BY ROY ADAMS

WALKED INTO A HOME IMPROVEMENT store recently in search of a couple of those hard-to-find little items needed around the house. Unlike my experience on previous visits, that day I found the attendants just where I needed them, just when I needed them, each one courteous and helpful. The checkout line moved briskly, the cashier had a sense of humor, and within minutes I was out the door, mission accomplished. I walked away with a good taste in my mouth, and had a feeling I wouldn't mind shopping there again.

When visitors come to our churches, what do they find? What taste does the experience leave in their mouths?

For quite some time now, I've been making notes about things I observe while attending Adventist worship services. And in what follows, I share a few of these observations publicly for the first time. These are real incidents, and it's possible some readers may recognize themselves or their church in one or another of the particulars I include. In some cases the church was not even aware I was in the congregation. In other cases I was the visiting speaker. In still other cases I might have been a member of the particular church. When the observation is positive, I sometimes name the church in question. When it's negative, I take care to ensure no one is able to say for sure that I'm talking about their particular church.

Case 1
Two little girls (one 4, the other about 4 or 5) are sitting in the row in front of my wife and me in this church of about 200. Bored as the service proceeds, they begin leafing through the church hymnal (of all things) for "entertainment." I sit there wishing with all my heart I had a Bible storybook with pictures to place before those little eyes, hungry for something to read, something uplifting to look at. I keep watching them as they just sit there for minutes on end, turning those dull black-and-white pages full of text and nothing else. Maybe their parents are up front serving; I couldn't tell, but on their left is a young lad (of about 11 or 12), probably big brother. Suddenly noticing how much fun they are having with the hymnal, he orders them to close it at once, and they obey. But with nothing else to occupy their time, it isn't long before they open up the exciting book again, causing the youthful vigilante on their left to terminate the delinquent activity once and for all. He confiscates the offending volume and slams it shut.

How sad! I thought. And sadder yet if that boy's behavior reflected the way he himself had been treated when he was the girls' age. There are all kinds of materials out there to help parents make church attractive and fun for the younger members of God's family. If I, a casual visitor, was able to pick up on these kids' need during a single appearance, why shouldn't caring members of that church have caught it over a period of weeks or months? (This first observation is so important that we've included a sidebar on it. Click here.)

During that same visit I watched young ushers dutifully standing guard at the doors during offering time, with people on the outside waiting to come in. During offering time! I had to shake my head in sheer disbelief. Who'd given these youngsters their orders? I wondered. How could it possibly have made sense to anyone to keep members and guests waiting outside closed doors when they could well have been let in to help swell the offering bag?

Case 2
Here's how the "welcome into fellowship" went in one church: The leader called attention to the names of the transferees printed in the bulletin. Then with no effort to introduce the people behind the names, the leader called for a vote that they be accepted into fellowship: "It's been moved . . . Seconded . . . All in favor, say Amen . . . It's carried . . . Welcome to all those who are joining."

And that was it! No calling on these new folks to stand, or to raise their hands, or to give some other signal that they were real human beings joining a new fellowship. Nothing! It was cold, impersonal, proforma. How could anyone be excited about joining a group like that? Contrast that with the backslapping, song-chanting welcome they'd receive down at the local pub if they should ever backslide!

And it's not much different for baptism. In church after church I've witnessed the sidelining of the event. We place it at the start, sometimes while congregants are still gathering. Almost as if it were an inconvenience to be rid of before moving on to the more important items on the program. The service ends with no further mention or fuss about these "new babes in Christ."

I've noticed in others of our churches, however, that a baptism occupies center stage. Placed toward the end, it becomes the climax of the entire service. Songs precede and follow every baptism ("Lord, I'm Coming Home," "Take Me to the Water," "O Now I See the Crimson Wave"). Years later--decades--those songs will remind these new members of that sacred milestone in their lives. At the end of the service they stand in front of the church as elders, friends, and other church members line up to welcome them into the fellowship. It's a big deal and these new members never forget. Why should they? It's a second birthday--the day they formally entered the spiritual family of God!

Case 3
If I've seen this once, I've seen it 100 times. It's about the microphone! Why so many of our churches neglect to invest in a good sound system, I will never understand. After all, about the most important piece of equipment needed for corporate worship is a good sound system. What good is coming together if worshippers can't hear--or are missing 35 percent, 50 percent, of what's being communicated?

And have you noticed (and this is so freaky) how often microphones behave as if they consciously were out to sabotage the sermon--even in places where the sound system's fine? I mean, why does everything seem to work just fine during the song service, the Sabbath school, the personal ministries period, the announcements, the children's story, and the special music, but then go absolutely haywire as soon as the preacher gets up? Has anyone else seen that? Suddenly microphones need changing, adjusting, readjusting. In one gathering I actually saw a sound technician go to the front ten minutes into the speaker's message. Replacement mike in his hand, he ascends the rostrum (the speaker meanwhile holding forth with the defective mike); taps the new mike to test it; and hearing nothing, actually speaks into the instrument (now live): "Testing, one, two." all this, while the preacher struggles to hold the attention of the 700 people in front of him, their eyes riveted on a technician testing a microphone beside him. My seatmate (another pastor) and I roll our eyes at each other in complete bewilderment.

Once the preacher commences the delivery, it seems to me, that's sacred time, to be intruded on with the utmost of care and only when absolutely necessary. Awkward and unnecessary interruptions can cause a speaker to lose their stride and never get it back. This means that stringent testing of the sound system should come before the speaker takes the podium.

Case 4
The last hot meal I'd had, as I arrived in this particular country, was Friday midday. For supper Friday evening and for breakfast Sabbath morning, I'd eaten from stuff in the refrigerator at the apartment provided. I'd spoken Friday evening, early Sabbath morning at one church (where they'd rearranged the program for that day to have the preaching service first), then gone on to another spot where several churches gathered for the 11:00 service.

I'd been looking forward to a good lunch before I'd have to preach again in the afternoon. But as I plunged into the dish set down before me, I discovered the food was beastly cold. Evidently, in that place they were carrying out the injunction to the letter not to kindle a fire on the Sabbath. They may well have been more righteous than I was, but one thing was sure: the hunger I'd been feeling suddenly disappeared. I had to face the afternoon meetings on an empty stomach (even if, perhaps, with a clearer head).

But the question is: Regardless of our own local ways of doing things, how do we finesse the situation when we're entertaining guests from another culture, even from another part of the world, perhaps? I don't have the answer, but I throw out the question.

Case 5
In one church someone made what I considered one of the most brilliant offering calls I'd ever heard during a divine service. Speaking about what he called "deep vein" giving (giving that comes from inside), he said, "You can give without love, but you can't love without giving." Coming to his dazzling conclusion, he said (and I wrote it down): "Stewardship is the art of organizing our life so that God can spend it." The audience was impressed almost to applause. The man sat down, and the offering plate immediately came to him in full view of the congregation that had just heard him; he passed it on empty to the next person.

Now we must not judge. It could be that his wife out in the audience was giving for the family that day; that he was practicing systematic giving and had just given his monthly quota the previous Sabbath (or would give the coming Sabbath); whatever. But you just don't make an offering call like that without setting the example or else explaining your personal situation that day, because people are watching.

Here and There
Now for a few miscellaneous observations, here and there:

1. Every time I see deacons or ushers serving from the back, I remember working with the late George Vandeman at evangelistic meetings, and how he drilled into us, students, the need to serve from the front--especially when we're handing out stuff (cards, pencils, or whatever). This way, people can see you coming, and those holding up hands can readily know whether you've seen them or they've been missed--without the discomfort of having to keep looking back to know where the ushers are.

2. At the Dupont Park Adventist Church in southeast Washington, D.C., I ran into a posse of junior deacons in action. The Sabbath I was there for a speaking appointment, there was a potluck in recognition of these young leaders (all of them between 9 and 14 years of age). In one of the after-dinner speeches a mother told how on those Sabbath mornings when her son is on deacon duty, the entire dynamics of the family changes. As soon as the young man gets on his suit--deacon's badge bearing his name pinned on--he transforms into a different person, and everybody had better be ready and on time. He takes the responsibility with utter seriousness, she said.

On hand at the potluck was an Adventist officer from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police, himself a (senior) deacon. Apart from the respect and confidence created in developing minds by having a real officer of the law up close and personal, these youngsters received words of encouragement from him, a graphic portrayal of some of the challenges and perils of living in a huge metropolitan area like Washington, and advice about becoming role models in their church, their school, and their community. Can anyone think of a more uplifting and farsighted thing to do for the youngsters of our church? I left the place thinking, Wow!

3. The way we announce the end of Sabbath school classes in most of our churches has always left me cold. In church after church, the superintendent goes to the microphone and interrupts the entire class exercise to announce: "Teachers, you have five minutes to bring your lesson to an end." Four minutes later the microphone is engaged again: "Teachers, you have one more minute." Finally the closing remarks begin, drowning out the three or four long-winders still standing, who, at last bowing to the inevitable, bring their presentations to abrupt, untidy endings.

It all seems so undisciplined. How easy--and how much more elegant--to have a firm preagreed understanding with all teachers that as a five-minute warning, a chime will sound, or a few notes will play on the organ or piano, or a dinner bell will ring, or (as in the local church I attend) a horn will blow, or some other unobtrusive signal will be given. What's so hard about that? But for decades now, Sabbath after Sabbath--in altogether too many places--we continue the same bad habit.

4. At the Community Praise Center Adventist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, earlier this year, I heard "In His Image," a visiting quartet from the Capitol Hill Adventist Church in Washington, D.C. They sang a beautiful Negro spiritual, followed by a powerful, powerful rendition of the well-known hymn "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go." I would travel far just to hear them sing those two pieces again! The audience could hear every word, and the harmony was so rich, so compelling, that the congregation sat on the edges of their seats, amens and applause at the ready. It reminded me that it isn't how old or how contemporary the particular piece; but the talent, the competence, and the personal surrender we bring to it.

Those whom God has gifted in the musical field bless our congregations in ways they will never know. Some time ago as I listened to the youth choir of the Dupont Park Adventist Church render the piece "Because He Is God" (and that's all I know about the piece), I could close my eyes and think that I'd accidentally strayed too close to the gates of heaven, and was hearing the angels' voices from within that sacred place. I had a similar feeling in Berlin, back in June of 2002. Many churches in the city had come together for an event at Adventhaus Berlin--Wilhemnsdorf; and a group of young adults, all White, came forward to sing, African-American style, something entitled "Walking in the Light, We Will Be Free." You couldn't get closer to heaven than that and still remain on earth.

Ok, I'm getting carried away--perhaps. What I want to say is this: when done well, music brings a power to worship that we'll never fully comprehend this side of heaven.

Not as a Critic
I don't go to church "to observe."

I go to worship. But even the person who has no intention to eavesdrop hears things, and that's what's happened here. I share these snippets (and I have more), collected over a period of years, with the hope that they might bring encouragement to many and lead to change where needed. We want people to leave with the feeling I had that day as I left that home improvement store.

The more we improve our worship services and our participation in it, the more they will inspire those who come, and the less they will attract negative notice. Our goal should be to structure these times of corporate devotion in such a way as to direct attention from ourselves to the One to whom it all belongs. In the words of C. S. Lewis, "a good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. . . . The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God." *

_________________________
* C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).

_________________________
Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.