When I was doing the research for this book, I sometimes attended multiple services—at different churches—on the same day. I think I can say with confidence that I was attending church more often than most of the people reading this book, unless you actually work for a church.
In my case I was attending churches of different denominations, with different styles of worship and a variety of approaches to preaching. Being an atheist, I would enter a new church never quite knowing what to expect. Often, the surprises were positive, such as the time the pastor of a very large church walked out into the audience as he preached his sermon, speaking to specific individuals as well as the entire congregation. Other times I was thrown off by confusing rituals. And always, no matter what type of church I was in, I found things that appealed to me and other things that left me cold. I imagine the same type of thing happens to you when you try out a new church.
After visiting fifteen churches in four states—including urban areas, suburbs, and small towns—I realized I needed to organize my findings. In chapter 9 I will summarize the general patterns and trends I observed in the churches I visited. And in the next four chapters, I’ll present my critiques of each church. As a way to organize the critiques, I have divided them roughly according to the size of the churches I visited. In this chapter, I’ll look at four services that attracted a relatively small crowd. In the next chapter I’ll critique midsized congregations, then large churches (in chapter 7), and finally three megachurches (in chapter 8).
No critique is ever objective, and mine are no exception. But their subjectivity is a strength. Any visitor to your church will make subjective judgments, so the tone of my critiques is in keeping with the type of assessment that is made by anyone who visits your church, whether they agree with what you believe or not. Visitors come away with things they appreciate and enjoy, and also things they find confusing and even troubling. Again, my critiques are no exception. The purpose of my church visits was not to look only for things I agreed with or that impressed me positively. I was looking for both sides of the equation—the good and the bad. And, sometimes, the indifferent.
So much for the preamble. Let’s go to church.
I began doing church research in Chicago, where I was living at the time I started this experiment. I visited several congregations in the city and surrounding suburbs, and one of the smallest services was held at LaSalle Street Church near downtown.
My trip to LaSalle Street Church began ominously enough: in order to get to the available on-street parking, I had to drive past Locust Street. Fortunately, Moses was nowhere to be seen, and there were no signs of an insect plague in the neighborhood. I had no idea what to expect inside, but had I envisioned a fire-and-brimstone service, I would have been dead wrong.
Normally, the church meets in a larger sanctuary, but since that area was undergoing renovations, we met in Fellowship Hall, a community center that served as a makeshift gathering space. I took a seat near the back of a room filled with several rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle. In the front of the room hung a bed sheet with a picture of a cross on it. The sheet was draped from the low ceiling, and a podium stood in front of it. The backdrop was so straightforward in its simplicity that I felt almost as if I were about to watch a grade-school play. Still, it was appealing.
The seats around me filled quickly, and I was surprised to see a wide age range represented. Many middle-school-age and high-school-age students were among the first to find seats. These kids appeared to have come by themselves! This differed from other churches I visited, where children were almost always accompanied by their parents.
I was prepared for the initial hymns and prayers, since they were a part of the ritual at many of the churches I had already visited. After the first few songs, and after standing and sitting repeatedly, we read some lines from Psalm 33 together. There was no discussion of the verses, so I wasn’t sure of the purpose behind reading the passage—perhaps to generate some audience participation, since the men and women were told to read alternating lines. Could that be it?
When the sermon began, I was excited to see a female pastor! I had seen only males on stage at the churches I’d visited up to this point, with the exception of one guest speaker. Perhaps I was about to experience a new type of sermon. Pastor Laura was dressed in comfortable clothes, a suit top with a hemp skirt, and spoke with a pleasing Southern accent. We had just finished reading Colossians 1:9–14, and Pastor Laura referred back to the verses as she mentioned she would talk about being rescued by God. She told a personal story of when she had felt rescued, interjecting side comments and jokes that the audience enjoyed. When she was finishing her story, she told how she felt when she was finally saved, explaining what she was going through and what it meant for her. Everyone’s eyes were glued to her.
The rest of her sermon, while referring back to the relevant Bible verses, also contained references to pop culture and global politics. It was a way to remind us that the verses contained special meaning, given the troubled times we live in. Pastor Laura made sure we knew there was a tie between what we heard in church and what we would be challenged by in the coming week outside of church.
