Pondering about worship and Veteren's Day

[My guess is that will be the most controversial post I have written so far. I penned it after worship on Veteren's Day and have been tweaking it over the past week.]

I was inexplicably a bit uncomfortable in church this morning when a video began playing. It took me a minute or two to realize why. We had just been singing hymns and choruses in worship of God. I was filled with warmth and had begun focusing on the service ahead, anticipating both the adoration of God for an hour and what God might say to me this glorious day. I realized I was in deep need of worship and contemplation. as i watched the video with my heart focused towards worship of God, it slowly dawned on my that what i was watching had nothing to do with God or with worship, but was instead focused on honoring and thanking war veterans (complete with quotes from political leaders, authors, and others). I'm sure my brow began to furrow as the quotes and images scrolled across the screen. As the video wound down, a question popped into my consciousness: Is a worship service an appropriate time to honor war veterans, celebrate America, or offer thanks or praise to anyone other than God? My first thought is an adamant, "No!" But then, I moderate to, "We'll, perhaps, but...." 

In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I have never been a fan of overdone celebrations of America at church. I have found it terribly inappropriate when churches have posted advertisements in the newspapers and broadcast commercials on the radio promoting fourth of July worship extravaganzas complete with skydiving military professionals, Ferris wheels, pyrotechnics, church sized American flags, military celebrities, military vehicles, and many other overly dramatic appeals to attract non-church goers. My question has been, "and what does that have to do with God?" It seems at best a bait-and-switch ploy to get folks onto church property and at worst an inappropriate mixing of holy and secular, politics and religion, worship of God and worship of human-made idols by celebrating military might and exploits as if they all are blessed and endorsed by God.
 

Part of my job is planning services of worship for collegians. The team with which I work tries to be conscious of honoring God in all that we do during each service. As the minister who overseas the worship area, I try to be the one who asks the annoying questions by bringing up the appropriateness of elements we are planning. But sometimes the students are the ones who push back, telling me that the music I have suggested or the placement of announcements, videos, or even teaching time is possibly not the most conducive to a worshipful setting. I prefer to mix things up from week to week by altering the placement of the elements of each service. The students however, always want large segments of corporate singing (the part of the service they deem "worship") immediately preceded or followed by teaching. They never want announcements during the service, but at the very beginning or the very end. For them, focus on and worship of God should not been interrupted by more trivial, unrelated matters. Despite my love for textured worship services, I am coming to agree with them. In our crazy-busy, technologically driven, always connected world it is tough to find extended periods where we can direct our attention solely on God. Even the insertion of jokes into a message may serve as a distraction instead of an illumination of the teaching point. 

I have come to see that every element of worship should point those gathered towards God. Period. 

Please understand, I'm not a prude who has to have "my" worship tradition unchanged. As I mentioned above, I love change; In fact, I need creativity, change, spontaneity, and "new" to be happy and content. That sentiment extends into worship as well. The balance that I have found is to ensure that anything extraneous to actual worship - the honoring, adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to and of God - should be done before or after "worship." The difference should be obvious to all, explained with words or definite transitions. No one should confuse the mundane with the holy. No one should confuse honoring our peers with honoring God through worship. The worship hour should be holy. It is our responsibility to keep it that way. At our student's encouragement during our collegiate worship services we make announcements before worship begins or after it is over. We often honor graduating seniors and students who have made great achievements. But that is always done at the beginning or end of our time together. We try hard not to abuse the hour given to God in worship. It is often hard enough to keep our focus where it should be - on God - without adding built in distractions into the planned service.

Yes, I am proud to be an American. I am thankful for the sacrifices my grandparents, brothers-in-law, nephews, students, and many thousands more people I do not know, have given serving our country in military service. Their service has given us freedom and has helped to keep the freedoms we have. But my first priority, my highest allegiance, and especially times of formal worship, should be focused solely on God and on nothing else! It is appropriate to give thanks to God for our freedoms as well as for those who have served and those who continue to serve. It is appropriate to pray for those who are serving. But worship is not the time to thank them personally or corporately. Worship is about God and only about God. 

