Old South Church is only a few blocks away. Neil drops Leslie and me off in front of the church, and drives down the street to find a coffee shop where he can wait for us. Old South is a Congregational church affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Although I was confirmed in a Congregational Church, this is another one of the denominations about which I know very little, and I know I will need to look this up later.
The church bulletin, though, is quite informative. Old South Church was founded in 1768, and was the home to the first legislature of the newly formed State of Vermont in 1768. The original building must have been destroyed at some point, because the building in which we are now meeting was erected in 1798. This building is the “oldest church on its original site in continuous use as a house of worship in Vermont,” according to the bulletin.
It’s a lovely edifice, with white walls and a blue ceiling, nice old woodwork, and unusual and very beautiful stained glass windows. What makes them unusual is that the stained glass is built into shutter-like panels, so that they can be opened, as they are on this morning. Behind the stained glass windows are clear glass panes. So we have both the clear glass windows letting in the light of God, and the lovely stained glass turning our hearts to heaven – a sweet combination of the two main theories about church windows!
There is a central pulpit, and an interesting old pipe organ behind it. I wonder if it actually works, it looks so old. The church can comfortably seat about 200 people, and there are probably a little over 100 in attendance. They have a great bulletin -- very clear, informative, and easy to follow.
The pastor, Rev. Amanda Lape-Freeberg, walks around and speaks to people before the service. She greets Leslie and me, and thanks us for coming. When the service begins, with a welcome and announcements, I am surprised to see a man walking around the sanctuary handing everyone who has something to say a cordless microphone to speak into – the sanctuary isn’t very large, and this doesn’t seem to be a particularly high-tech service –why the mike? Later I learned that the services are recorded for shut-ins, and everyone who talks speaks into the microphone so that the shut-ins won’t miss anything. I came to think of this (the desire to capture everyone’s comments) as one of the truly representative aspects of this church, as will become more apparent later.
The Introit is done as a round – the congregation is divided into two groups for singing “Be Still and Know That I Am God.” It goes off amazingly well, considering that we seem to be your average group of not particularly gifted singers.
The service continues with prayers, a hymn, the confession, moment of silence, and assurance of forgiveness, the Gloria Patri, and special music (a vocalist accompanied by a pianist). Then the pastor calls the children up for the children’s sermon, which they call, in the bulletin, Simply Speaking.
There are seven or eight children, and they sit in the first pew with their backs to the congregation. Rev. Lape-Freeberg asks them to imagine how God might have created the world. She uses three props – a lamp, a water pistol, and a CD player – to illustrate things coming into being. She says “Let there be light,” and someone plugs in the lamp. She says, “Let there be water,” and a confederate sitting in the pew directly behind the children squirts them with the water pistol (amazingly, this does not cause any screaming, just some giggling). She says “Let there be music,” and someone turns on the CD player.
It goes off very well – the pastor is natural and enthusiastic, no one is frightened by the water pistol (which seems to me like the most obvious place for this to fall apart), and the children are attentive and interested. The whole thing takes about five minutes.
Children’s sermons are popular with many churchgoers, but not often with pastors. They are difficult to do well. You have to keep them short, so they must be very well planned. If you get a group of kids who all want to talk, they can go on endlessly (and unintelligibly).
But the more common problem is that children freeze in front of all those staring eyes, and refuse to respond to any of the pastor’s increasingly desperate questions – “So, can anyone think of something God gives us? Anything? Anything at all? . . . . How about food? . . . . How about parents? . . . . . Do you think God gives us friends? . . . . Can you think of anything God has given you? I’ll give you a hint . . . . . . .”
To add to the pastor’s discomfort, children’s sermons are the prop comedy of homiletics. Many adults in the congregation seem to expect the equivalent of Kids Say the Darndest Things, and eagerly look forward to amusing or heartwarming bloopers.
So, someone giving a children’s sermon has to speak and manipulate objects, while simultaneously interacting with a group of children in front of a group of adults. Plus the whole performance has to convey some sort of actual gospel message. It’s no wonder that some pastors dread them.
The sermon is titled “God the Creator.” Rev. Lape-Freeberg lets us know that she will be referring to God using masculine words and pronouns, and apologizes if that offends anyone. Her point is that most of us believe that God is neither male nor female, but we have to use language to speak about God, and sometimes it is just very awkward to do so without using gendered pronouns, and gendered terms such as “Father.”
I know plenty of good Christians are angry and/or dismissive of attempts to deal with the issue of gendered language in any way whatsoever. Some of them, of course, do believe that God is male, so any attempts to conceal His maleness through language seem to be outright efforts to emasculate Him. He is our Father, they argue, so what’s the deal with gender-neutral language?
Some people think that God is not a sexual being in any sense we can imagine, and therefore neither male nor female, but still would prefer we just stick to the traditional language, because it is customary, beautiful, and inspired. I thought the pastor’s response was reasonable – I’m sorry if my language offends you, but it’s too hard to use any other language in the context of the first chapter of Genesis. Of course, there are people who would be offended by her apology – one of the sorry lessons of pastoring is that you’re almost always bound to offend someone whenever you open your mouth.
The point of the sermon is that we should have a sense of wonder when contemplating God’s power of being able to call the world into being from nothingness.
During the offering there is a musical production – “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” performed by three men (clarinet, saxophone, vocalist) and the Director of Music on the piano. They have what jazz musicians call a train wreck near the beginning of their number, so they simply stop and begin again.
I admire their willingness to perform in front of friends and neighbors, and I truly admire and enjoy the music. You know, we are incredibly fortunate in regard to music. If we lived in any other era except for the recent present, the opportunity to hear a wide variety of great music performed by great musicians would be something quite rare – even for the wealthy and powerful. But now, because we happen to live in this amazing age, we can hear the greatest and most accomplished musicians in any genre whenever we want, wherever we happen to be, just by popping a CD into a player, or turning on a computer or MP3 player. This is a staggering thing.
However, what we can’t hear, most of the time, is ordinary people making music. To me this seems like a bit of a loss. I like hearing amateur musicians. I like it when they perform well, and I sympathize and still enjoy it when they don’t do so well. In this particular case, these men stumbled during the first few bars, recovered with grace and dignity, and played and sang for us – a gift from them to us.
The service is obviously winding down – the only part left before the benediction and final hymn, according to the bulletin, is the Joys and Concerns, which is in many churches a quick listing of good or bad events occurring to the congregation during the week. At Old South, though, as I soon realized, Joys and Concerns are in some ways the heart of the service.
The man with the microphone comes out again, so that everyone can be clearly heard and recorded. People share for at least fifteen minutes, and more than one person speaks with tears – tears of both joy and sorrow. The kinds of things they mention are the stuff of ordinary life – children going away or coming home, sickness and recovery, jobs lost or found, people going on mission trips, etc. It somehow doesn’t strike me as soppy, in spite of the occasional tears – people are just talking about their lives, and they are setting before the congregation their hopes and needs. This would be a hard thing to accomplish in a large church, but it’s one of the strengths of a small church.
The pastor asks Leslie and me where we are from when we shake hands going out the door. This church is accustomed to the occasional summer tourist.
Photo courtesy Flickr user bobw235
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