Before she ended the sermon, she told us she had just returned from a large conference for pastors at Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch I discuss in chapter 8. As she described her visit, she talked about entering the Willow Creek campus and the sense of awe she felt as she drove onto the grounds. I had to laugh, because I had felt those same emotions when I had gone there a few weeks earlier. She related stories she had heard from Willow Creek’s pastor, Bill Hybels, and again, she pressed home the point that it was our responsibility to take Christian teachings and use them to help others, or at least contribute to the church to enable it to take on that task.
Pastor Laura repeated a story she heard at the conference, about how money raised by one church bought enough food to feed a large village. It was a powerful message: just fifty dollars donated as an offering can keep an entire family of four alive in Africa for about a month. I could feel her passion, and I wasn’t alone in that. Still, I wasn’t sure if she meant to say these efforts were possible because the people donating money were Christians, or merely because they were generous. Even if it was God who motivated them to use their money to help others, it was the donors’ decisions that made the charitable work possible. Was she minimizing the power of human kindness? I couldn’t tell.
To conclude the morning, Pastor Laura reiterated that being rescued was a powerful moment in anyone’s life. Before her sermon began, she had asked some people to participate in an interesting exercise. She had given them each a sheet of paper and asked them to write on one side what they felt before they were rescued by Christ, and on the other, what they felt like afterward. At the end of the sermon, she stepped aside so those people could, one by one, hold out their pieces of paper to show what they were like before, and then flip the paper over to show the change that came about after they were rescued. It was different from anything I had seen at other churches. In fact, this sort of peer teaching was a method I hadn’t seen utilized since I had visited a very small house church during my initial research after the eBay auction.
Some of the members wrote that they went from fear to security, dark to light, apathetic to engaged, lonely to befriended, nobody to somebody. And one person, humorously enough, went from blind to near-sighted. Since I was still in the “before” aspect of this exercise, I asked myself if I shared any of these feelings. I rarely feel lonely or apathetic. In fact, atheism has given me more confidence in myself and more passion to help others than I experienced when I was active in the Jain religion.
Reflecting on my life in light of the church members’ responses, I had to wonder: was being down, or lonely, or desperate a prerequisite to finding God? Did these people think others who had not yet found Christ were lost, scared, or miserable? Did I have to go through some sort of trauma or crisis before I would find anything of ultimate meaning? Pastor Laura’s personal stories of being rescued had been humorous and uplifting. I had expected the others’ stories to be similar to that—optimistic, revealing a good life that was made even better. After hearing their stories of before and after, I was upset and somewhat angry. When the people shared their words describing personal change, their representations of being “lost” seemed to include the whole range of people who had not accepted the divinity of Christ. Maybe religion had helped the people who spoke, but I wasn’t “lost” in the sense of being miserable, desperate, or without hope.
Yes, I’m an atheist—which means I have no faith in a God, gods, or the supernatural. But I am surrounded by loving people whom I can talk to if I get depressed. I know I can’t always control what happens around me, but I can try to react to the unexpected in a positive way. I also know there are questions I just can’t answer, such as why the universe exists. For many, religion provides answers to un-answerable questions. But religious “answers” to my unanswerable questions don’t satisfy my need for a logical explanation.
While I hadn’t been asked to participate in the before-and-after exercise at LaSalle Street Church, I did think about what I would have written when I was in the process of becoming an atheist. Before: Questioning. After: Satisfied, but still questioning.
On a different Sunday I drove more than an hour west of Chicago to visit three churches in DeKalb, Illinois. I had never been to DeKalb before; my familiarity with the town was limited to the fact that Northern Illinois University is located there … and Cindy Crawford was born and raised there. But on the summer day when I visited, the university had only a fraction of its student body on campus, and Cindy was nowhere to be seen.
As I approached DeKalb, I was driving on a long stretch of highway that extended in a straight line as far as I could see. At one point I was one of only four motorists on the road, which never happened any morning in Chicago. The miles of cornfields confirmed I was headed to a rural area. While DeKalb is growing in population, it is much smaller than any of the other towns where I have attended church.
