So what did we do (many of you were asking)?

• We opened the service with Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll.  The band did a great job, and people hung in the tension of liking what they were hearing but realizing this really wasn’t Christmas music.
• We had a ‘producer’ interrupt the band two minutes in the song and tell them they couldn’t play it because people had come for Christmas.
• The band then regrouped, and starting playing Rock and Roll again, only this time subbing in Christmas lyrics.
• I got up, cut them off and told them they had to play real Christmas music (at one of the services, people started calling out for more Zeppelin)…welcomed everyone and launched into some Christmas tunes.
• Musically, we then did some rearranged Christmas carols (like Chris Tomlin’s version of Angels We Have Heard on High).  We brought out some dancers who did a couple of kid versions of some Christmas songs to actions, and closed the service with Robbie Seay Band’s Go Outside and O Holy Night.
• The message was simple and fairly short (20 minutes).  Everyone got an invitation that was handwritten by someone at Connexus.  It simply said “My name is _______ and I want you to know that you are invited to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”.  My message was simply that Christmas is the greatest interruption in human history accompanied by the greatest invitation in human history.  We invited people to respond to the invitation.

What I loved about the service this year was how the opener surprised people, caught them off guard and got them engaged in the first few minutes.  It was a bridge for people with little church background, and in many ways, modeled the message.  We interrupted the song…God interrupted history… we handed out a personal invitation…so did God.  We hoped it would work, but as usual, you don’t know until it’s all happening live.  I loved the kids’ dance too because it helped the kids stay engaged and gave the younger kids music they loved.  Plus it helped families see that we sink some significant time and resources into families.

I was so thrilled with our community…we asked people to invite friends and family and they did.  Being a portable church is hard and when you can’t even meet where you normally meet for Christmas services, it makes it even more difficult for a crowd to find you Christmas eve.  But our Christmas eve attendance has doubled in the last two years and was up 50% from last year alone – all because people told their friends.  We’ll plan for over 1000 attenders next year.

So that was Christmas.  If you were at Connexus, what did you think?  If you weren’t, please share some thoughts or share what your church did.  We’re always learning and would love to hear.

It’s also why people get hung up on God.  I have conversations every day with people who think of God as an idea – as a force – as something so large and impersonal that there’s no immediate or direct connect.  Lots of us grew up in church with that concept of God.

But Bono also did something else.  He made this huge show personal.

He talked about being in Toronto a lot.  True, musicians do that in every city.  But he also told some personal stories.  He shouted out to the people in condos next to the Rogers Center and asked them to flick their lights off and on if they were listening.  They did. (That was sweet).

In one extraordinary moment, while the intro to City of Blinding Lights played, he hoisted a twelve year old boy on stage.  He ran around the perimeter of the stage with him holding the boy’s hand.  During the first verse, Bono got down on his knee and sang the verse looking straight into his eyes.  Later in the song, Bono took off his glasses and put them on the boy’s face.  When it was over, he handed the boy back to security and to his parents.  Extraordinary.  Check out the photo from that night.

The biggest show in the world got personal.  Very personal.  Theologians call that imminence.  God is both transcendent (large) and imminent (personal).

Is that a key to briding the gap between believers and non-believers in church?  Rather than debate worship v. performance music (we use both at Connexus), maybe a key learning is that our service ‘style’ ought to reflect both the transcendence of God (being part of something bigger than ourselves) and the personal side (God is so close, so personal, and so interested in each of us).

How can we do this? Do we do this?  What could we do to better reflect this?  What do you think?

Constructing what many believe to be the biggest stage set in concert history, their stage is gigantic.  Check out this video for a tour of the set.  I’m pretty sure that at the Rogers Center, they needed to open the roof because the set didn’t fit in the stadium.

There’s a theological word for something that big: transcendence – something that is magnificent, huge, incomparable. 

And that is in the nature of God.  God is transcendent.  He’s bigger than we can comprehend. 

Most of us want to be part of something bigger than we are.  We want to worship.  If we don’t worship God, we’ll worship money, or work, or family, or a rock band.  We’ll find something that is bigger than us to bow down to.

And while U2 isn’t worthy of anyone’s worship, their concert was transcendent.  You knew you were dealing with the biggest band in the world.

Now wait for the final post Monday…because the temptation would be to think that proving you’re the biggest band in the world was their goal – it wasn’t.

But it leads me to a question: in what ways are we doing church that points to a God who is transcendent? Sometimes church can be so banal, so mundane, that you would have a hard time believeing anything supernatural or bigger than us is involved.

In the music we use, the way the band plays, the way the preacher points to God, in the things that are happening in church, in what ways does that show the insider and the outsider that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves?

That’s transcendence.  And people are drawn to transcendence.

Musically, it’s tricky.  We have a fantastic music team.  Andy Walker, our director of music, has done an unbelievable job of crafting what I think is one of the best church music environments in Canada. (Yep, I’m biased, but you should hear our team.)

The tension is Christians always want to sing more music.  People who grew up out of the church generally want less. Where else in the culture, after all, do you sing out loud in public?  People with little church background generally love great music, they just don’t want to be asked to stand for 30 minutes to participate in songs they don’t know to sing lyrics they don’t yet believe with their friends standing next to them.  That’s why we rarely do more than 3 participatory songs in a service.

We ask: how do you bridge the gap? I had the chance to see U2 last month in Toronto and watched Bono do something powerful. It was a huge life-highlight for me.  Broke down and cried a few times, actually.

He blended transcendence, imminence and a universal message masterfully together in a way that drew 63,000 people at the Rogers Center in Toronto together. And he did it much better than I’ve seen in most churches.

I wonder if there’s a blueprint in that for those of us who are committed to doing church in a way that constantly includes new friends.

That’s what I’m blogging about this week. 

In the meantime, anyone else at the U2 concert?  What did you see or learn?