Sheila Dougal

“There’s no preacher here today,” my dad whispered in my ear as I sat in the second row pew of my childhood church. 

When I visit my dad I always go to church with him. Though I do not hold to many of the doctrines of my childhood church, I love singing those acapella hymns in church with my dad.

On a recent visit, my dad’s church preacher was sick and had called one of the church elders the night before to hand the preaching baton off to someone else. But the person holding the baton apparently didn’t feel he was equipped to pull off a good sermon so he stood in his wrinkly suite (one I’m guessing he wasn’t expecting he’d be needing to wear) before the sparse congregation of mostly senior adults and handful of children and explained that this Sunday, he had asked several men in the church to read a selected passage of scripture and another man to lead the flock in singing a selection of hymns between Bible readings. The church would then share the Lord’s Table, pray and be dismissed. 

Everyone was uncomfortable. You could feel it. The 4th wall was definitely broken. But I felt like I was transported back in time to the days when the newborn Church, “…devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” and spoke to one another in “…psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

I listened as the man in his jeans and tucked in t-shirt read with a trembling voice, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:16-17).

I’ve heard that verse thousands of times. But when I listened to the balding man, visibly uncomfortable with public speaking, read as though he was reading a personally life-changing declaration, I trembled.

A silence filled that sanctuary after the man closed his Bible and returned to his seat and another young man stood at the pulpit, raised his right hand in the air to begin conducting the rhythm of Nothing but the Blood. 

What can wash away my sins?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus

There we sat and insecurely sang. Some of us were out of tune. Some of our voices were cracking. Some were perfectly pitched bass tones melodiously blending with the acapella voices of the tenor and soprano voices. 

There was no band. There was nothing to drown out the fact that we made a poor choir. But my heart was leaping. I wanted to stand to my feet and shout, “Amen!”  I didn’t.  That would have really freaked my childhood church out. 

After a rotation of men who read various new testament passages, interspersed with the acapella singing of traditional church hymns, another man came to the podium to lead us in the partaking of communion.

The unassuming man with gray hair and glasses stood and announced that we would now be taking the bread together from the Lord’s table. And then, to my shock, he began to share something from his heart. Something spontaneous, or maybe it was something he prepared, I don’t know. But it was a poem. I don’t know if he knew he was sharing a poem, but he was. 

I scrambled to find a golfing pencil in the pew in front of me and scribble down his words on the church bulliten’s margin:

Agape love is in his blood

Forgiveness is in his blood

Obedience is in his blood

Caring is in his blood

Hope is in his blood

Never forsaking us is in his blood

Truth is in his blood

“Now let’s pray…” 

Oh, Lord! (I prayed in my head), Lord! This whole service is balm to my soul. I just needed your word. I just needed to hear your broken people sing and to sing with them. I just need to hear someone share beautiful, heartfelt words about the wonder of your death and resurrection. Thank you, Lord! Thank you!

In the world of theater and acting, the fourth wall is that invisible barrier between the actors on the stage and the audience members that keeps things from getting weird when you watch a play. According to Brittanica.com, “The imaginary wall is part of the “suspension of disbelief” by the audience deemed critical to an appreciation and enjoyment of works of fiction.”

I haven’t been in a church without a fourth wall in decades. I know we keep that wall up so that first-time guests can slip into a service and not feel like they interrupted a private club meeting or something. I know we do it so we won’t be a distraction to the people gathered to sing and listen to a sermon. But I wonder if we are so concerned about keeping up appearances and putting on a good performance that isn’t distracting, that doesn’t (God forbid) make anyone in the pew feel heard or seen or uncomfortable, that we’re missing the opportunity to be seen and heard and vulnerable with each other. I wonder if we’ve turned church into theater. 

My childhood church doesn’t have it all right either. Growing up, those stripped down church services without musical instruments were held rigidly as the only way to acceptably worship God. The legalism was so thick you didn’t have to worry about a fourth wall. 

But there is a stark contrast between what I witnessed and participated in that Sunday with my dad and what I experience most Sundays in my suburban church where the lighting is just right, the band is on point, the crossfades on the stage don’t leave any awkward pauses, the sermon is delivered with humor and kept short, and the audience doesn’t have to worry that their out-of tune voice will be heard above the worship leader’s. In both churches there’s a liturgy of service. Both hold a certain way of doing things on Sunday. And in both, I worship the Lord who saved me. But I was refreshed that Sunday in my childhood church in a way I have not been in a long time at church. 

The church gathering was never meant to be a performance. Nor was it to be a ritual so rigid with rules one can’t breath. I crave the gathering of the vulnerable Redeemed. I don’t want to have to worry about walls when I gather with the church.