I entered the Evangelical Free Church of Sycamore-DeKalb for the 8:30 a.m. service. What is this church’s name all about? I wondered. Maybe it’s free of evangelicals? Or does it mean no one has to give an offering? I was directed into the largest room in the church and took a seat toward the back. A one-man technical team was positioned to my right, and a video-projection screen was suspended above the stage (every church seems to have one, regardless of its size). For a room that could seat a couple hundred people at most, I was surprised to see a setup for a full band onstage. Drums, guitars, and several microphones were propped up, ready for use.
When the band started playing, it was just after the 8:30 start time, but there were fewer than forty people in the church. But by the time the band had finished singing and the pastor got up on stage, the crowd had more than doubled in size. I noticed families with young children walking in without any visible indications of guilt. I wouldn’t think the people at this church were purposely rude, so they must have had a good reason for showing up late. Was the music so unimportant to them that they decided to come only for the “main event”? If that’s the case, is church like a movie theater where you can walk in after the previews and no one thinks anything of it? I’ve always thought the previews are vital to the movie experience, though, just as I would assume that singing is important to a church service. Furthermore, in a small community church such as this one, I imagine people would know one another better than at a larger church. The people in the congregation, therefore, might know the people on stage who were singing and would surely respect them enough to show up on time. I didn’t see that respect being shown, though.
Before the sermon began, announcements were made. A ladies’ craft night was scheduled for later in the week, one person mentioned. There would also be a women’s prayer group on Wednesday and a men’s prayer group on Friday. That sounded odd to me. I had heard of youth Bible studies and adult worship services, and I understand there are good reasons for groups to be separated according to age. But the separation of men from women was a new concept to me. Atheist communities haven’t separated the sexes at any meetings I’ve attended. What was so different about prayer meetings that men and women couldn’t pray together?
Later on, I had a chance to ask the pastor why men and women needed to be separated for prayer. Pastor Brad said such an arrangement gave both men and women a chance for “more intimate sharing” of concerns. For example, women could talk about upcoming surgeries they might feel uncomfortable sharing if men were present. I assume the same reasoning applied to men. However, for something as solemn as a prayer meeting, would the potential for awkwardness really present that much of a deterrent? It didn’t make sense to me that someone would request prayer from only half the adults in the congregation. While I don’t believe prayer has a direct effect on someone’s health, wouldn’t Christians want more people praying for them, rather than dividing their support in half by excluding an entire gender?
On the Sunday I visited his church, Pastor Brad spoke on the topic of contentment. His main point was that we should be happy with what we have. As I listened, I realized I am often motivated by not being satisfied. I don’t mean I’m motivated to obtain more material goods. Rather, I’m motivated to achieve goals. If we’re always content with where we are and what we have, there would be no need to try to improve ourselves. But in his sermon, I didn’t hear any encouragement to work toward goals or to improve ourselves.
To illustrate his point, Pastor Brad began by telling a story about a man who kept wanting more and more until finally he realized he had everything he wanted all along. Later he told a story about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While in prison, Solzhenitsyn rejected Marxism and began a journey toward Christian faith. The theme of Pastor Brad’s sermon was Be Satisfied with Your Life, so I wasn’t sure why he used Solzhenitsyn’s story, since the author’s life changed so dramatically. I didn’t notice this at first. Initially, I was captivated by the story. When I reflected on it later, however, I began to think it didn’t fit with the morning’s theme.
Pastor Brad also denounced a segment of Christian television he characterized as “pop psychology wrapped in Bible verses” and presented by people telling us to not be content. We need to be content with where we are in life, Pastor Brad repeated. I felt like he was missing the point. Those “pop psychology” pastors tell us to do more with our lives and to strive for more. It isn’t about being greedy; it’s about getting the most out of life. In my mind, contentment is not a virtue if it leads to apathy, detachment, or lack of involvement in the world.
As the message went on, I found I wasn’t enjoying myself in the same way I had in other churches. And it wasn’t because I preferred sermons that were sugarcoated. Instead, I was put off by the lack of humor and the formality of Pastor Brad’s presentation. After visiting other churches, I had grown to appreciate certain elements of preaching that hold the audience’s attention. Other pastors made humor the centerpiece of their sermons, while staying focused on the themes of their messages. They told us what would happen if we followed their advice. They stepped away from the podiums and spoke to the congregations as if everyone knew one another well. Those qualities made those pastors more compelling and even more likable, even as they conveyed messages not that different from the one I was hearing on this morning. At the Evangelical Free Church, many people in the audience weren’t laughing. They seemed to be as uncomfortable as I was.
The pastor set a tone of formality by wearing a white shirt, red tie, blue blazer, and khaki pants. Anyone who showed up in jeans would have felt very out of place. This isn’t to say it’s bad for people to wear dressy clothing to church. But the pastor’s formality, along with his very serious sermon, made the service feel like a dull college lecture.
When I visit a church, I bring along a pen and a spiral notebook. I take a lot of notes, not just on the sermon but on the setting and the atmosphere, the look of the sanctuary or auditorium, the mood of the congregation, and a lot of other things. I did the same at this church, but an hour into it I began to drift off. And here’s the interesting thing: I wasn’t alone. As I looked around, I saw many people looking at their programs or at other families. Often, they’d look at their watches. They clearly weren’t focused on the message. The children who had not gone to the Sunday-school class weren’t that different, spending the morning coloring their Children’s Worship Bulletins.
As I studied the congregation, I noticed something I hadn’t expected at a church in a smaller community. Most of the families chose to sit by themselves with empty seats surrounding them. The next closest family would be several seats away, or sitting in a different row. Where was the close bond I expected to find in a rural town? I grew up in a religious family that was part of a tight-knit religious community. When our group got together for worship and teaching, we kids would make sure we sat next to each other. The adults would say hello to their friends before taking seats among them. (And if a prayer had started, they would at least acknowledge their friends silently.) Everyone looked forward to seeing one another at these gatherings. I expected no less at a small church located in a small town. But I didn’t notice a special bond connecting these families. Even the children, whom I expected to rush to sit next to one another, sat with their own families.
At other churches I had attended, the services ended with more songs, announcements to remind the congregation of upcoming events, or blessings being pronounced. This morning, however, the pastor talked and talked and then suddenly said, “Amen.” Before I knew it, everyone was getting up and walking out. That was it? It wasn’t even a collective amen. There was not even an, “Okay, you can go now,” or, “There are refreshments in the lobby.” It was very abrupt. By that point, I was ready to join the others who were racing out the front door to their cars.
The next stop on my DeKalb, Illinois, road trip was Westminster Presbyterian Church, only a couple of miles from the Evangelical Free Church. I arrived just as the service was about to begin. When I stepped into the meeting hall, I noticed for the first time in the months I’d been going to church services that there were no separate seats. I had to sit in an actual pew! Attached to the back of the pew in front of me was a large wooden pocket containing two Bibles, two hymnbooks, paper that people could use for writing prayer requests, and information about ministries the church offered.
The atmosphere was somber. The stained-glass windows around the room didn’t create a picture; they were just small, amorphous shapes. There was an organ in the front. No drummer this time. I didn’t even bother looking for electric guitars.
People began to file into the pews shortly after I took my seat and just before the first hymn was sung. Compared to the church I had visited earlier that morning, this one was more crowded, and the average age had skyrocketed. A few children were present, but most in the congregation had gray hair. They were very cordial to one another and chose seats close to one another. For some reason, it seemed as if the entire room was full … except for a ten-seat perimeter around where I was sitting. I didn’t know if it was because I was sitting with a notebook, writing, or because I was an unfamiliar brown person in a sea of whiteness, but only when the other areas became crowded did anyone choose a seat closer to me.
As I filled out a “friendship book” with my name and contact information, the pastor came in wearing a robe with a green sash around his neck. I looked at my program to see what he was going to speak on but couldn’t find any mention of a sermon. The first page of the program listed the prayers everyone would recite, followed by a hymn, then a scripted “call to worship” between a leader and the churchgoers, then another hymn, then a call to confession, a poem, more scripted text between a leader and us, more singing, a performance by a children’s choir, another prayer, and finally, at the bottom of the second page, I saw one line that mentioned a sermon.
