ is re-presented in a sacrament of thanksgiving and hope. God’s love is made visible in our peace—the hugs and laughter.

We are, first of all, a Sabbath people who worship a God who celebrated on the seventh day. And secondly, we are Easter people with lives built on a resurrection festival. And thirdly, a Pentecostal people of sprawling wild fires, violent winds, and a dove that hasn't found its way back to the cage. 

Jesus’ life was festal even if it was also painful, ending in suffering and death. You’d often find him at a table sharing a meal or telling stories about wedding banquets and great dinner parties. That’s why it was fitting for Christian worship to begin as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Christians, at the beginning of our existence, weren’t uptight. We gathered on the first day of the week at daybreak, which is the day following the Jewish Sabbath, with bread and wine for koinonia, or fellowship, and song. The rationale is simple—when Christ’s presence is recognized among the gathered, the best response is to celebrate. And why not go hard?  We are, after all, subjected to so much bad news the rest of the week that it's nice to have a day to let hope loose. 

I must confess that the party template for worship isn’t appealing if you have mild social anxiety, especially when there’s not a bar to get a drink to make the small talk bearable. Parties can be uncomfortable. I assume there are others like me and that it is one reason why attendance drops when we gather with other congregations for shared worship. But God’s Spirit takes the place of alcohol by bringing us together and filling us with joy and communion. Why else would a group of sober friends, and oftentimes strangers, get together to hug, eat, and sing? If it gets real heated then hands are raised, except not to Journey, but to Charles Wesley. Surely, this Spirit explains why outside onlookers thought the early church was drunk on the day of Pentecost.

If we are a resurrection people then one thing is certain: we should throw better parties.
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I happen to know that there are a few key ingredients for a good party: the first step is to think about who’s there, what they’re bringing, and the particular season for celebration. We call worship liturgy, or ‘the work of the people,’ because it’s something we join together to create in the Spirit in ‘full, active, and conscious participation.’  Like a potluck, the festival changes depending on who has created what or what has been brought to be tasted. The style of party—whether you have organs or guitars or hymns or Hillsong—won't matter as much as what gifts, attitudes, or needs are brought into the body. All of it is incorporated into a theme, or a season and focus, that gives shape to the time and more generally, our lives together.

Go ahead—plan the party, get the details hammered out, and then the people will take it and create an experience that you could have never foreseen or planned.

There’s a Spirit involved in our worship that can’t be predicted, but moves with the energy of our common life together. God isn’t coercive; God fills sanctuaries and hearts as we acknowledge the presence and make room. We show up with thanksgiving and the Spirit gives us a heart of celebration. But these parties aren’t only about being happy, either. We may arrive grieving a loss and the Spirit will come to us as Counselor. We only need come expecting to see God and each other, and God and each other we will find. Which is why this much is certain: if worship is another obligation or box to check off on our to-do list, then it will become a rote and dreadful thing to persevere. Visitors can sense this. The room is deflated, or what Marcus Borg calls ‘flat-tire’ worship, because all of the Spirit has been pushed out of the room. No one wants to go to a party that’s always a duty to fulfill. ​

​On the other hand, a right experience of God bestows energy that we carry home with us and bring out into the world. Here’s why this is so crucial for us and the others around us: transformation rests on the shoulders of good parties. There’s better mission when there’s better worship. At the end of the service, the pastor stands up with open arms to give a benediction. It’s a blessing and also a rally cry to go back into a broken world that needs healing. Worship demands action. If saints aren’t being made more Christ-like, or if chains aren’t being broken and powers and principalities aren't vanquished, then it’s not a right experience of God. It’s just fairy tales and self-help, or worse—entertainment. The taste of the bread and wine must make us hungrier for real life, which is life as God intends in the kingdom of God. If we have an encounter that moves us and begins to shape our will, then we’re more likely to not just have church, but to do church.

To put it all more simply, bad parties don’t cut it.

​We should bring better gifts, a bigger appetite, and an expectation that something good might happen—something we can’t risk missing. We owe it to God who has created a festal life and is inviting us into it. But we also owe it to our communities, especially if worship is a primary place that God changes our wills, sanctifies us, and makes us into the kind of people who transforms the world. Let’s not settle for routine when real goodness and truth might fall on our human hearts and then radiate out into the world.

When folks say, ‘something beautiful just happened,’ then pastors and other leaders of the church should listen. If it’s a better party to gather with the neighboring congregations, then why don’t we do it more often? After all, it’s beauty that will heal our broken world. Let us gather it to create another living performance of God’s drama of (re)creation.

Unless, of course, we think that there’s nothing to celebrate.

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