The Awesome God Project™®©

Let’s talk about espresso and cappuccinos again.  The reason most church-type bars fail is because they use the equivalent to consumer espresso machine.  Try as you might, it won’t taste good.  A really good professional espresso machine will run you about 15 grand.  This was the crux of my argument is my last Kensington post: the Church unsuccessfully trying to imitate popular culture to draw people away instead of going out and influencing people by living in the culture.

Let’s start with Woodside, and my prejudices.  I attended a Woodside service at White Lake a few weeks before starting this project.  We got the time wrong, arrived late, but still caught the message.  Wasn’t overly impressed, but not immediately turned off.  The newsletter was a trip: movie reviews that totally missed the point, a science column that pimped a “creationist USA tour”, and a column to review Christian fiction.  I know, I laughed really hard at someone actually wanting to read Christian fiction, too.  The newsletter—a whopping 44-pages this month—details the ongoings of the 5 Woodside campuses and various aspects of Christian livelihood.  They even have their own TV show, “Get Real: A Christian Take on Current Events” which is pretty self-explanatory.  So, walking into Woodside in Troy Sunday I mentally prepped myself for the worst.

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I don’t even know where to begin this week.  No idea.  I mean I bailed right as Pastor Tobias started his closing prayer.  No promise of any off-key worship song could keep me in my seat.  So, I have no idea where to start.  So, this is what I have so far.

“Now the story of a Church that loved Armageddon and weird metaphors, and the one guy who had to sit through it.  This is The Awesome God Project.”

The day started weird when Pastor Tobias (not his real name) started his sermon with his usual (I assume) 15-minute pregame prayer.  He started out with some gruesome imagery:

“LORD! You know that the most heinous crime a person could commit would be to slaughter and mutilate an innocent new born!  LORD!  You know this horrific act, of killing a child, is an affront to you!”

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I don’t know if this is awesome, or an issue.  All I know is that it exists, and I have to deal with it for one more week.  The lead pastor at Five Points Community Church is a hybrid of 3 different people:

• Ed Cordry, former Daily Show Correspondent
• Buster Bluth, from Arrested Development
• Tobias Funke, from Arrested Development

Hearing a Pastor talking about reflecting the glory we receive to God, while throwing hand motions similar to Buster describing a seal attack mixed with the facial expressions of Tobias discussing his career as an analrapist, and Ed Cordry calling bullshit on a politicians enhances the message with—what I’m sure are unintended consequences—hilarious references and connotations.  The first unintended consequence was me spending the first 15 minutes (which was actually his opening prayer) trying to figure out who he reminded me of.  By the time we started the sermon, I then had to prevent myself from breaking out into fits of laughter for the remaining 45 minutes.  Oh, and did I mention I was late?

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I’m Sean, Drew’s younger brother. You might have heard of me before, in fact I know you have, because the only reason Drew’s new project is called “The Awesome God Project” is because of me. Also I was featured in a couple of the old Awesome Movie Project blogs (specifically Easy Virtue, where I saved us from an indian Teeny-Popper movie. Easily one of the shining moments in my career.) I’m filling in for Drew this week because;

a) Drew is lazy and starts these projects without really expecting to follow through with them, leaving him scrambling every week to find a guest blogger (Such as Deanna or myself) to cover for him.
b) Kidding.
c) Drew is headed to the Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo area for numerous drunken escapades involving hard drugs and loose women.
d) Just kidding.
e) Drew is headed to the Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo area to hang out with a friend and go see Thrice in concert.
f)True. So Drew. Frak you, I can’t attend the Thrice concert, and I’m bitter about it.
g) Drew is also just lazy enough to not go to Mars Hill and blog about that church.

So I’m left to do his work. The first thing you’ll notice is that I’m a lot more cynical and sarcastic than Drew is. Drew is very cold and calculating about it, I am not. Which would explain why I had some drunken oaf threatening to rip my nose ring out, ensuring I would only have one nostril.
Side note: To be fair, he was saying that Rear Window was amateur moviemaking and Touch of Evil was nothing more than mediocre, I think he deserved the cutting, sarcastic remarks I made.