What should I do with my life?

In college I paid a visit to Dr. Rosalind Ragans, or Roz, as she was informally known - my art teacher and mentor I had throughout my elementary, middle and high-school years. I went rather out of guilt. You see I attended college in the town where I grew up and where Roz still lived. I got so busy with my own life that I didn't cross the street from campus to say hello - literally, her neighborhood was just less than a mile away from the campus. I was an art major in college. Roz kind of discovered me as an artist. She was the art teacher at Marvin Pittman Laboratory School, a school that was a part of Georgia Southern University. Georgia Southern began as Georgia's Teacher College. The school was built as a place for teaching would-be educators how to do their job. All of the classrooms were built with two way mirrors in the walls so that observations could be done without interrupting the classroom. It was kind of creepy to go into the little rooms next to the classes and look through at all of the activities going on. Roz was at the school when I went to 1/2 day preschool as a 5 year old. Even the preschoolers had art class! I attended Marvin Pittman from preschool all the way through 9th grade and Dr. Ragans was my art teacher all the way through. For some reason she had favored me from the first class I had with her. She later told my parents that I was one of her favorites.

When I moved to Statesboro High School for 10th grade I didn't get along very well with the art teacher there. In my High School Artist mind she was not very good. I continued to view Roz as my teacher. I went to her house several times a week for private lessons. One year when I was middle school age she bought an old homemade potter's wheel at an auction and brought it to Marvin Pittman. Roz had polio as a child and because of the weakness in her left arm and leg could not exert enough force on the clay to use the wheel. She wanted her student's exposed to lots of methods of making art. Because she could not use the wheel herself she told he the basic techniques and I struggled through learning how to use the potters wheel on my own. Each summer Roz was the teacher for High School Summer School art classes. She asked me to be her teaching assistant when I was just a middle schooler. For the help I gave I received High School elective credit! As a result I taught pottery to high school students each summer from 7th grade through 10th grade.

On the visit to her house in college she proudly showed me a copy of her soon to be published book, ArtTalk. Roz had developed an amazing technique for teaching art to elementary and middle school students. In fact, her book has been the authority on art education for many years. It has been translated in to many different languages and has gone through many different revisions. When she pulled out the new copy she told me to open it to a certain page. There, in full color, was one of the pictures I had drawn when I was in kindergarten. I don't remember if she then took me to the files where she had with lots of my work or if she told me to look up another page number, and another, and another. But I remember seeing lots of my early work. She had kept many of my pictures and had some published them in her book. The last one I looked at was a large pencil drawing that I had done while looking out of her front window. I called it, "View from a Southern Window." It featured her window and the huge Southern Pine trees just across the street from her house. As a high school junior it was one of the pictures in my portfolio when I applied and was accepted into The Governor's Honors Program. I also submitted the picture to the Georgia Art Symposium, a juried art show for High School students then held at the University of Georgia. I was selected from among a small group of students across the state to travel to UGA for the opening of the show and for a weekend of classes and seminars on art. After the show I gave the framed picture to Roz as a thank you for the many years of teaching me and mentoring me. From that exhibit a few pieces were selected to be displayed in the Georgia State Capital building in Atlanta. My drawing was selected, and I had to borrow it back from her so it could hang in the state capital the spring of my senior year. I received a call from someone who curated the capital's artwork telling me that two pieces from the show had been chosen to be in the permanent collection. He then asked if I would donate the piece to state of Georgia. I told him no. It was not mine to give because I had already given it to my teacher. He begged. I refused. Roz said I was crazy. But she still had the picture on her wall and, as I remember it, had published it in her book, showing the development of a young child into an artist.

I looked back and forth between the first picture of mine in the book and the last. There was no comparison between the two. The first looked like any old pre-school child's scribbles. There was no real form, no good use of color, no creative use of line - there was nothing remarkable about the picture. I paused on the picture, wondering why in the world this brilliant woman who had taught me so much, gave the child who drew this scribble-scrabble any second thought! So I asked her, "Roz, what in the world did you see in this picture that caused you to think I would ever develop into someone who could draw this?" as I flipped over to the last picture. She laughed and told me something I will never forget"

"Nathan, it was not the drawing that caught my attention, it was the look on your face while you drew and as you presented the finished product to me. You simply beamed with joy and pride." She continued, "And through the years I watched that grow and develop. Not only did you love producing artwork and trying new things, you loved to help others do the same thing! You took joy in helping others learn to draw, to paint, to make pottery. You loved watching others create art!" 

Some of you maybe wondering why I bring this story up. You know that my current job has nothing to do with art. Yes, I play around at home, drawing some, throwing a few pots here and there, playing around with woodworking and the like. I like being creative, but I'm not an artist. But what Roz saw grow in me way back then is still what drives me today - I love to help others grow and learn and develop. I love to watch others "get it." I love to teach, to draw out of people ideas, skills, and abilities that they did not realize they had. I love to help people make faith connections in the midst of the mundane. Basically, I thrive on helping others "become."

When I went back to see Roz again just before I graduated from college I feared she would be disappointed in me because I was leaving the expected career of art. But she wasn't - at least she didn't show it. Roz, a lapsed non-practicing Jew, gave me her blessing as I headed off to seminary.

As a collegiate minister my realm of teaching is different now, but I still get great satisfaction in watching others make connections and learn new things. I have students come to me quite often wanting advice as they wrestle with the practical question, "What does God want me to do with my life!?!" Sometimes I tell them my story. Sometimes I give them a quote from Frederick Beuchner about "calling" or, more specifically, "vocation." He wrote, "vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need." As we seek to discover what it is we were created for, the task is to discover the answer to two questions, "what gives me the greatest joy?" and "what do I see as the greatest need in the world?" Where those two answers intersect we can discover our vocation, calling, destiny, or whatever we would like to deem it. It is at that juncture that we find we can say, "I was made for this!" Some people even find a way to get paid to do the thing they know they were created to do! Sometimes, however, a calling is not the same as a career. Some people have to actually get jobs which then allow them to pay the bills so they can perform their vocation on the side. There are many "bi-vocational" ministers who work in a church or para-church ministry part-time or as volunteers on their time off from their "jobs," the work they do that pays the bills.

The key is getting to know yourself and being honest about what motivates you and drives you, then finding a way you can do that to meet the needs of the world. Pretty simple. Yet many people find discovering their calling or their vocation a difficult and long process. I think this is for lots of reasons.

Many people become so programmed over their lives that they really have no clue about what they really want to do. They have developed dreams around the expectation that they need a high paying job to make lots of money to be successful or happy. The first step to answering Beuchner's questions is getting back to zero by ridding yourself of the lies you have been told and have told yourself about success or dreams for the future. Sometimes getting back to zero is nearly impossible. Most of us have become so enmeshed with the subtle messages about success that we cannot see beyond a future paycheck. What we need is someone like Roz who will point out to us what they see in us. Before that conversation with Roz I was full steam ahead towards a career as an art teacher.

Midway through my college career I decided that I wanted to teach on the college level, not in elementary or high school. Through a confluence of events, over a four year period of time, I discovered that I was made for collegiate ministry, not art. My conversation with Roz was the beginning of that journey. I thought I knew who I was and where I needed to go with my life. Talking to her caused me to reflect on my art experiences, but also on other areas where I had found success. All of them revolved around a teacher who took special interest in me, nurtured me, challenged me, and pushed me to become more. A few years back I developed a purpose statement (it was all the rage in the early 90's): My purpose is to help collegians become all that they can be in Christ Jesus. Though that was composed many years ago, that sentiment still drives me to get out of bed each day and to get to work early.

I have discovered what I was created for...how about you?

*Update - Roz and I have just reconnected via LinkedIn and email. She lives only a few miles away in Lawrenceville. I'm headed over for a visit very soon!