Compared to the songs sung at other churches I had visited, Westminster Presbyterian used hymns that were more solemn and old-fashioned. But other than that, they weren’t much different from songs I had heard in other churches. When it came time for the scripted readings, though, I had a hard time understanding the point behind them.
The leader would say, “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”
We would respond, “Who made heaven and earth.”
The leader would say, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”
We would respond, “They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”
And so on.
It was all written there for us, but what was the purpose? To get us more involved? If it was meant to energize us about God, you would never have guessed from the lackluster responses given by the congregation. If it was meant to be a prayer, it gave no evidence of being heartfelt. If it was just a ritual, I didn’t see the point. I recalled some of the Jain rituals that never made sense to me when I was growing up. There were times I was supposed to kneel when I prayed, but only on my right knee; there were certain words I was supposed to say when I walked into the temple; there was even a specific way I was supposed to say certain mantras—and repeat them exactly one hundred eight times. Even if there were reasons behind the rituals, the reasons were never apparent and rarely satisfied my curiosity. I felt the same way this morning in church.
After the children’s choir finished singing, I saw that the program mentioned there would be an Old Testament “lesson” (in this case, 2 Samuel 7:1–7), a response (Psalm 89), and a New Testament “lesson” (Ephesians 2:11–22 and Mark 6:30–34, 53–56). When we arrived at that point in the service, the Bible verses were read out loud by a leader, and then we sang another hymn.
I had to wonder, What happened to the lesson? There was no teaching or explanation, just the various Bible readings. Perhaps the word lesson was code for scripted Bible readings, but I certainly didn’t learn anything from them.
The pastor finally took his place on the stage and began to speak. Pastor Blake made quick references to the Bible passages, though his voice was not helping me stay awake. He spoke in a monotone, with a steady volume and low energy level the entire time. In all, there was only a five-minute sermon before he called to the stage anyone who wanted to be baptized. A young couple joined him. They repeated an Affirmation of Faith, and the man had water put on his head. (I assumed the woman had already been baptized and had brought along her new husband to do the same, but I didn’t know for certain.)
The program then called for the ordination of elders and deacons. I took these to be titles of respect that would be reserved for only a handful of people. In fact, just three people were ordained that morning. The pastor then called for those who already held the titles to come grasp the hands or shoulders of the newcomers. I expected another one or two people to go up to the stage, but instead nearly half the audience went up. I was missing out on something. Either it didn’t take much to earn the title of elder or deacon, or everyone had been coming to this church for a very long time.
More prayers were said. There was another offering. And a few hymns later, we ended the service. The number of times I stood up and sat back down made it feel like I had just finished a long workout.
I admit I’m far from knowledgeable about the traditions and beliefs of a Presbyterian church. But I can say I felt no connection to this church. Had I come more often, I suspect I could become close to the members, but the rituals and scripted prayers turned me off. When a newcomer enters a place of worship and is unfamiliar with the rituals, it can make him or her uncomfortable. What would happen, for instance, if I didn’t kneel at the right time, or if I didn’t know to stand during certain prayers, or if I failed to repeat the words we were given? Well … nothing. Except I’d feel awkward and out of place. Rituals happen largely without thought. You just do them without thinking about it. I prefer activity that makes you think, which is why I appreciated sermons that left me rethinking my own life.
Aside from being made to feel you don’t belong, I also don’t see the religious reason for rituals. If I wanted to feel close to God, the prayers would have to come from within, tailored to my own struggles, hopes, and gratitude. A scripted prayer took away from all that.
Once we were finished, I had only a couple of minutes before the next church service was to begin, so I took off for First Lutheran Church, hoping I would find a stronger connection there.
The 11:15 a.m. service at First Lutheran Church was not a traditional service (that had occurred earlier in the day). This was to be an informal praise service, which made me wonder if there would be a lot of singing without a full-fledged sermon. Actually, that wasn’t too far off. When I entered, albeit a few minutes late, I heard the words to a familiar song. The program I was handed said this song was called “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” I had to look through my program from the Evangelical Free Church I’d attended earlier that morning. My hunch was right; I had heard this song already. Was that a coincidence, or was it just a popular song?
