Temple Beth Messiah
Last week I decided to check out a Jewish Synagogue. Actually, this was a Messianic Jewish Congregation which means they’re down with Jesus and the whole New Testament. They keep all the tradition and ceremony of Judaism while professing faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
It was a pretty typical service… you know… singing in Hebrew, ladies dancing in the front, the parade of the Torah while everyone kissed it… (yep, I kissed it too). That Saturday was Shabbot Hachodesch or the first Sabbath closest to the month of Nissan which is the month of Passover. So for some reason, we took communion twice that morning. The second time we did it at the end of service and they passed out little dixie cups full of wine.
It was interesting, but I forgot how uncomfortable it is to walk into a church for the first time where you don’t know anyone. I was literally sitting in the parking lot debating whether or not to turn around and go home.
It’s also easy to forgot how much of the “rules” or “language” we assume people know. Church has it’s own code. Most people don’t know it… and so anything spiritual becomes irrelevant. I’ve been in church for awhile, but the code here was extremely complex. Stand up, sit down, call and response, turn and pray, speak in Hebrew and then English. I know I messed some of it up.
I think the challenge here is to preserve the rich and complex tradition, but do it in a way that is applicable to modern life. Why do we have the tradition and what does it mean to me today?
March 29th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I think there is a way to preserve the traditions through symbolism and still make it relevant by figuring out a way to tie it into today’s culture. Does that make sense? I think we(meaning the church)never really try to find ways to do that. We just use the same old traditions in the same ways. We need to break that habit…
April 5th, 2007 at 9:40 am
My idea is that of retiring jerseys. In sports, they retire a player’s gear after a while, churches should carry the same idea. Work a “tradition” until it fades away, then retire it! Then, in the church lobby, have a glass case with represenative symbolic items that remind people of that tradition. Then, with that, people that are new to the church, don’t have to feel uncomfortable with kissing things,dancing, or call and response. Seriously, I felt lost at my parent’s Methodist church just trying to follow all of the call and responses, mixed with the hymns (which I later noticed my mom bookmarked all of the hymns using the 15 pages that she got in the program when we walked in). With this, new traditions can come and go to satisfy the traditionalist in church, OH YEAH! while trying not to scare people away that are just finding a relationship with God.
Did I mention that I was scared of church folk before I got saved? :O) Actually, some church folk still scare me…..but I am workin on that.