Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a recurring post that examines personal and pastoral events of Sunday. 

Someone said preparation is not the same thing as planning.

I planned a discussion with confirmation students about the position of Christianity in American culture. I printed copies of the chart from this report, but I wasn’t prepared for a student’s objection to the lumping together of “Jewish,” “Muslim,” “Hindu,” and “Buddhist” under a category called “Other.” I offered a sterile defense of research methodology and missed a moment of righteous indignation.

The Youth Intern proudly announced to the junior high students that he had knocked out a foreboding piece of his wedding planning by securing the venue 21 months in advance. He reported the date. I checked my calender. “Oh, that’s a Sunday.” His face fell. He wasn’t prepared for 7th graders to cackle as him, nor from his enraged fiancee’s condemnation: “You had one job!!”

After a Saturday cooking class and the purchase of a new cookbook, I planned my family’s weekly meals on paper. I took daughter shopping with me after church, then returned home to spend the next two hours chopping produce, making stock to freeze, and cooking rice for use throughout the week. But I wasn’t prepared for Daughter’s indifference as she turned up her nose at what I was making. Cookbook, meet trash can.

We’re planning three high school youth group sessions on romance, dating, and relationships. I enlisted students’ help in planning specific topics. Giggles. Silence. Jokes. I’m no more prepared now than I was before.

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a recurring post that examines personal and pastoral events of Sunday. 

 Today’s topic: Veggie Tales.

My church has never had a dedicated high school gathering on Sunday morning before worship. What it does have is a dynamic married couple who, for close to 40 years, have taught a combined junior high and high school class in the hour before worship. It’s honestly one of the best things about my church.

Last year we decided to fully include new 6th graders into all of our youth activities, rather than make them wait until the 7th grade, which is when middle school starts in the public schools. As a result, a small contingent of the high school students in that Sunday morning class began showing signs of frustration with the, shall we say, less advanced maturity of their younger peers. I reached out to these students and asked if they would like to have their own gathering on Sunday morning–high schoolers only. They said yes they would, so I recruited a few teachers and sent them off.

This morning I think that send off officially sank. After a promising start last fall, it struggled in the winter and spring with too little support for the teachers. By the time we regrouped for the current school year, many students didn’t come back, and most of the new high schoolers didn’t want to leave the junior high class with the married couple. The teachers I’d recruited were frustrated, and with good reason.

I tried one last thing: a high school Bible study in my office with the three or four high schoolers who were interested. Today was week three of that. Week one had two students, week two only one, and today, well, none.

Several high school students actually showed up for Sunday school. And when I saw them I simply told them where I would be at the start of the hour, and that they were welcome to come join me but that I wouldn’t coerce them. Well, to a person they chose to join the junior high class. I found out later why: Veggie Tales.

Initially I’m miffed about this. That my high school students can’t resist the allure of animated Bible stories meant for young children makes me think I’ve failed in some bigger way. Either the Bible study I’m proposing is hopelessly boring, or the work I’ve done with these students since they were sixth graders has not increased their Biblical literacy or spiritual maturity one bit.

But I suspect there’s something else going on here, something I don’t want to fight, and so I’m gladly conceding defeat. The married couple are amazing, amazing people, and that any of our students of any age get to sit at their feet is a gift I’ll not block. Further, they like having high schoolers and junior high schoolers together, even when that involves a six year stretch of grade levels. They’re the experts, and I should get out of the way.

I’m adding this whole episode to my career’s growing chronicle of things that were working just fine and had worked fine for years before I arrived but that I somehow thought I could improve and so inserted myself only to threaten or wreck a good thing.

I’m also adding it to the long list of reasons I believe Veggie Tales are from the devil.

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a recurring post that examines personal and pastoral events of Sunday. 

Today’s topic: improvisation.

One of the valuable contributions being made by NEXT Church is a push towards spontaneity and improvisation in worship. Mainline churches have relied heavily on printed orders of worship that clearly instruct worshipers in every move of a service, especially since the liturgical renewal movement of the 1960’s. That serves a critical hospitality function, as anyone who can read is able to follow printed prompts and join in printed responses.

But voices like Ashley Goff are pushing churches to drop the scripts and pick up some improv skills. To sit for 60 minutes listening passively or joining in now and again in precisely predetermined ways feels more and more out of joint for contemporary people. How, the question goes, can churches expect to incorporate the gifts of men and women who, Monday through Saturday, are blogging and DIYing their way through more and more of life when what we offer them is an hour long seminar or hymn sing?

It’s a complicated question, and there’s lots of nuance to be added, but I’m persuaded that the move to improv and spontaneity is the right one. So yesterday I tried some things. I asked for a raising of hands during the sermon. I tried the “Yes, Let’s” benediction again. But that’s not much. I still felt like I was doing a lot of one-way talking.

So here’s my question: if you’re a church leader, what are some of your favorite ways of “imrov”ing in worship? If you go to a church, what kind of balance do you expect between what the service dictates for you vs. what you’re invited to contribute of your own? And if church isn’t your thing, then what is the most invigorating kind of collective activity you participate in, and what makes it that way?

Thanks for your comments!