email to spencer about church with david:

i hung out with meghan, david robinson, and the kids today--heard a sermon and had brunch. it was uniquely pleasent. though, as from my txt this morning, the understanding of the praise and worship music was less so (though we did encounter a lovely version of what a friend we have in jesus, a song that continues to move me, despite my better instincts)




the sermon was great, though the whole thing gave me a few questions---



there does not seem to be much of a structure, i don't know when the music ends, the passing of the peace seems to be to early, there is no real congreational singing, there was no narrative pull that allowed for the sermon to the be apex, and the sermon should have been the apex because there was no lord's supper--i fundamentally don't understand how you can have a sunday service without having the eucharist, and much of the songs were about the strength of god, and you know, i am convinced that god knows her own strength, i never understood the obsession with praise hymns, or with the idea of a god that is better then other gods, that is bigger--one of the (few?) appeals of xianity for me is the idea that god is weak, that is he is an empty vessell, that his body is broken for us, and the idea that he was only cruicifed/humilated in order to make him stronger i find isolating and kind of off putting.



it was interesting (and i am not sure if you know this) david r's church is thinking about merging with another church, and david r's other church is evangelical but non-demonational, and the baptist church does not seem to have strong ties to it's history--and this is the interesting/confusing thing for me; the liberal anglicans are often criticized for being too wishy-washy, too ambigious, and too willing to jettison it's history or tradition for the convience of its politics or its aesthetics, but isn't that fundamentally what non demontional evangelicals do, and you know it becomes a porridge of realtional aesthetics unrelated to its roots, creeds, or historical texts--David is a brilliant exegete, and the sermon was much more sophisticated then most, but perhaps even the Bible?



(also, side note, for all my supposed moral ambguity, mock shock, and via negativa/refusal to engage with the church--when i sing what i a friend i have in jesus, or when david talks about being part of the adopted family of god, or when i spend time in evangelical circles, fundamentally i feel made alive and beloved in the name of a lord--you know the old joke, where an evangelical christian is bugging the child of a secular jew, that he is not saved, and he is going to hell, and eventually the secular jew goes to his father, and asks about what they believe, and the father says we worship YHWH, who doesn't exist. i've always head that close to my heart, but you know sitting in the back of an evangelical worship house, i think to myself, what the implications would be, if the answer was, I worship Jesus, who does exist?)



I am tired and thirsty, so this is prime time to solidly evangelize me.