I am a product of the wyt church. For the most part, I have values around keeping a service tight, not letting it go too long, and making sure I don’t give people I know who will go on and on the rope to hang me on as a worship leader. I want to show the rest of the worshipping community that I am “minding the store” — watching the clock so they do not have to do so.
Even as I write those words, I realize how deeply capitalist Christian mainline worship has become. Ok, how deeply capitalist I make my own worship services. To give myself a break, that comes from 30 years of ordained worship where people may love all of the incredible offerings that come in a worship service that lasts an hour and a half. But they still return to me to say, “Yeah, but it went long.” The alternative is rarely offered. Namely, “Well, if God’s gifts and praise take that long to communicate, worship services are to be on God’s time. That’s how the Spirit moves.”
I think there is another reality to consider
My wife related an experience in the Black Church where one of the leaders praised her for “enduring” but also asked if she knew what she was getting herself in for by attending a Black Church worship service. We laughed but in that difference I recognized that this vital church was tasked with much more than the churches I regularly serve.
Black Church worship services require a communication of culture that is decidedly different than the outside world. That culture has to counter so much crap not only who they are as individuals but also who they are as an African-American community which is regularly told that their history does not matter (1619), their votes do not matter (why all the voter suppression in places where Black votes did indeed matter), and their lives do not matter. Holding quantitative space makes possible that they walk out into the wider world knowing that they are Beloved Children of God. In contrast to what the Domination Systems say to them, they know God regularly says, “You are wonderfully and marvelously made and you are precious, cherished, and loved beyond measure!”
You would think God would say, “No! You matter!” Nope. God goes way beyond that to communicate that “matter” is a baseline. At that very moment, God is at the center of the movement to reclaim an identity that is profoundly counter-cultural. If we are going to hear that and make it our own, we have to spend time with it.
Counter-cultural practice takes time. If it is going to get into our blood stream, quantitative space is necessary. That is why wyt church worship will always struggle to be countercultural when it has to be that hour long. Wyt church worship is not trying to be counter-cultural. It is trying to fit into an appointment book.
Wyt church worship is not getting under your skin to help you with the practice of transformative justice.
Lunch after worship is more important. Catching the Bears game is more important. Declaring priorities is a necessary part of spiritual growth. Wyt church worship is more a spiritual nicety rather than a countercultural practice. With its time restrictions, that’s all wyt church worship can ever be.
Evangelical worship, when it is a longer commitment, recognizes it is doing something cultural and carves out the time to do that. But too often evangelical worship is about absolving guilt and obtaining power over and against the O/other. God is like us. The devil is outside the door. Everybody in here is saved. All the people out there . . . well, we’re not sure about them.
Counter-cultural practice requires quantitative space to use the required repetition, have a chance against the cultural messages we receive the other six days of the week, and offer a prophetic word that will have us humming a different tune when we take on the Domination Systems. If wyt church worship seeks to join in the struggle for social justice, it will necessarily have to detach itself from the idol that is the capitalist clock.
That’s not begging for longer sermons. That’s recognizing we need to be not so tidy, welcome more diverse gifts, and find space for a broader and broader spectrum of counter-cultural practice.