How Will I Fare?

It is a strange Sunday morning for me. I am in Nashville, Tennessee, on church-related business, attending a Middle Adult Summit beginning this afternoon through Tuesday, which is sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship. I am not accustomed to being in a strange community on Sunday morning, and even less accustomed to not leading worship and preaching. I will, however, be worshiping while I am here, although it will be with a group of people I have never met. In a few minutes I will walk three blocks from the hotel where I’m staying (walking is my only means of transportation this week, except for the shuttle to and from the airport) to worship at West End United Methodist Church.

I have a good idea of what the service will be like, because I’ve perused their website and listened to a previous worship service online. It will be a traditional worship service with plenty of “smells and bells,” as they say in more liturgical circles. I will be worshiping in the heart of the Bible belt, and I understand that the 11 o’clock service is the primary service of the morning. There will be much that I will be familiar with … the hymns, the liturgy, the music.

But I am still struck by a nagging question, “How will I fare in a worship community not my own?” It’s a strange question, really, and one that I shouldn’t even have to ask. I mean, after all, I have been in church nearly all of my life, have been a pastor for more than twenty years, and have been pastoring in United Methodist Churches for fourteen years. I should not be anxious about the experience, and I shouldn’t have to wonder, because I am familiar with what will happen, the church is part of my denominational family, and I have traveled enough to expect diversity. But I still have some repressed anxiety about showing up alone to worship in a service with people I do not know.

I cannot help but wonder, then, how the average de-churched or no-churched person in my community feels. How intimidating must be it be to do something so anxiety-producing when you may have not been in church for years, or do not know the people there, or have no experience with the denomination in question?

I will blog again later today about my experience in a new, strange place. I am on a mission of sorts … to experience what it feels like to be alone, unfamiliar and entering a strange place for the first time.