January 18, 2011

The Most Fun You Ever Had in Church

For a guy who hears a lot “you’re really fun – for a priest" I felt upstaged a bit when a local mega-church cancelled services and put the Seattle-Chicago NFL game up on their big screens this past Sunday morning. This story made it on the T.V. news and on the front page of the paper. They showed some of the guys at church wheeling in a keg (at 10 in the morning), serving pulled pork sandwiches and whooping it up until the Seahawks took gas and went down in flames. The church band played Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over” to no avail. The final quote in the newspaper story was from a woman at the church for the game who said, “For the first time in my life, I actually looked forward to coming to church.”

I use this as an illustration that church needs to be fun. And that this is big news.

Can you think of the most fun you ever had in church? We do our best to have a good time several times throughout the year. The Mardi Gras party, the Annual Auction (this year’s theme is Viva Las Vegas), the Kick-off Picnic are regular times for big church fun. Our kids look forward to children’s chapel because it is always a great time. They aren’t so sure about “Big Church.”

Is “Big Church” fun for you? It can be moving, meaningful, profound, boring, slow, routine, dull, or all rolled into one, but on some level, it needs to be fun. Humor in a sermon, some music that brings real joy, a presentation by the church school, well crafted announcements with a few surprise punch lines, unorthodox interecessions during the Prayers of the People can all insert some uplifting joy into the service itself. This is in addition to all the fun events and traditions that a parish maintains over the course of a year.

The church’s pastor that hosted the play-off game said in a pre-game sermon entitled, Why Christians Should Be World-Class Partiers, “when the wedding ran out of wine, Jesus turned water into wine. Here’s the son of God playing open bartender at a week-long party.” We should never lose track of the fact that we come from a tradition that is firmly based in joy.

Of course it would have been a heck of a lot more fun if the Seahawks had won.