However, I digress. Onto the actual Awesome part of this post.

I went to Grace Church in downtown Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Currently, and this will come back into play, the church meets at the Ward Theatre, ironically, I think, across from Blue in the Face II, a head shop. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to downtown Mount Pleasant, it really tries to channel quaint downtowns of bigger small towns. Hip bars and delicious restaurants, downstairs boutiques and the occasional eco-friendly store. The Ward Theatre is no exception. It’s easily recognized by the small lit up marquee and classic movie theatre look. As I walked in from the relatively warm night, with Main Street festively draped in white Christmas lights, past the greeter at the door (who did not say hello), the moody lighting prepared me for what I thought would be a smaller scale version of the Traverse City’s Star Theatre, or something in that vein.

I was disappointed.

In the actual theatre, the carpet had been ripped up, and instead of classy theatre chairs, they had typical “church chairs”–If you grew up in a church, you know what I’m talking about.

Attendance was probably somewhere in the 60′s or so. As per usual with churches, coffee was offered for people to mingle and converse by, and, as per usual, I immediately could pick out the groups or cliques. Sad state of affairs, I know.

To be honest, I could sum this up in a paragraph. Grace Church is just like any other small church. Down to what I felt was the over-produced, under-practiced, untalented worship set, complete with the over-zealous, this-is-my-chance-to-shine lead singer (who couldn’t really sing in the range he was trying), to the I-do-this-because-it-makes-me-feel-good-about-myself half a dozen backup singers (two of which doubled as keyboardists–because they needed two keyboardists), and of course the I-want-to-throw-in-a-lame-guitar-solo-because-I’m-frakking-cool guitarists, and yes, they had 2 guitarists and a bassist.

Okay, I lied, it’ll be more of a paragraph.

The entire worship set was accented by numerous videos played over the music. I’m not entirely sure why, to be honest. I found it more distracting than anything. Granted, I’m very visually driven, and I’ve been spoiled by the audio/video combination of Back To The River, Back To The Forest, a local band, of which I know a few members.

As the pastor, Barry Flanders, came up to speak, I could immediately pick up again on what kind of church Grace was, and I can’t say anything negative about it, a small church is made for a teaching pastor. Evangelical preachers work large crowds, but as a teaching pastor and a small community, you can delve deeper into scripture and relate to real life through this. That is exactly what Flanders did.

Here’s the story. Grace Church is moving to the old Ember’s Restaurant on Mission St., and they need help, they need money ($90,000 by the end of the year), they need volunteers. Through reading some of the book of Nehemiah, Flanders quickly made his points clear.

1) Anyone can help
2) True leaders lead
3) Community is messy
4) Faith begins at home

Or, as deciphered by a teaching pastor expert, me…”Help us, okay? Because we need it. We’re trying to take on a huge undertaking, but we…really…really…need your help.”

There. Deciphered. Need I say more?

Couple more things that stuck out to me. I got there 10 minutes early to see how the community would react to a new-comer. As I expected, the only person to talk to me, Mike, would be the only person to talk to me. Young fellow, dressed in the counter-culture style, complete with long dreads. He asked the typical questions; Who are you? Why are you here? What’s your background? Both in faith and school. Why are you barefoot? Why do you have a camera? That’s pretty much it. After Mike talked to me, the girl in front of me turned around. Her name was Kelly. The only thing she asked was;

“Do you work for the newspaper?”
“Yes.”
“Are you doing a story on…”
“No.”
“Oh, okay. Well, my name is Kelly.”
“Hi.”

Why do I include this? Because I thought it was interesting. She only turned around after I mentioned I worked for a newspaper. It just goes to show our fascination with media.

Other than that, during the worship set, I noticed some of the same things I notice at other small churches. Typical audience participation, which would be minimal. And at one point, the lead worship singer said “Let’s just praise the Lord by saying Alleluia.”

I never knew it was that easy.

All in all, Grace Church is like any other Grace Church in a small town. There is no difference. It doesn’t stand out. To me, it just melts into the pot of small churches in small towns. They’re all the same, I swear to God.

