Go in love.

I had a really great time at Christmas. A good blend of old traditions and new experiences. One event combined both. For the past few years we've found a Christmas Eve service to attend and it has been at a church that Jami/Jake do not attend. They've involved a lot of the ambiance of Christmas Eve. Decorations, good music, the Christmas story. This year for the first time J/J's church had their own Christmas Eve service so we went to that one. You just never know when you are going to walk into one of those situations that hits you right between the eye.

To begin with, their church is new. No building yet, so they are renting a building. The building they are renting is a :





Their sanctuary looks something sort of like this:




This isn't new to me, nor is it the first time I've been in their church, but for some reason that night it was really tripping me out. I grew up a card carrying member of the GARBC, in Florida no less. (General Association of Regular Baptist Churches) The only thing more rules oriented then the GARBC, was the GARBC in the south. The rules never made a lick of sense to me. I couldn't follow them. They seemed random. I heard a joke once that I thought summed it up. Q) Why don't Baptists like premarital sex? A) It might lead to dancing or playing cards! (If you don't get it, you weren't raised Baptist!) There were no rules about how to treat each other, or how to support each other, but there were rules out the waz--zoo about church attendance, reading your Bible (as long as it was KJV, otherwise it didn't count), sex, alcohol, drugs, rock and roll, cards and movie theaters.

If you played UNO, it was OK. If you played with a regular deck of cards it wasn't. If you smoked a cigarette it wasn't OK, but if you brought a dessert full of fat, sugar and sodium (which is just as bad for you) to a pot luck it was OK to eat it. If you rented a movie and watched it on your VCR it was OK (sometimes it was even called Youth Group), but if you went to a theater--not OK. Really not OK.


I didn't go to my first movie theater until I was a sophomore in college. I wondered if I'd be able to enjoy it, or if whatever evil a theater contained would be waiting to grab me. No problem. Loved it. Wondered what the big deal about movie theaters was.

I realize that rules can be a good thing. I realize that there are some things that are too highly charged in current cultural events to participate in. I'm not even saying the rules were necessarily wrong. It was the inconsistency that I could never wrap my brain around. It was the eagle eye sharpness to monitor a few select "sins" and the willingness to ignore others that drove me crazy.

So, back to Christmas 2011. I'm sitting in a theater, trying to wrap my brain around why, 25 years ago being in one was one of the worst things I could do and now it is OK to hold church in a theater. I'm sandwiched between my 8 year old niece, and 10 year old nephew silently thanking God that they are growing up in a different church environment then I did. I'm listening to music that includes drums, which in my opinion is the only way to conduct music in church. I'm watching this group of white people sing in a way that doesn't sound like a funeral dirge. There is movement and clapping and hand raising as much--as white folk can do those things. (Have you ever been in an African American church when the Spirit moves them while singing? I have, and that is a spiritual experience!)

As the pastor closed the evening his final words to the congregation were, "Go in love." It summed it all up. A positive command rather than a negative command. Relationship over rules. A piece from my past healed that night. Why was it OK to have church in a theater? Because it was never wrong in the first place.

"Go in love" is one of my personal goals for 2012. That, and putting all my tax information in the zip lock baggy during the year :-)