I had the opportunity to preach at Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, MN yesterday. As the director of Lost and Found Ministry, it is important for me to visit them, at least once a year, to share with them the ministry of Lost and Found, and what is going on at Recovery Worship.
It is always an interesting experience for me. This is the first time in almost a year that I have worn my Alb, I even had to Google "Christ the King Sunday" so I would wear the proper colored stole. In many ways, preaching at Trinity was a flash back for me. For seven years I served eight congregations in rural North Dakota. Each congregation was wonderful, but each had its own, distinct, personality.
The difference between the 8am and 9am service at Trinity in Moorhead reminded me of the days that I would preach in Sutton and Hannaford, ND. Sutton would always be the first service. I would arrive at church about a half an hour prior to the service. One or two folks would show up about fifteen minutes before the service, and then, just a few minutes before the service began, everyone (normally about 15 people) would arrive and take their places in the church, of course in their assigned pews.
It was near impossible to get the folks at Sutton to smile, laugh, clap (impossible to clap) during worship. Regardless of how many jokes, intended or otherwise I had in my service, they would not laugh. And of course, only at Sutton did I ever have anyone sneak up to me during the sermon hymn to question something I had said in a sermon. The amazing thing about this story is, the people of Sutton, following the service would head for the basement for coffee and conversation. The men would sit on one side of the basement to discuss farming, hunting, and sports, and the women would sit on the other side and discuss quilting, cooking, and complain about the men. They would laugh, smile, and joke with each other, a truly wonderful group of people. However, in church, they were the model, staid, Norwegian, congregation.
Following Sutton I would make the drive to Hannaford, thinking all the way, that my sermon bombed. Then in Hannaford the people would be talking and laughing and visiting while communion was being prepared and Sunday school was being let out. In Hannaford, the congregation would laugh when I said "Good morning" and would not stop until the service was over. They clapped for the special music, regardless of the quality of the music, the clapped during the children's sermon, and they laughed at my jokes, regardless if the jokes were funny or not. They were generally happy to be there.
The eight o'clock service at Trinity was much like the Sutton congregation. In the middle of my sermon I wanted to shout out, "Why are you people here? What made you get up this morning, put on your suits and Sunday dresses, and come to church this morning?" The expression on the faces at 8 am was not unlike those faces you see in a dentist's office waiting room on people waiting for a root canal.
The nine o'clock service at Trinity was much like the service in Hannaford. People were smiling, they clapped for the youth choir (however why they don't clap for the other music is beyond me) and they laughed. I got the sense that they were really happy to be in worship.
Now there are a lot of reasons for this difference, mostly generationally, but I will save that for another blog. I enjoyed worship at Trinity, but I was really glad to be back with my folks at Recovery Worship at two o'clock to share with them memories of a friend who died last week. I am really glad to be the pastor at Recovery Worship. I wish I knew of a way to bottle up their enthusiasm for worship and sell it to the "cathedral congregations" in Fargo/Moorhead.
See you next Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment