Church Experiment #28: Beth Messiah Synagogue

In 2000, I became a Christian at the age of 23. Two years later, I was working at one of the largest churches in the country. After two more years, I left that job to help start a brand new church. Four years later, I stopped attending church. So...no church, to attending church, to working in a church, to starting a church, to leaving the church - all in less than eight years. Now, I am visiting 52 churches in 52 weeks in order to redefine my faith. This is reflection 28 of 52.

Going into the Saturday morning service, I believed one of two things to be true of Messianic Jews:

1) They were Jews who believed in Jesus.
2) They were Christians who still practiced Jewish traditions.

After the service, I'm more confused than I was going in. In two hours and fifteen minutes (which is a long time to be in a synagogue), Jesus was never mentioned. Not once. They talked about God a lot, but no Jesus. Or, if he was mentioned, I missed it, which means he wasn't a centerpiece of the service. (And I know they use Jeshua, but I didn't hear that either.)

So...moving on.

For the first time in a long time, no one really spoke to me during my visit. The greeter barely said hello, and that was the only time someone addressed me. The main room sat between 250-300 people, and it was probably about half full at its peak. People dressed business-casual, and many (but not all) of the men wore prayer shawls and the little Jewish hats. The congregation was mostly white, and there was a pretty wide range of ages. The service started a few minutes late and, as I mentioned, ran about 135 minutes. In all fairness, Beth Messiah did host a guest musician, Jimmie Black, who played for over an hour, so maybe this was a long service for them.

The service officially began with a prayer, specifically asking us to "bathe in the presence of Hashem." I hope Hashem is God, because I knew a guy named Hashem once, and I don't want to take a bath in front of him.

Then worship began, and Beth Messiah's version of worship is definitely unique. Once the music started, a dozen people went up front and started dancing. It looked like a Jewish two-step. Or, as I wrote down, a Jew-step. Get it? Yeah...I was pretty proud of that one.

I actually liked it. The moves were complex (and I later saw online they have classes in case people want to learn the steps), so I didn't participate, but the dance seemed lively. Nothing weird or goofy. It reminded me of what happened at Christian Life Center. Just a group of people having a good time dancing for God. The energy was definitely high during worship - it felt like a cross between a wedding, a church service, and a ho down. One woman even had a Star of David that she fashioned into a tambourine. Nice.

The third worship song was in Hebrew, and I must say, it was quite beautiful. Sometimes you don't even have to understand the lyrics to feel the song's soul.

But what really blew me away was the fourth song, called Moshiach. In Hebrew, the worship leader sang, "V'af al pi sheyisma'mei'ah, im kol zeh achakeh lo bechol yom sheyavo." To me, that looks like someone fell asleep with their head on the keyboard and woke up to find gibberish on his screen, but she made it sound amazing.

After worship, there was about fifteen minutes of singing/reading prayers - first in Hebrew, then translated into English. There was Shema, V'a hav ta, Amidah, Kaddish, and so on.

For some reason, these ancient Jewish traditions were fascinating. The Catholic traditions never seem to resonate with me (maybe because I have more experience with them), but the Jewish rituals really had my attention. Especially the Torah Ceremony.

The scripture reading was from Numbers 25, but the wild part was the Torah Ceremony. First, two men walk up to a large armoire in the corner of the stage. (And keep in mind, there is praying and singing going on all throughout this process.) They take out a giant cloth covering with a royal crown on top. It looked like this:

And instead of just taking the Torah out of its container, one of the guys carries it around the entire room. As he walks, people line up behind him to follow (only like a dozen or so, and mostly children). As he passes people, they touch the cloth and kiss the hand that touched it. Because I was sitting in an aisle seat, it passed right by me, so not wanting to look like a sinner, I touched it, but forgot to kiss my hand. Oops. Sorry, God. I did kiss my hand later in the service just to cover my rear, but it may have been too late.

So, after everyone has a chance to touch the Torah covering, he takes it back up front and they remove the actual Torah, which is a huge scroll. Where does one get such a large Torah?

Torahs-R-Us?

(For the record, I have never been prouder of myself.)

So, after the Torah was unrolled, the process of reading the scripture began. I couldn't keep up. A woman would read something at the podium, then someone would read from a book, then someone would read from the actual Torah (all in Hebrew), and then someone would translate in English. The whole process took at least fifteen minutes to read a couple dozen verses from scripture, but it did sound pretty sweet.

My favorite part was when one guy was reading, and he said, "Gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, Cosby, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish.

Wait, Cosby?

It was the only word I understood, and it was crystal clear. I thought someone was playing a joke on me until I realized he was reading the story from Numbers that involved Cozbi, a Midianite woman who was put to death. But I'm sure Bill is in there somewhere too.

After the scripture readings concluded, there was another big ceremony to put the Torah back in the armoire. And that was it. No message, just readings from the Torah. The Rabbi went up front and did some announcements, took up an offering, asked new people to raise their hands (I decided not to raise my hand, but about seven other people did), and introduced Jimmie Black, a Messianic musician, who played a set for the congregation.

He had a good voice, but his whole performance was basically another worship set. More dancing, more singing, and this time, a conga lined formed that sashayed right by me. A few people got down on their hands and knees to pray, and a couple women up front started howling. I was enjoying the service up until this point. Not because anything bad was happening, but man, it just went on forever. We already had about twenty minutes of worship, and Jimmie Black did over an hour more! It just felt like the service was never going to end. I totally tuned him out at one point and just sat there thinking about the Church Experiment.

In the midst of the conga line passing a second time, and those two women still screaming on the floor, I realized I'm in box-checking mode. No wonder people hate church. When attending every week becomes a duty or a chore, you're bound to dislike the experience. As I sat there, annoyed that the music felt like it was never going to end, I just wanted to get through the service so I could get on with my life.

Church has become a dentist appointment - something you don't look forward to, but you have to get a checkup, so you suck it up and go anyway.

But I don't want church to feel like a root canal. And I'm not blaming Beth Messiah or Jimmie Black or any of the other churches I have attended. It's something that was probably unavoidable when I set out to visit 52 different churches in 52 weeks. I am having a difficult time connecting because I am disconnected.

But I think I have an answer - at least within the structure of the experiment. From now on, I am going to work harder to connect to people instead of just visiting a service. Instead of waiting to be greeted, what if I introduce myself? And instead of bolting right way, what if I stay afterwards and talk? What if I invite someone to coffee? The Mennonite Church in Cincinnati has a pot luck on the second Sunday of each month. Mennonites, I'll see you August 9th with my potato salad!

I'm gonna get myself, gonna get myself, gonna get myself connected! I ain't gonna go blind for the light that is reflected!

I did enjoy Beth Messiah - the Jewish traditions were very interesting. It actually made me very excited to visit a Jewish Synagogue to learn more about some of their ancient rituals. But Messianic Judaism definitely isn't for me. Although, there was that conga line...

Next week may get a little tricky. I will be watching a good friend of mine get baptized Sunday morning, so I'll have to get creative with church #29 (I already visited the church baptizing him). I'll figure something out. Until then, Shalom!

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Confessions of a CF Husband

Strap in for this one.

While I was in North Carolina, someone from a church in the Outer Banks (called Nags Head Church) commented that I should visit them. By that point, I had already made up my mind to stop by Duck Methodist (mostly because they had a Wednesday night service that fit into our traveling schedule), so I didn't think much of it.

Then, Tuesday night I was checking my Google Analytics and I noticed a huge spike in visits on June 23rd. As I searched for the reason, I noticed I had a lot of visits from a blog I had never heard of called "Confessions of a CF Husband." So, I clicked on the link and found Nathan, Tricia, and Gwyneth. Nathan is the worship leader for Nags Head Church - the same person who left the comment on my blog.

Their story is simply amazing. The kind of story people should be making movies about.

When I see that type of strength and courage from Tricia, it blows me away. And when I see a man of character like Nathan, I am challenged to step up and stop acting like a selfish little boy.

Read their story, pass it along to your friends, and say a prayer tonight for the Lawrenson family.

Click here for the full story.

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Best Acting Performances

Monday night, I finally got around to watching Ray. I like Jamie Foxx, but because he blew up after that movie, I was always a little skeptical. After all, Foxx is no Denzel.



