Skip to main content

The Live Worship Recording

By Susan ~

The Pentecostal church can be a serious mind-fuck.  I honestly can not believe what I agreed to do in order to try and win the ‘favour’ of my pastors and of God.  I was a sheep, faithfully following my strong leaders as God’s appointed.  Coincidentally, in the church that I attended, God had chosen the pastors family and closest friends as his cohorts!  Amazing:)
Of course, this couldn’t be questioned or one would be seen as dissident and therefore in the way of God’s work.
I once ‘served under’ a young worship leader that was told specifically not to sing for several months because of a serious jaw condition.  The church had already committed to recording a live worship CD and had invested over $10,000 in the project, not including the expense of flying out Christianity's hottest worship couple from New Zealand to coach us.
Our young leaders’ jaw condition persisted, but we were all told to simply trust that God would show up on the night of the live recording and miraculously heal her jaw.  Obviously she needed someone to sing her ‘lead’ parts in the many rehearsals up to the ‘live’ night.  I was chosen to do that and I willingly agreed as I knew this would show my faithfulness to the church leaders and ultimately help in my moving up on the worship team ladder.  Being that I am a singer, I saw no other possible outlet to express myself vocally but to become a worship leader.  The thought of playing ‘in the world’ was out of the question to me at that time.
Long story short, the day of the live recording arrived and with only hours left before the performance…er….’worship night’ began, I finally got up the nerve to address the elephant in the room.  I chose to bring it up to the blonde 40-something worship leader from New Zealand in the leather jacket.  “Ummmm…..I don’t want to sound like I don’t have enough faith, but….what happens if God doesn’t heal her tonight?”.  She looked at me…smiled…shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Well then honey, it would all be on you!”.
Being someone that lives with an anxiety disorder, this may as well have been a forceful punch in my gut.  It’s the truth I knew but hadn’t dared to address:
-hundreds of humans will be arriving within hours to help record a live CD that is being funded by the generous donations of the faithful people of the church
-the leader is incapacitated and has not exercised her vocal chords for months and is therefore completely unprepared 
-It is entirely likely that her jaw will freeze up and I will have to be the shoulders the entire congregation stands on
It was more than I could emotionally bear, but even in that moment, I felt guilty for the pressure I felt…I felt that I wasn’t believing enough, and I felt that even to the final hour.
God I wish I could go back to that moment with the 20/20 I have now.  (Exit, stage left.  Now run as far and as fast as you can.)
Lo and behold, she was able to get through the worship night, though it was a complete shit show…complete with flashing lights and smoke machines and the young leader calling out “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus”…over and over again when her vocal ability failed her and she needed to fill the dead air space with something.
I am known for having a terrible memory, but this memory is somehow forever emblazoned in my mind.  I was singing background vocals on stage and looking out at the ‘pumped’ crowd.  The leader was screaming something out, the congregation was cheering, the camera’s were rolling, the strobe lights were flashing, but in my minds-eye everything went completely silent.   Silent.
All I could see were the false hopes and dreams of hundreds of people that desperately wanted to be involved in something that mattered.  And to them, this live worship night was that thing.
So when the Director of the show….er…worship night….told them to cheer again and again and again so that they could get a good recording of the sound of the power of the Holy Spirit, cheer they did.  When they were told to give God a ‘clap offering’…clap they did.
And they jumped…and they pumped their fists…and they raised the roof…and they lifted holy hands to the sky….
And I stood on stage…nauseous and dizzy and feeling like everything I knew to be true no longer was.
I endured the night as best I could and then I ran to my car.  As soon as the door closed behind me I burst into tears.  I sobbed and sobbed all the way home.
I cried because I knew I had seen clearly that night.  And what I saw was ugly and proud and broken.  It was cloaked in hair dye and heels, in smoke machines and strobe lights, in clap offerings and flat-screen teleprompter’s.  But I saw it.  And it was nothing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro