Just a link as Lent begins

If you've been following our posts on non-English language services, you might enjoy this song (by David Wilcox) about God's speaking in ways we can each uniquely understand. We first heard it in worship at a nearby church. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDShITngyt0

And here's a link to his website: http://davidwilcox.com/

Healdsburg Seventh Day Adventist Church

Mindy and I have gone to church the vast majority of Sundays in our lives; so much so that it throws off our mental calendars for the week when we don't go. Prior to last weekend, we had a different challenge to the aforementioned mental calendars: remembering to go to church on Saturday morning.

The Seventh Day Adventist denomination has been meeting on Saturdays for a year plus a century and a half. It's one of their founding beliefs, that Christians should meet on the Sabbath as dictated by one of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' practice on earth. Traditionally, most other Christians meet for worship on Sunday in honor of the Resurrection.

There's something to be said for placing a Scriptural basis over a traditional basis for a practice. Upon entering the church, we were greeted by several people with a handshake and "Happy Sabbath."

We knew before we came (the church's website calendar told us) that this would not be their standard service, but instead was the Christmas program. The sanctuary was quite full and the service opened with the Healdsburg Brass. (When we attended Healdsburg Community Church the Healdsburg Brass often opened Easter services.)

We sang a number of Christmas Carols from the hymnal. I was very happy that among the carols was "Now is Born the Divine Christ Child," a song that I usually hear sung in French. (Really, how many songs refer to an oboe, let alone the musette?)

 The program had "Praise Songs / Holy Land Band" but instead there was piano or guitar accompaniment to carols from the Adventist Hymnal. My guess would be that the Holy Land Band usually leads choruses, but things change at Christmas. Many churches we've attended no longer keep their hymnals out, if they even have them. I shared a hymnal with a couple of little girls whose mother had a seat behind us. We were surrounded by a number of small children which made Mindy and me happy, and Mindy noticed a ziploc bag of activities one family had picked up at the back of the church.

There was a dedication of a baby that apparently came all the way from Australia for the event (accompanied by his parents). His mother had grown up in the church and a large contingent of the family came forward, a number of them also having come from Australia.

A number of children came forward for the "Children's Story" which advocated the virtues of being nice over being naughty. After the main offering, children were sent off to collect dollar bills for the local Adventist schools.

There was no sermon for the morning (which made me a little sad because I was looking forward to hearing my friend and the church's pastor, Dan Martella), the message coming through the Christmas Program performed by the Cloverdale Adventist School, "A Christmas to Believe In." The kids did a great job, pulling off the humor and the music, including several solos. The Church Choir and the Men's Chorus provided some of the music in the program as well. From something the woman sitting next to Mindy mentioned, we got the impression that this group performs a Christmas program at the church each year.

After the program, there were a couple of other special musical numbers, a string quartet and a solo. Much happy socializing took place at the service's conclusion. (Apparently, again according to the church website, on the first Sunday of the month there is a 9 am breakfast, followed by 9:45 Bible Study, worship at 11:00 am and then lunch. So fellowship opportunities would seem plentiful.)

It was a good time of worship and worth the challenge to our daily equilibrium.

Statistics:

Service Length: 1 hour 25 minutes

Christmas program time: 35 minutes

Visitor Treatment: Greeted at the door; no "friendship pad" or other way to register attendance (that we noticed)

Our Rough Count: 200

Probable Ushers' Count: 225

Snacks: none

Songs: What Child is This?

            Now is Born the Divine Christ Child

            Silent Night (five verses)

           --Dean

A Pilgrim Can’t Expect the Expected

“We’ve always done it this way before!” is one of the most easily mocked phrases in the modern Christian church. When someone’s come up with a new way to worship more vibrantly, reach people, or even just save money, and people object just because it’s not traditional, you almost have to laugh.

But not at this time of year.

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, and so much of the emotion of Christmas is tied to tradition. This is as true in the church as it is in most households. In both places, it seems important that this particular song is sung and this particular ornament is hung. Frankly, for most of the last three decades, I’ve had enough influence in the churches I’ve been a part of to make sure that many of my favorite traditions are upheld.

I’ve written Christmas programs with songs I want to hear. I’ve been able to pick favorite Scripture for advent readings. And even when I haven’t been able to choose, when I’ve been in a church for years, I could take comfort in expecting things to go as they had before.

But not now.

For this next month, Mindy and I are choosing churches rather randomly. We’ve chosen (been called?) to be church pilgrims for the next couple of years. We don’t know if “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” will be sung tomorrow (a hymn that should always be sung early in the advent season). We don’t know if the churches we’ll go to will have an advent wreath with candles lit by small children very excited about fire. We don’t know if there will be a Christmas tree (that wonderful theft from paganism). We don’t know if the churches we’ll go to even celebrate Advent in four Sundays or save all their Yuletide cheer for one end of the year blow-out event.

Early in our marriage, we moved to a new area and began to worship at a wonderful church that did celebrate Advent. They sang all the right songs. They had caroling activities, and I believe the Sunday School class had a Christmas party. But the pastor came up with absolutely the worst name for an Advent sermon series I’ve ever heard. Taken from Psalm 2:12, the series was entitled, “Kiss the Son Lest.” It’s a small comfort as we encounter different Advent traditions in the weeks to come, traditions perhaps different from our history and preferences: we will not have to deal with a sermon series with a title that awkward for four weeks in a row.


--Dean

What's Happening in 2015

Mindy and I (Dean writes) will be starting an adventure in the year 2015. We will be visiting churches throughout California on a thematic basis (megachurches/home churches, urban churches/rural churches) and we would like you to join us. Just for fun, we'll also be writing about our visits to churches in films, churches in history (real and imagined) and will be writing about church trends, quirks and peeves.

All this is in preparation for an even bigger adventure in 2016 when we plan to visit a church in every state. Bookmark or follow this site now and join our church pilgrimage.