I watch a lot of movies. Not much of a secret, it was the original premise of the Project.  In movies—especially those in which someone claims sanctuary in a Sanctuary—the churches strike awe in you.  The architecture and design instill the grandeur of God, you walk in and you think, “Why not become Christian? They have awesome stained glass windows?” (Where else are you gonna find Superman finding Polar Bears on his way to the Fortress of Solitude? And hello to the three people who got the joke.)  Finding these awe-inspiring, conversion-inducing Churches isn’t easy in the real world.  Most churches, obviously, are not like the movies.  With a 24/7 Priest living in the Sanctuary waiting for the falsely accused to pound on the ancient, intricately carved wooden doors shouting at the top of their lungs, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”  I’m not sure if Christ Church Cranbrook has a Priest living in the Sanctuary, but you can’t walk in the building without thinking you just entered a holy place.  The insanely long sanctuary, the high altar at the front, the stone arches, with the seemingly never-ending roof trusses, and, of course, the stained glass.  When you walk into a church like Kensington or Shepherd, you don’t get a feeling of awe from the building.  When you walk into Cranbrook, you want to convert/repent/rededicate/whatever Christians do these days right then and there.

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I know.  What a bold title.  An audacious title.  To level such accusations and observations against a church body shows a blatant lack of respect for the parishioners, and my Christian brothers and sisters.  But I tell you, kind reader, there was a Dog in the audience.  No, seriously, there was a Seeing Eye training dog in the audience.  A golden retriever puppy (Maybe? We stupidly sat in the balcony because no one informed us of a puppy in the main auditorioum.  Strike 1, Kensington!). The dog laid happily in the aisle way as the trainer petted him (except for the one bark that came during the announcement).  Jealous for sure.

As we drank our cappuccinos at the Great Lakes Café on the upper-level of Kensington, the conversation mainly focused on the dog in the audience.  I mean, hello, puppy!  But we also discussed the community, the odd quirks, and the environment we observed during our two weeks (only one for Brother Jordan).  Last week I addressed the message, now I’m gonna talk about the elephant in the room: the megachurch feel.

According to the Hartford Institute of Religious Research, Kensington boasts an average attendance of 11,099 people (I assume spread out over the campuses) and also is in the handy-dandy megachurch directory the Hartford Institute constructed.  The average attendance beats out Keith Butler’s church by 99 people for the highest total in Michigan (I’m not measuring overall reach and influence, which with Rob Bell’s popularity as an author, I assume Mars Hill would win).  While impressive, its just numbers and I want to address my views on the larger tenets that are assumed when the stereotypical megachurch gets addressed. (A Deconstruction on the Christian MegaChurch? Postmodernism for the win!)

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Dear God,

What’s up?  You’re never on AIM anymore, we miss you lol!  I’m doing my Awesome God Project, and I need some help on how to write it.  It’s very tough figuring out how to approach it and write about my experience.  Like, what do I focus on?  The message?  The whole church?  The people?  How do I incorporate this into one coherent blog post (btw, UPDATE YOUR BLOG)?  Anyway, I’m gonna go try to write this—call me dude!

Love,

Drew (like you didn’t know haha)

Dear Drew,

Frak off, I’m watching The Plan.

God

I want to point out to people – nothing would make me happier if God actually spoke those words to me.  Or something BSG-related.  And on that note bear with me as I figure out how to write this. Read more…

Throughout most of my life, I’ve attended one church.  Besides for a couple of years, where my family attended Covenant Baptist Church, or followed my Dad around as he subbed in at a variety of churches, I spent my childhood at Shepherd Fellowship Church.  In college (arguably, the more formative years than our formative years), I didn’t attend church.  Not because I hated Jesus, but every Sunday was a seeker service, and every “Grow more with the Lord” group scheduled meetings during my night classes.

And not to be crass, but Science Fiction films is more exciting than listening to you debate whether we should pray to God or Jesus.  Here’s a hint: they live together, and they pass along the phone messages, in fact they’re so close together it’s almost like they’re Father and Son—honestly, they’re pretty much the same guy.

