On not being wildly popular

There is a church in the States that is wildly popular. They are revered for the record number of baptisms they do. But I heard a disturbing report this past week concerning their practice of calling people to baptism. They do a few things that a skeptic might suggest brings into disrepute the moving of God's Spirit.

Here are the few things:

They plant leaders in the congregation as 'first responders' to the baptismal call. This gets the ball rolling as it were. They choose these people and place them so that they walk down the longest most visible aisles.

Then people are called forward to the stage, they only choose younger, good-looking people, as Jesus would.

A part of me - the bad, unChristian, unredeemed part - is quite gleeful about this type of revelation; I greet it like we sometimes greet news of the demise of a Hollywood relationship: all that money and they couldn't make it work! They're human after all with the same sense of existential ennui! See if your blockbuster can save you now!

Oh. Okay. So they're also concerned about that time between call and response. And for those who don't know, there is nothing in this world quite like it. You haven't quite lived - or better, died a thousand deaths - until you call for a response and no one comes forward, not even your mother. It is the pregnant pause to beat all pregnant pauses. This I believe is even worse than a comedian being heckled - at least a heckler is engaging.

A picture Mary took. Railway line. Midlands.

I understand the deep desire to make sure everything 'glows and flows and steps on no one's toes'. I took it upon myself to lead worship at our Ash Wednesday service. I like leading worship which is not quite the same as saying I'm good at it. I don't have a terrific singing voice and I'm about the fourth best guitarist in a church full of talented pianists. I've had some disheartening experiences. Once I played the saxophone and missed the first note quite, well, noticeably. Afterwards I quietly enquired of my mate, the guitarist, what he thought of the saxophone in worship and he responded in a matter-of-fact manner, 'Well at the start, it sounded like somebody slapped a pig'. I've been nervous since then so when I do lead I make sure I always have a quality singer or two on hand, to plaster over the cracks in my voice and strumming.

This Ash Wednesday I was deserted by all, a strange living-embodiment of the Lenten spirit. In church, during particular feast days, you want your people emotionally raw, but for the right reasons - for the significance of the sacrifice rather than the excruciating pain of a guitarist who willfully strums in D while singing in B flat.

But we did okay. We got through.

We did better on Wednesday than I did on Saturday I led one song on my guitar by our Wall of Remembrance. We were placing in the ground a dear old lady - ninety nine years of age. She was Welsh - died in Wales - but loved Africa and so had her remains interred here. Being Welsh they requested Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah. A note to other musicians: this song covers a number of octaves so if you start it wrong - read, too high - you're not going to hit the notes in the chorus. And so I did. You realise this too late as a musician. Trying to remain calm on the outside, you realise far, far too late that you're ascending to notes and scales no one, least of all you, can reach. I needed a castrato to finish this song off. There comes a moment when people stop singing and simply watch you, as they would watch a contortionist folding their body into a cereal box - that is, they stop to watch how on earth you're going to finish this song off with that voice.

But this is the thing.

Perfection is over-rated.
Even, dare I say it, excellence.

Coffee. Piggly Wiggly.

Or at least, they all pale next to the one quality that is absolutely necessary: sincerity born of honesty.

That very successful church would do well to let it be, to make a call and leave it open and to deal with it if no one comes forward. And if only fat, wrinkly people who sweat too much and have bad skin present themselves to the church, so be it; there is no Biblical evidence to suggest that Jesus didn't have to fight a bad case of acne, like most teenagers the world over. Hey, Jesus may not have been the hottest guy on the planet. In fact, scripture more than suggests it; just read Isaiah 53: 3. (Yes, sit with that thought a moment. Jesus might not have ushered in the hot hipster look most depictions of him seem to suggest - less Jared Leto and more Middle Eastern mediocrity, perhaps? Seriously, sit with it a moment).

Can I suggest that not only can you fail in ministry, not only can you come across as broken and sometimes hapless, I think it might be a pre-requisite.

My dear wife once put the order of service together and instead of writing 'We shall overcome' as part of the call to worship she typed 'We shat overcome' - although a mistake, this changes the sentiment dramatically. When it popped up on the screen she was mortified; we consoled her by saying simply, sometimes we confuse our 'shats' with our 'shalls'. we say 'shat' when we should say 'shall'. She sells sea shells on the sea shore...

Thinking back on this and this issue of perfection, one band member suggested that we should simply own the mistakes. It happens. Deal with it. We try our best but sometimes we will get it wrong and if someone gets heated over that, so be it. But this comes from the same guy who said, not only does he celebrate Jesus being the 'defender of the weak' (as one of our song lyrics goes) but he won't stop until Jesus makes it to 'Defender of the Month'. Take it from whence it comes, I suppose.

You're not really being church until you are making mistakes but sincerely gunning forward all the same, Quixote-like in your quest to express God's love. Or, as one of our great Methodist preachers, Rev. Viv Harris once said: If it is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Personally I'm a little jaded by Bright Lights Big City conferences where people are always getting it right because they have the resources (read, money) to make it as near as dammit to perfect. Its time to celebrate the failures a little more; after all, Jesus seemed to favour them so if we're looking for Jesus this might be the place to start.

You see, if we're not willing to fail, if we make success our God, what won't we compromise? Will we tell the truth if the pews empty? Will we be prophetic if it means we look like failures? In a rather superficial world, where image counts for much and perfection in all its forms is highly prized, this question is worth some consideration.

Now you might argue that I'm over-analysing this whole thing. I don't think so. At the end of The Wizard of Oz there is that marvellous exchange, once Toto has tugged back the curtain to find an old man operating the machine:

Dorothy berates, 'Oh - you're a bad man!'

To which the old man responds, 'Oh, no my dear. I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard.'

In my book, there can be redemption in that. You can work with a good man who is a bad wizard; what we can't really afford as Christians are bad men masquerading as good wizards. The pain of the Christian faith could be described thus: conjuring power, creating fear and manipulating holiness driven by carefully crafted human ingenuity, 'magic' as it were. With sometimes an increasingly corrupt heart beating behind it all.

So try and be willing to fail and, more than that, be able to live hopefully with your failure because its not about you, it's about Jesus. I'm guessing that people who come into our communities generally don't stay because we got everything absolutely right. I'm guessing they stay because somebody bothered to learn their name, to invite them out to coffee, to introduce them to others, to share their lives, and, in the long run, to involve them in the ongoing celebrations and mistakes of a breathing Christian community.

So fall into the arms of grace for the King of kings is vulnerable and the Lord of lords beautifully human. And he is the Saviour - not you, not me - him.

He also happens to be the Defender of the week.