so yesterday after the services at cross point were over, i visited emmaus church in nashville. when the catalyst road trip guys were here a few weeks ago, they introduced me to michael, emmaus’ pastor.
backing up a little, i’m a teenie bit OCD. the symmetrical, every-detail-matters kind of OCD. on sunday mornings, it is a passion of mine to make sure all the song lyrics have no typos, that everything is perfectly aligned, and that there is nothing funky on stage that might interfere with video. (and this really isn’t part of my job description…it’s just who i am!) :)
okay, now, back to emmaus. it’s a small community of twenty-ish people. it’s diverse. it meets in a rented garage in a very potentially dangerous part of nashville. they have made it look amazing and warm and welcoming. like really, when you walk it, your mind explodes a little bit because of the vibe of the space and the welcoming spirit.
as i sat down during the worship set, i noticed a half-empty bag of cheetos leaning against an amp. and then i noticed that my heart didn’t do that little “fix it” pitter-patter. instead, it embraced it.
we do our best to make our environments nice and clean and by all means, we should keep doing it. emmaus was certainly clean and welcoming.
however, i know that in the past (AKA all the time) i know i can try and make an environment perfect. but you know what? i wonder why.
was i distracted by this bag of cheetos? did the holy spirit stop moving in my heart when i saw the bag? not at all. if anything, it made me realize how completely unimportant it is to try and attain perfection within our worship environments.
life is not perfect. people are not perfect. and god forbid, the church is not perfect.
maybe people will feel more comfortable taking off their masks if we don’t portray that we have everything together ourselves. as shane hipps has said, the medium is the message.
the medium of a cheetos bag next to an amp during worship said “real people here” to me.
what does your medium say about you?
Comments
21 responses to “OCDism and how God Speaks through Cheetos”
you’re right, the Church is not perfect and never will be. a bag of cheetos is a great symbol of the Church, especially an open, partially consumed, crumbly, and cheesy bag of cheetos
the life of a perfectionist…i hear you.
ahh! They’re beginning to realize the difference between perfect and perfected again! Quick! We need a distraction!
Oooh! Lookie! Halloween is coming! Oooh! Scary bad OCCULT stuff! Oooh!…
Don’t worry. They fall for that one every year. (grin)
anne, as a worship arts pastor i have simply given up a little. due to our circumstances I got so burnt out and i was doing too many people’s jobs so i had to get comfortable with some “good enough” things. i still try to do my best but not miss God as i do so – and realize that being real speaks to people way more than being supposedly perfect. i have more opportunities to minister when i share the reality of my life.
I was leading worship a couple of weeks ago. I looked down and saw my stainless steel coffee mug on the alter next to the flowers. I was mid-song. It was an awesome second for me – a reminder that I’m just a thug of a guy leading worship.
I was very cool when I shielded the mug with my Bible as I walked of the stage.
We feed our kids waffles with sugar during worship practice.
Your bag of Cheetos brings up a lot of good thoughts about food and worship. Thanks – I needed this on a Monday!
Later,
Terry
I am a detail freak as well and that bag would have dove me nuts! Great Job letting it go! We recently got a fog machine at my church and we are still trying to figure it out. We had lots of smoke yesterday and it was making me a little silly wondering why we had it set so high.
I wish I were less OCD about some things. Just last week I went through a huge chunk of our database here at the office making sure that everyone’s area code was enter in their contact information. This was a waste of time since the only possible good that came out of it was that it made each contact look more uniform when pulled up on my screen. (sick, sick, sick,… I know)
I think my medium can sometimes say I am a person who loses focus. When I lose sight of the big picture I tend to get stuck working passionately on things that don’t matter in the end.
It is our love of God that really matters, not much else, but I can let my focus get hung on the proper audio mix or lighting set and forget the message that is being presented through the audio and lighting. I think the old sermon title for this is called “Majoring on the Minors”. We do it as people, as churches and as denominations.
Thanks for getting my head around this today. I have a very hard week at work this week and need to keep perspective.
To me, if you’re used to grunge jeans that goes along with it and to me it shows some awesome transparency is going on – like “don’t sweat the small stuff.” What’s going on here is far more important!
I’m so glad you got to go to that church! And I know for sure they were thrilled to have you Anne Jackson!
Anne –
Your medium, the first breakout at MinistryCOM08, helped set a tone of honesty and authenticity for the entire conference. I was blown away at how real you were with your highs and your lows. I think your book is going to be a huge gift to a lot of people.
Jon
I totally agree with you! I think that when we over-produce a service, it becomes less authentic, less transparent. If TV can learn and trend toward raw and uncut and less produced, why can’t the church be less produced?
When my wife and I were searching for a new church last year, we actually counted it as a positive when we saw little mistakes here and there because we took that to mean that perhaps it was indicative of a deeper understanding of what really matters. Probably not true…but who knows?
ha…. this week i created a theme song for our connections dude… we call him steggy…. so i had kind of this wwf/early 90s theme music fixed up from garageband (which comes standard on a mac, for those pc guys…) “go steggy baby, go go steggy baby”….
It was perfect!
Then I pressed play during the service as he was walking out…. …..
…..crickets.
He made it funny by trying it again and i could never figure out the problem, but panicking, I must have hit some button that made it work….
Anyway, my wife told me that was the funniest part of the gathering…. goes to show you…
It says “this person cannot make up her mind!” I went through the stage of wanting to make everything look perfect (and I still do). Yet, the worship times I enjoy the most are when I am at a service where it seems the people are not putting on any airs. They aren’t smiling to make me want to come there, they’re just smiling. And, they might not have a perfect “set.” I described this to a pastor I know and he told me different people different times, different locations. So are some called to look organic/authentic and others aren’t? I don’t know. I have both kinds of days… Doing your best to glorify God might mean looking at a different set of things than the ones we have been taught to look at. Just a thought.
My husband and I are both part of the worship team at our church, and we are constantly amazed by the number of people who come up to us after an obvious mistake… a forgotten capo, a cord comes unplugged, etc. The response from them is how much it makes it all real to them… how we are all broken and imperfect and waiting for glory in this “now and not yet” life we lead.
i’m definitely identifying with the second paragraph…”it’s just who i am!”…that pretty much says it all for me as well…i show up 45 minutes early to make sure things are “ready”…
my “medium” was the WORST rehearsal and BEST worship set in months…not to say that preparation is not important, but if we really rely on God and ask Him to use us and to show Himself during our service…He can and will, regardless of how awesome or how terrible our rehearsal time was…i’m still going to be MR. OCD with my preparation, but i need to trust God with what i can not control in any way…
This is seriously why I can’t go to my parents’ church, or churches like – sorry – Cross Point. Everything’s too perfect, too staged, too … corporate. It drives me crazy that “production values” have become the norm in community worship.
I can’t wait to visit Emmaus. Sounds like an awesome community.
What? God still moves even if everything’s not “perfect”?? Help me, I need deliverance!
My OCD turns up in odd ways and at strange times. Like right now, I am trying desperately not to point out that it was Marshall McLuhan who came up with the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ :-)
carla- you are right….and shane gives him credit….in my head i was pulling from the messge shane gave at mars hill…
*message
We try to balance “ready” with “real”. We want to be ready for ministry and whatever service we are ministering in, while all the while remaining real. I mean honestly you can’t get to perfect with a pastor like me who constantly gets morning and evening mixed up. I mean I know what time of day it is, but it often just comes out of my mouth wrong.
When it comes to being ready though I believe we should offer the Lord our best. So we practice, clean, prep, but in the end it’s being real that matters most I think.