During my time Church-hopping with Dad, we’d usually go back to the church when someone else talked.  I’m not sure if this was intentional—letting my Dad get the feel of the place—or just because when you’re churchless, why not?  But even when we only hit up a place when my Dad showed up, you learned a lot just by the way people reacted at the end.  Their interpretation of the Bible, their view of life, their fashion sense, and what TV shows they watched on Thursday night.  Just by how they reacted to someone different talking about the Bible.  I didn’t realize at 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 that church-hopping revealed a whole backside of Christianity that shapes the way we see things: interpretation.  Christianity all comes down to how you view a certain passage: do you take into account the social forces at work when the writer’s wrote it, and the social forces at work when you read it?  Or read it as a stoic piece that exists outside of social forces?  The Bible means different things to different people, and you shouldn’t accept what you hear blindly, and the world won’t end when some disagrees with you.

Because God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.

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“What does the coma represent to you? What idea were you trying to get across with the symbolism?”

“I just thought it was funny. When I was writing, he ended up in a coma and I said, ‘Hey, that’s weird.  I wonder what’s gonna happen?’”

– Bob Byington, director/writer of Harmony & Me, and a slightly pretentious Traverse City Film Festival audience member during a Q&A.

When writing – something totally not grasped by non-writers – things happen.  Narratives, stylistic choices, and main topics go places you didn’t quite expect.  At some point you stop and say, “Huh.  That’s weird, I wonder what happens next?”

This happened with the blog, happened in my reviews, and happened with the people who stumbled across it.  Who knew that including an incest-riddled review with the words “sleeping with your stepmom” would drive in the most traffic to the blog?  People utilized search terms like “stepmom incest true stories”, “stepmom xxx”, “how to know if your stepmom wants to fuck” to find me.  But my personal favorite search term still remains: “how to subtly convince my boyfriend to join the military”.  Now the last two terms are posed more as a question, and I feel bad, because this site never ventured to answer them.  The searchers had their own coma incident: they were looking for something else, and ended up getting movie reviews.  They were misled by a wildly restrictive search string, and clicked on my link in vain.  To them: I’m sorry.  Please try “Stepmom * seduction * me –porn OR –pornography” this will limit you to results with the words stepmom, seduction, and me while eliminating the words porn or pornography from the search.  Good luck.  To boyfriend hater: try “manipulate * join+military”.  Good luck.  I also am aware that these search strings may not yield results, those probably aren’t topics with much helpful information on the Internet.  Therefore, let me offer another olive branch.  Let’s break the questions down.

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Let me give you some back story on my formal education.  I graduated from Central Michigan University with a degree in Broadcast & Cinematic Arts and Political Science.  I took classes in Television Production and Film Criticism.  The film classes were split into two categories: director classes and genre classes.  These classes were taught by the amazing Dr. Jurkiewicz, a man who can give an engrossing four hour lecture on Kurbick’s 2001: A Space Oddyssey, why his lectures aren’t on iTunes U is beyond me.  A few of my BCA classes I took with my good friend, Bryan Carr.  My post-senior year I was a regular castmember on Bryan’s podcast “GeekSpeak”, and occasionally pop in every now again.  (If you’re thinking, that sentence doesn’t seem to fit and it’s just a shameless plug for GeekSpeak, you’re right.)  Bryan’s smarter than me on all things film (this is where he feigns humility, disregards the complement, complements me, and I feign humility back.  We love that game).  To give you an example: for our Science Fiction Films term paper I wrote 10-page feminist critique on Serenity, and Bryan wrote 22-pages on V for Vendetta.  Granted, your first thought is “those two men need lives,” our first thought was “I can’t believe we get to do this.”  So, when I was able to haggle some time off work to head up to Mount Pleasant to see Inglourious Basterds with Bryan and his girlfriend Pang (and Brother Sean and his girlfriend Leah) I couldn’t pass that up.  At the end of Inglorious Basterds everyone in the theater walked out with the same reaction: we liked it, we just didn’t know what to make of it.

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