But after watching the movie (which is really good), I must say, Foxx gave one of the best acting performances I have ever seen. There are great actors, and then there are actors who seem to become the character they are portraying.

Throughout most of the movie, I forgot Foxx was an actor. It was almost like Ray Charles was starring in his own movie. If acting is an art, then Foxx created the Mona Lisa in Ray.

So I got to thinking...what are other performances I would put in that category? Actors who became the character.

After some thought, here are my top ten (I realize many of these are recent performances, but obviously, those come to mind first). I would love for you guys to add to the list by sharing your own.

In no particular order:

1) Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray
2) Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood
3) Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight
4) Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
5) Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Milk
6) Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs
7) Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland
8) Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man
9) Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump
10) Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Misery

I know I am leaving a ton out, so that's where you come in. I love actors like Kevin Spacey, Denzel Washington, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank, Robin Williams, Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Kate Winslet, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Jodie Foster, Johnny Depp, Philip Seymour Hoffman, among others, but no performances of theirs are screaming at me the way those ten are.

What performances come to mind for you?

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Church Experiment #27: LifeChurch.tv

In 2000, I became a Christian at the age of 23. Two years later, I was working at one of the largest churches in the country. After two more years, I left that job to help start a brand new church. Four years later, I stopped attending church. So...no church, to attending church, to working in a church, to starting a church, to leaving the church - all in less than eight years. Now, I am visiting 52 churches in 52 weeks in order to redefine my faith. This is reflection 27 of 52.

Sunday, I experienced the perfect storm of laziness.

It was the day after the 4th of July, which meant I enjoyed a few adult beverages with friends the previous evening. It also meant I stayed up pretty late and had a difficult time waking up in the morning. The weather was chilly and rainy in Cincinnati - an odd combination for early July. My gas tank was on empty, and I really didn't feel like stopping to fill up. I had exhausted most of the churches within walking distance of my apartment. The Hindu Temple I plan on attending at some point in July is almost a thirty-minute drive. And so on.

The perfect cure for a lazy Sunday afternoon?

Church online.

I have known about LifeChurch.tv for a few years. An acquaintance worked there for a brief stint, and I was always fascinated with its online church experience. Basically, they have thirteen actual campuses - eight in Oklahoma, and one each on Arizona, Florida, New York, Tennessee, and Texas. But, from what I understand, all thirteen campuses use the same live feed for their services. If I go to church in Albany, New York, I watch the pastor from an Oklahoma campus give the message. As their tag line states, "One church. Multiple locations."

About five years ago, LifeChurch.tv decided to open an online campus. That means people all over the world can log on and watch the same service at the same time - complete with worship, an offering, announcements, and a message. (Communion was a little tougher.)

Now, this isn't a videocast. Many churches allow you to visit their web site and watch video from the previous week's service. And I used to listen to many podcasts on my MP3 player (Matt Chandler, John Ortberg, Mark Driscoll, Erwin McManus, Rob Bell), but this is different. This is like going to church, only in your pajamas. I mean, how often do you attend church in your underwear?

I did exactly that yesterday. (You are welcome for that visual.)

Right off the bat, getting to the service online is pretty easy. You start at http://www.lifechurch.tv/. From there, it's fairly simple to access the online church community (you can't miss it). Entering the church experience is pretty straightforward, but Saturday night, I had a difficult time figuring out when it started. All times are listed as GMT or CDT. I didn't even know what CDT was. (Central Daylight Time?) From what I found through a Google search, sometimes CDT is EST and sometimes it's CST. So after a decent amount of research, I finally realized there was an 11:00am EST service.

Once "inside," I noticed a number of details (as you can sorta see from this screen capture.)



First, a small screen that feeds the service directly to your computer. Second, an additional window off to the right of the screen that gives four options:

1) Chat
2) Global Users Map
3) Message Notes
4) Facebook Connect

The Facebook Connect wasn't anything useful. Just a way to tell people through a Facebook status update that you are watching LifeChurch.tv online.

The Message Notes were...the message notes. Scriptures, talking points, etc. Pretty basic stuff.

The Global Users Map showed dots representing where in the world people were watching from. Most viewers originated in the Midwestern or Northeastern regions of the United States, but there were additional dots scattered through the country and the world.

The Chat Room is what really stood out. Just like any real-time chat (instant messaging, Facebook chat, AOL chat rooms, etc.), as a visitor, I could interact with my fellow viewers. All I had to do was create a nickname (I choose "TheSeeker") and I was ready to go. I will be talking about this feature throughout the post, so more on chatting later.

At precisely 11:00am, the service began with a brief welcome by the worship leader, and then moved directly into worship. They were pretty good. Ok songs, ok talent. Pretty typical stuff. The problem was the chat feature. I knew right away attending an online church was going to be filled with distractions. Not only would I have felt weird about standing, clapping, singing, and raising my hands in my living room, but because people were chatting throughout the entire worship set.

Imagine you went to an actual church building, and during worship, you sat with a couple dozen friends and carried on a conversation during every song. At one point, I even asked the room, "Just curious...how do you guys experience worship if you chat at the same time?"

One person answered, "Church isn't just about music and the message, it's also about relationships."

Someone else said, "Sometimes we use chat as a worship response."

Interesting.

Either way, I was distracted. I kept reading the screen instead of paying attention to the music. Of course, I could have ignored the conversation or clicked out of the chat option, but that's like saying I could just ignore a group of people behind me talking during a church service. You're compelled to eavesdrop.

Some people actually did say they were clapping along and raising hands as they worshipped, but considering they typed out those words, I was skeptical. (But also impressed.)

After watching many people say "hello again" and "welcome back" and other greetings of familiarity, I added to the noise by asking this question: "Do you guys come back every week to this service? Do many of you know each other from this experience?" I was curious about the online community being developed.

Many answered yes. One said she meets with an online small group (or life group as they call them). Another said he actually leads a church in his home and they use the live feed every week as their service. Fascinating.

After worship, a man named Kevin Thomas from Australia said a prayer, greeted online viewers, and gave brief introductions.

Then, Brandon Donaldson (who I believe is the online campus pastor for LifeChurch.tv) took up an offering. Seriously! A button popped up on the screen that I could click and donate online...right there...in the moment. Wild.

Craig Groeschel, the senior pastor at LifeChurch.tv, came on screen next to say hello and ask viewers to invite friends and family to next week's service, the beginning of a series called "At the Movies." He said it was designed for people who don't normally attend church, and it sounds like they are going to talk about movies, so I am officially inviting you to check it out. Sounds like it might be interesting.

Finally, the speaker hit the stage. Interestingly enough, Pastor Dino Rizzo actually spoke from his home church in Louisiana, but since LifeChurch.tv is beamed all over the world anyway, it really doesn't matter where the pastor is speaking, as long as the video feed is working.

Ok, so here is where things got...ummm...strange?

Pastor Rizzo seems like a nice guy. His message was probably pretty good. The parts I heard were interesting. The theme was, "God is here and anything can happen." Good point. Something I need to become more aware of each day. I often limit God (as in, if you have cancer, God isn't going to heal you). Do I really believe anything can happen with God? I want to answer "yes," but my gut always screams out "no way." I put God in a box, but I'm working on that.

With that said, I barely heard anything Pastor Rizzo said because I was so distracted by the conversation in the chat room. (Also, I left the room at one point to get a bowl of Banana Nut Cheerios...can't get those at church!) People kept chatting throughout the entire message. And not just casual conversation, but deep stuff.

It got crazy when someone named Red joined the room and immediately asked, "Does God hate me?"

Everyone pounced. They were trying to help, I'm sure, but man, everyone had something to say in response to Red.

Red followed up the initial question with, "I tried to die," and, "But I self harm," and, "I was raped." It kept escalating from there.

Needless to say, Red dominated the whole conversation. It might have been real, but it felt fake, like someone was online screwing with everyone. And, honestly, there is no way of knowing in that environment. A few people encouraged her to click on the "Live Prayer" button, but she didn't. Others encouraged her to listen to the message (which applied to her circumstances), but she seemed more concerned with telling her wild story.

This created a super-bizarre dynamic. A co-dependence of sorts. Red was looking for people to tell her everything would be ok, and it wasn't her fault, and she's a good person, and God loves her. And the Christians in the room seemed to get off on helping her. It seemed like a competition - who could give the most obvious Christian response to Red's (supposedly) serious problems. One person even offered the classic, "Let go and let God."

If I ever got raped and, in response, someone told me to, "Let go and let God," I would punch him.

What Red needs is in depth counseling from a professional, not cliche religious sayings. In fact, many people were giving her some terrible advice. I'm not saying prayer isn't involved in the process of healing, but God created professional counselors for a reason. You are not equipped to deal with complex emotional disorders because you love Jesus. Often, you will make things worse if you try to help without the proper training.

It's not enough to be well-intentioned.

People did start praying for Red in the chat room, which seemed a little odd, but was probably the healthiest response. Your prayers for someone in need are probably going to be good; your advice is probably going to be bad. Stick with the prayers.

There were a few people who came into the room to cause trouble, but they seemed few and far between. I assumed there would be more problems with anti-church folks. One guy asked if there were any sexy women in the room. Another guy named Boobs wrote the word "boobs" and then disappeared. I sorta giggled at that one. During worship, someone named CT Dan asked, "With the worship set...are we preparing our hearts for worship or selling albums?" For every song, a little banner ran beneath the screen with details, including a link to the artist and CD.

So, overall, minor stuff compared to what people could do in that environment. Who knows, maybe they have a way of filtering out graphic language and obscene comments.

At the very end of the service, the Australian pastor was back on the screen explaining the connect card and "What's Next" kit. He even led an altar call! He told people to electronically raise their hands (there was a button you could push) if they wanted to accept Jesus. I could see the tally of hands going up, and it reached a couple dozen before the number disappeared.

The service was exactly an hour long - twenty minutes of worship, thirty-minute message, and ten minutes of other random stuff I already described. Once the service ended, the screen went blank, but people could still hang around and chat until the next service began thirty minutes later.

I stuck around for a couple of minutes, but signed off once the conversation slowed down.

Online church was a fascinating experience. As someone who has been around the Internet for almost twenty years (including AOL back in the day), I am familiar with how chat rooms can simultaneously build and hinder community. I still see it happening with communities like Facebook and Twitter every day. There is good; there is bad. But, then again, that probably describes almost everything in life.

I don't think an online church is right for me (mostly, I get too distracted), but I can see how others would enjoy it. And it's not a bad replacement if you can't make it into church for whatever reason. Part of me is just nervous that we are moving closer to the day where we won't ever have to leave our homes again. That seems like a scary direction to be moving.

Next week I am about 90 percent sure I'm visiting a Messianic Jewish Church/Synagogue. Until then, I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day. I know I speak for all of us when I say thank you to all the men and women who continue to fight for freedom today. Your courage, strength, and character encourage so many.

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Socialism

I have been thinking about socialism a lot recently. I don't claim to be a political expert, nor could I give a complete explanation of every governing ideology throughout history.

I just think it's interesting that socialism gets blasted so much in the United States. It was even used against Barack Obama in last year's presidential election.

My question: If you and fifty other people became stranded on an island, wouldn't it seem natural to choose socialism as your governing ideology?

Wouldn't everyone have to work, and be given a job that best matches their skill set? Wouldn't everyone be given medical care by the group's doctor, regardless of socioeconomic status? Wouldn't everyone be given an equal portion of food and water? Wouldn't everyone be provided with shelter? Wouldn't every child be given the best possible education?

There probably wouldn't even be money. Everyone would pitch in, and everyone would be cared for.

I know 300 million people is very different than 51 people, but come on, shouldn't we strive for a country where every person has equal access to a good education, quality health care, food, shelter, etcetera? In my gut, it feels like a no-brainer.

Honestly, I have a hard time understanding how you can follow Jesus and not promote socialism. Would Jesus support capitalism? I don't claim to know the answer to that question, but the character of Jesus doesn't seem to line up with some of our traditional American values.

So that's what has been swimming around my brain recently. Clearly, my pool is only a few feet deep.

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