The Lutheran service took place in the church’s atrium. There were only four rows of seats set up, and not too many people filling them. A number of high-school students were present, and I figured most of the adults in attendance were their parents.
A couple more songs were sung before the pastor, a woman, began reading the scripture. Again, there wasn’t a discussion. It was simply a reading. And these words also sounded strangely familiar. I glanced at the program. Ephesians 2:11–22 and Mark 6:30–34, 53–56. It was the same material I had heard less than an hour earlier at the Presbyterian church. What was going on in DeKalb? Did all the churches have some schedule that determined which verses should be read on which day?
It turns out they did. I spoke to Pastor Marilyn after my visit, and she told me her church uses the Revised Common Lectionary,1 a collection of Bible verses to be read on certain weeks. These verses are used in a three-year cycle. I asked Pastor Marilyn if the three-year cycle was in place so all the verses in the Bible could be read over that time period. No, the pastor responded. Only certain books were used. The Gospels and Psalms were well represented. “What about Leviticus?” I asked. (Atheists often point to passages in Leviticus as evidence that the Bible includes horrible acts of violence.) Pastor Marilyn said it wasn’t included in the readings. And the song I heard when I walked in? Was that also specified in advance or was that just a coincidence? The pastor laughed as she said it was just a popular song.
After the Bible reading, Pastor Marilyn mentioned that a number of the teenagers had attended a conference in Texas and that the students wanted to thank the supporters who made the trip possible. The conference was called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Youth Gathering, and each student explained how he or she grew closer to God through the experience. The pictures that played on a screen in the background showed the inside of the Alamodome, packed with teenagers and adult chaperones.
The students shared that fifteen thousand youth had participated in this event. Fifteen thousand? Wow. I was jealous. Most atheist conventions I had attended attracted several dozen college students—nowhere close to hundreds or thousands. It wasn’t that there are so few of us, but it was difficult to get the funding to bring everyone to one centralized location. Even so, those conferences left us students excited and ready to be more active in our local groups. As the Lutheran kids talked about the event they had attended, I was amazed by how life-changing the experience was for so many of them. Many students noted this was the first time they had met such a large gathering of people who shared the same beliefs they did. They came back energized about the church and eager to share their faith with others.
As I listened, I could imagine certain atheists saying that a church conference is a way to brainwash youth into thinking that just because something is fun, it must be valid. To that end, I didn’t hear the students mention any sessions where they were taught to think critically about their faith. Then again, I’m not sure I would expect a session like that at a religious conference. The conference presented the kids with a chance to interact with other teenagers and have a good time. Theology may have been taught, but it wasn’t the focal point for most of the students who spoke about it. From that standpoint, I’m glad they had a good time. I do think it would be beneficial for the students to learn what non-Christians think and how to interact with them. To teach this at a conference of this size might be the best way to create a positive change for the future.
Interestingly enough, the students’ descriptions of their experiences were not far from those I’ve heard from students who have attended secular conferences. Among atheist college students, when they have a chance to speak to other students who often share similar “coming out” stories and experiences, it’s a powerful step in affirming one’s nonbelief in God. For the Lutheran students, many had never been around a group of like-minded people and were excited to bring back the new ideas and activities to First Lutheran Church.
After the students spoke, Pastor Marilyn returned to the podium to share her message, which was the closest we came to discussing the Bible passages. Again, it didn’t last very long. Then more hymns were sung, the offering plate was passed, and the Lord’s Prayer was recited.
If this informal gathering was any indication of the more formal service that had been held at First Lutheran earlier that morning, I was disappointed I had missed the other service. It would have been interesting to hear Pastor Marilyn give a more complete sermon, as well as give me a chance to compare the effect of a formal service on those who attended. Did the closeness I observed among those who attended the informal service grow out of the informality, or would I have noticed a similar degree of closeness at the formal service?
On other weekends I attended churches larger than the ones in DeKalb—but still not megachurch huge—in Chicago, Houston, and Colorado Springs. They shared some similarities with the churches I have described in this chapter, and a lot of differences, which I came to expect. Often when I visited a different church, my preconceived notions of church were reinforced. However, the midsized churches I attended forced me to set many of those notions aside. I’ll report on the midsized churches in the next chapter.