I think I surprised some of you yesterday by having Will King (our resident photographer) move around and take some candid shots of us during worship. We have no pictures of ourselves on our web pager doing what we do most (and maybe best). We post pictures of ourselves dressing up to pass out candy at Trunk-or-Treat, dressing up in costumes for a Fiesta VBS or a drama production. But what we don’t have are any pictures of us dressing up to worship God on Sunday. OK, so we don’t dress up so much, but we do worship. I just thought there needed to be some shots of us doing that.This morning Will emailed three of the pictures he took (8 megapixel pictures do take awhile to shoot through cyberspace), and I posted them on the web site, and I hope to add more pictures later. One thing struck me as I looked at the picture of us singing (besides the fact that we are an extremely good-looking group). It is very hard to sing praises to God and look dignified in the process. Look at the picture. Richard Pittman looks kinda cool, but Richard always looks cool. Sabrina has a great smile on her face as she’s singing. And
There is one more question this picture raises. What’s the deal with everyone packing in like sardines at the back and avoiding the front several rows as if they were “full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean?” I don’t get it. In every other venue, you pay extra for front row seats. Any ideas?
3 comments:
I think I kind of agree with uncle Sam. Most churches I have attended do leave the seats up front for the older members (and those that appear to be more animated in service). There is only one difference. The older members, elders, deacons, etc., actually sat up front. I think that the back seats should be left for the visitors and those that are running late so they can more easily find seats. Perhaps making that announcement (over and over) will get the word across.
One of the unfortunate side effects of post-Constantinian worship is that ALL we ever see of one another in worship is someone's backside. It is hard to "see the face of Christ on your brother" as the old song says when all you see is the back of the head in the pew (chair) in front of you. Perhaps that is unavoidable-- it's hard to sit a circle with 200 people.
I'm not sure I understand the point about animated worshippers. There is an old Chris Rice song entitled "The Cartoon Song" (see the link below). It asks "What if cartoons got saved, they'd start singing praise in a whole new way." The he sings "Hallelujah" line the Flintstones, Elmer Fudd, the Smurfs, etc. I guess that would be an animated worshipper. I'm not sure I've seen one of those. ;-)
http://thefuntimesguide.com/audio/Chris-Rice-Cartoons-song.wma
We had a neat experience while in LA for an Easter service. The church arranged rows in a square facing each other. It was different to sing towards people, instead of towards backs. However, I don't see how we could set that up given our current facilities.
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