Chaps at church

The Sunday church experience—sitting in pews, singing, praying together, listening to the sermon, and all that—it floats some people’s boats, but not everyone’s. And certainly not all of the time.
Of course, worship is a lot more than an hour or so on Sunday. It’s a whole-of-life, 24/7 thing flowing from a God-facing life of gratitude, love and obedience. But just because we come at Sunday church from different places doesn’t mean there can’t be something meaningful in it for everyone. With this in mind, War Cry asked two males to share contrasting perspectives …

Darryl Carpenter shares one bloke’s view of Sunday church (based on the short prayer ‘Please God, don’t let them make me sing seven songs in one service again’). Darryl attended the church of the great outdoors for most of his formative years and can’t sing to save himself.

I don’t know about you, but Sunday worship doesn’t do it for me. Fronting up on Sunday morning for an hour or so of six or seven songs, all of which are some variation of ‘closer my God to thee’, is quite a bit like going to the dentist.

But even that is being a bit unfair on the dentist. At least they let me lie down and give me a helpful dose of anaesthetic to deaden the pain. They also give me a choice of DVDs.

It’s not that I’m against worship. The songs are okay-ish, the band is usually superb and the lyrics sound. It’s just that the combination of mass arm raising, eyes closed, tears-streaming-down-your-face vocal choreography isn’t my thing. Unless, of course, I’m at a Silver Ferns game, or watching the Warriors, Rob Wardell or the Black Sticks.

Sport is different though. You’re meant to ‘get into the zone’, paint your face, wear your team colours and get enthusiastic with plenty of cheering and shouting. I’ve been known to shout out loud at the TV during a match—when the ref is wrong, the play goes right when it should have gone left, or when Valerie Adams throws another gold-medal winner.

God and I have a similar conversation arrangement: lots of silence interspersed with desperate pleas for forgiveness, injury prevention or achievement (from me to God, not the other way around), and occasionally when I remember, a quick statement of heartfelt thanks. I have been working on this a bit lately—more thanks and less desperate pleading.

When the mind starts to wander

So here I am, stuck in church, halfway through worship song three of seven and my mind is already starting to wander. But since the War Cry editor asked me to write this article, I thought I’d track my thoughts and use these as the basis of my article.

We’re up to song four and I wonder what the current update on Gaza is. There is so much pain and suffering there. Two sides, one conflict. The chasm between the two is so much more than the physical gap across the barbed wire border or the enclave fence. The kids will be suffering the most. It is always that way in these sorts of situations. Maybe a quick prayer will help. Actually, that is all that will work in this situation.

I’m a bit bored, so I glance around the room and smile a hello at one of the guys from home group who glances my way. He well knows my aversion to worship and has perfected his own technique for coping: he just gets right into it. A slight shuffle of the feet, a hand tremble with arms raised and his eyes averted to heaven. His mind will be totally on worshiping God, he oozes complete belief and trust. I really admire him for that.

I look across the other side of the room and see the youth. They always sit together en masse, and our three kids are amongst them. It’s nice to see so many of them; the new youth worker is doing a great job. I must catch her after the service and say a quick word of thanks for all she is doing. Having been a youth worker back in the day, I appreciated people doing that for me when I was sometimes in the firing line.

I glance behind me and get the blokes ‘hello’ from one of the guys. You know the hello I mean: eye contact, a smile, and then the subtle head tilt backwards. He and his wife have just started an outreach for petrol heads and those into drag racing, 4x4 driving and motor bikes. Not my thing, but definitely theirs. They decided that rather than try to bring those folk to church, they will take church to them. So they turn up to events, offer their friendship and share God. I reckon God likes that.

Create in me a clean heart

Song six—we’re almost finished. I’ve read the War Cry cover to cover and there isn’t much else to do. The worship team has struck up an old tune I know from way back in the day. Keith Green took Psalm 51 and wrote music for ‘Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.’ I need a bit of that; my heart’s been a bit grubby of late.

The next verse goes on with ‘Cast me not away from thy presence, oh Lord, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.’ I couldn’t think of anything worse. Imagine not being part of God or there being no God so that we lived our lives with no hope. It must be like that for those living in West Africa, Syria and the Ukraine at the moment—not much hope there.

But we are saved, literally, by the final verse: ‘Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and renew a right spirit within me.’ An amazing verse, and somewhere deep down in my soul I get an overwhelming sense that God loves me, that I am doing okay and that he truly cares. Maybe there is something about this worship thing after all?

Song seven is all finished, so that’s church done for the week. Now, where’s the coffee? I need to catch up with the folk I have been thinking about in the last hour or so. My friends, my community,
my church.

Martin Barratt thinks he’s a fairly normal bloke. He enjoys sport, action films, rough and tumble with his son, a good pie … and knows some basic DIY. He also enjoys worshipping in church on a Sunday morning.

Church worship gets a bad rap sometimes as being irrelevant or even a bit girly or wimpy. But that’s not my take. I guess I owe my positive view to my varied church journey. I came to faith at 18 in a big evangelical Anglican church. You know the type: huge candles, hard pews, stand up and sit down, long hymns (O Lord, this one goes on forever!). There was a sense of awe and wonder, and with over 1300 people, there were also quite a few blokes.

I then shifted to the opposite end of the spectrum—a well-known charismatic youth church. It was very different, vibrant and dynamic. A number of internationally popular male worship leaders come from this church, which, together with the culture of the place, made it easy for guys to really enjoy worshipping in its services.

From here, I moved to a different denomination for the next nine years—a church movement well regarded around the world for exercising the gifts of the Spirit and its passionate worship. It’s also known for its influence on modern worship in the wider church. Worship as a lifestyle was a big component of my church life here, and again I found safety in a herd of male worshippers.

I look back and realise how blessed I am to have enjoyed such an eclectic mix of church worshipping experiences. I’m also aware that some guys feel embarrassed about engaging with worship or simply don’t enjoy it, but I’ve never felt awkward or weird; I’ve just got in there and really enjoyed worshipping.

Expressing the joy of salvation

Years ago, I was at a large youth leaders conference. During one of the evening meetings, I was happily getting into the music—singing away, arms outstretched (I try not to wave them too much as, being tall, I have the wingspan of an albatross) and I may have been tapping my feet too. After the service ended, one of the band members asked if he ‘could have a quiet word’. I was a bit worried, but he said how good it was to see guy really enjoying worship. He told me it was a good example to others and also an encouragement to him as a worship leader.  

During the rest of the conference, I took some time to see how other men were responding (or not) to worship times. I noticed a lot were ‘actively disengaged’ (looking terribly bored), some were courteously indifferent, and I wasn’t even sure if a few were still conscious. A mere handful appeared to be enjoying themselves. It really made me think: we guys can get passionate about a number of things—like sport or cars—yet many of us seem indifferent to visibly expressing the joy of our salvation.

Sometimes I struggle to understand this. After all, didn’t David dance before the Lord with all his might (2 Samuel 6:14)? Now, he was a fairly Alpha male! And doesn’t Nehemiah 8:10 say the joy of the Lord is our strength? It’s not wrong for men to demonstrate strength in the right way, and worship allows us another platform for that.

Maybe it’s because women are less inhibited about showing emotion in public. And it’s true that the very personal nature of certain worship songs can leave us guys feeling rather awkward and, as a result, distant. Maybe churches leave men feeling it’s not ‘the right thing’ to be truly expressive. If so, this is a shame, because if we can’t be honest, open and expressive in church, then where can we be?

Struggling with public worship?

Here are a few questions we can ask ourselves if we’re struggling with the whole public worship thing:

• Do we acknowledge the awe and wonder that comes with worship of God? Are we reminded of the smallness of ourselves and the greatness of our God?
• Do we make room for worship in our spare time? I like to use car journeys when I’m alone to put on some ‘manly’ Christian music that I can get into. (I’d recommend Need to Breathe, Anberlin and Jeremy Camp for starters.)
• Have we reflected on our prior church or family experience to see how this may have influenced us? What has been modelled to us? If we have seen men being uninterested or passive in worship, it’s highly likely we will follow suit, thinking that is the norm or even the most ‘appropriate’ way for men to be.
• Perhaps the basic problem is that expressing our love for God is a difficult concept for some guys? (But, hey, we all love Richie McCaw, right?)

Faith is a journey and a challenge, and not all parts are equal. We take more readily to some facets of faith (just watch us guys hit the post-service food tables!), while other parts take time and discipline to become part of our everyday experience. While we would all love to be a rough, tough Christian man like Bear Grylls, unsurprisingly most of us aren’t. And that’s fine; God wants us to come as we are.

So, for all who find public worship toe-curlingly awkward, what can we do to get the deeper connection that corporate worship allows with the body of Christ? Here are a few suggestions:

• Strive to set a good example for others in church services.
• Don’t let the circumstances of the service distract you from offering your praise, whether it’s hard seating, a room that’s too cold or too hot, or some off-key music.
• Remind yourself that if King David could dance and be undignified in worship, we can too. (Within reason, of course!)
• Recall the good things that God has done in your life. That God made us, provides for us and, best of all, that he loves us. Now respond to that!
• Come expectant that God will meet you on a Sunday whenever you head to church.

Ultimately, if we believe in God and have seen his work in our life, shouldn’t we honour this? If God is who he is, then how can we not tell of his wonders, how can we not sing his praise? So, why not give that a go this Sunday? You can even reward yourself with an extra biscuit at the after-match function for being so brave!

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by Darryl Carpenter & Martin Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 6 September 2014, pp11.
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