the church geek

What does a “Church Geek” do on his vacation? He visits other churches, of course…

Over the past year or so, I’ve been immersing myself in the emergent conversation. One of the leaders in that conversation is Doug Pagitt, the pastor of Solomon’s Porch, a holistic, missional, Christian community that meets in the Twin Cities. Over the weekend, my wife and I made a trip up to Minneapolis, and on Sunday evening we took the time to pay a visit to one of their gatherings.

Solomon’s Porch meets in an old Methodist building. When we arrived we scoped out a couch to sit on since there are no pews in the sanctuary. All the pews have been replaced with couches that face the center of the room. In the center is a stool from which the primary leader sits when leading a part of the service.

The service that evening focused on raising awareness about the sex slave trade and exploring ways to join in with efforts to help abolish it. We watched a video that detailed three different stories of women and children who had been freed from such slavery. We also learned about an organization called “Not for Sale” that organizations can partner with to join in abolition efforts.

A young woman then shared her story of God’s movement in her life. She was preparing to go to Thailand to train former sex slaves in the craft of jewelery making. Doug followed her story by saying the church was prepared to move alongside her as well as to join in other efforts to address the issue in the various ways they felt God was leading them.

I found the service to be very moving. Of course, I was totally disheartened by the scope of the problem, but I also left hopeful that there were specific ways I could get involved. At the same time, while I left with hope, I was also deeply impressed that I was not offered polly-anna sorts of answers.

I was especially refreshed by two things that Doug stated during the service:

1.) Before communion, we sang a song with a chorus that went “Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Allelu.” Afterwards, Doug mentioned that “Allelu” is an incomplete “Alleluia.” Singing it in its incomplete form reminds us that the reality of the Kingdom of God is “here but not yet” and that our praise of God in the midst of a broken and needy world will necessarily be imperfect and incomplete.

2.) Doug shared that over and over the story of God in the scriptures is the story of rescue from captivity, whether it be sin, slavery, bondage, or what have you. Wherever God is working to free the captive we as God’s people are called to participate in that work. By extension, I heard him say that if we just restrict the scope of God’s activity to rescuing captives from sin, we have truncated the whole of the gospel.

I will admit that I was disappointed to not experience preaching in the round (Doug is known for a preaching style that encourages dialog and participation by way of a book I’m currently reading called “Preaching Reimagined”). But I was very pleased to be a part of a worship service in a community of faith seeking to work out the gospel not only in their personal spiritual lives but in the broken and deeply hurting world around them.