Where Do the Old Rockers Go?

1 Corinthians 14:26-33

"When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people." (NIV)

Christianity is exclusionary, but church was never meant to be.

What do I mean by that? Christianity is exclusionary because we believe that there is only one way to Heaven, only one way to be saved. "Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’" (John 14:6 NKJV). No one comes . . . except through Me. That "except" is huge! There is only one way, through Jesus as a person’s Savior. No other religions, no other beliefs will do. Christianity is totally exclusionary. Christians cannot, by definition, accept other religions as being equal or even similar.

On the other hand, once a person becomes a Christian, life within the Church was meant to be fully inclusionary. Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 12 about the body: "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good . . . Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (v. 7, 27 NIV). To each person within the body of Christ are given gifts of the Spirit to be used for the common good of the Body. This is God’s promise.

So what’s happened? Why has Church, for so many congregations, become an us-four-and-no-more proposition? In fact, why have, in many, many cases those who have reached greater maturity (translation: gotten older) been shut out of their ministries in favor of younger (less experienced) people? Where has the joy and flavor of being multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-anything gone?

In other words, where do old Christian rockers go? (And no, I’m not talking about the kind of rockers that you sit in on the front porch of the Cracker Barrel. I’m talking about Baby Boomer musicians.)

My disclaimer in all this is that I’m a Baby Boomer musician, so, in a sense, I’m talking about myself and my friends. Years ago, when we were younger, we submitted ourselves to the leadership and training of older musicians and were grateful to do so! The songs we sang weren’t always of our choosing, but the experience we gained as musicians and Christians was invaluable. We were also encouraged to develop our own music ministries which we did quite successfully. As we all matured, we were looking forward to the day when we could step full time in music ministry . . . only to find that there came a point (and we weren’t that old) when the church leadership decided that only "young folks" should be on stage. Somewhere in the process of church culture changing, we got lost.

And now we are in our prime as musicians. We have great voices, skilled fingers, and a wealth of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t for music . . . and we’ve been left out. Completely left out. For some of us, there are part-time opportunities. We may be allowed to lead worship occasionally or to back-up a much skinnier, younger worship team. But our wrinkles and grey hair simply aren’t "cool" enough to be allowed on the stage anymore.

Dick Van Dyke at 90 -- There Is No Such Thing as "Old"


The Church has no idea what it’s missing! For example, in my secular job, I am the director of seven performance groups, ranging in age from kindergarten through eighth grade. More than half of our student body participates. Last year, my girls’ show choir was ranked #1 in the state of California in their competition division. For the past three years, I’ve written musical plays which have been performed at my school and highly acclaimed by the adults who attended the performances. I have trained and practiced and I know what I’m doing as a musician. I know how to make good music.

More than that, as a Christian, I have grown tremendously. I know how to listen to that still small voice of the Spirit, even while I’m leading worship. I know how to combine songs so that a beautiful theme is created. And I know how to make meaningful worship without click tracks and pre-recorded background. It took a lot of years of practice and prayer to get where I am. But most churches are uninterested in even talking to me because I’m closer to retirement than diapers.

Where do aging musicians go?

And it’s not just about musicians. Our denomination (and perhaps others) frown on placing pastors into churches if that pastor is over 40. That means, a church often gets a senior pastor with 10 or fewer years of experience. Wouldn’t someone prefer a pastor with more than 20 years? Not so. Why? Because of the mistaken idea that an older person can’t relate to younger people. (However, that’s not necessarily true. Just ask my students. They’ll tell you I’m the coolest person they know. Go figure.) Relating to culture and people isn’t about age; it’s about mindset and perspective. I spend a lot of time with younger folks and in order tolearn what’s important to them. That’s what all Christians should be doing, listening to each other regardless of age, culture, or race.

The Church is losing so much by segregating the young from the old. It’s time we took back our churches and began to integrate our congregations and our ministries so that each one can participate. There’s more than enough time and opportunity for everyone to participate. And we would be stronger for it.

© 2016 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

Body Shaming

Proverbs 16:31



"Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness." (NIV)

There’s been some discussion of late about the state of Carrie Fisher’s body and the effect of aging that can be seen. (For those of you who don’t know, she’s staring as Princess Leia in the latest movie of the Star Wars franchise.) Ms. Fisher has been through a lot, including overcoming a drug addiction, having a child, and restarting her career in a field other than acting. Personally, I think she was very gracious to return and reprise her role. Regardless, as Ms. Fisher and I are similar in age, I have thought a lot about the body shaming and her response. We put too much emphasis on looks in this country.

My paternal grandmother married young. My grandfather, from the beginning, could be mean when he was thwarted. Like most narcissists, he believed that life’s purpose was in getting all he could for himself. Even near the end, he would have preferred to have another smoke rather than spend time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My grandmother lived with this man from her marriage until her death. Near the end, she spoke with me and regretted the years she had given him. But she had stayed true to her marriage because honor and commitment were more important to her than happiness.

My grandmother was, even as a teen, only marginally beautiful. In the ensuing years, she worked initially as a restaurant server (in those days, called a waitress). She would work twelve hours or more six and seven days a week, beginning her shift in the hotel coffee shop and ending in the great dining room. She could carry ten hot dinner plates on her arms (a feat that always marveled me). She brought her meager earnings home every time, not spending a cent on herself, because my grandfather would take his weekly pay in Friday night and come home Saturday morning broke. She saved enough money to pay cash for a small house and continued to save throughout her life.

When my grandparents followed my parents to California, my grandmother took a job as an upholstery seamstress. I don’t know how many times the large needles pierced her hands and fingers, but she worked fearlessly and long hours. She had to; there was no other income coming into the family. My grandfather continued his habit of drinking up his pay on the weekends until he retired.
 My grandmother was finally able to retire, but when, in the 1970's, the bottom dropped out of the economy, she had to take another job, this time as a manager of a trailer park in the desert. The job gave them a roof over their heads. Even though it was a small single wide with only a swamp cooler (and summer temperatures averaging about 110 ), she continued to work hard. She was in her early 70s.



Finally, she was able to retire. The few pieces of property she had been able to salvage from the economy drop were sold and she bought a small mobile home in Bakersfield for herself and my grandfather. While there, she began attending the church where my family attended and it was at one of those services that she accepted the Lord as her Savior. She spent all of her free time reading the Bible and praying. She finally realized that the love she had been seeking all these years was guaranteed in a relationship with the Lord Jesus.

My grandmother wasn’t, by the world’s standards, beautiful. But by God’s standards, she was magnificent! She had wrinkles, gray hair, and gnarled hands, the result of hard work for many years. Up until the end, her body was strong from all of the manual labor. Her mind was sharp from much use. (Even in those last years, she could add in her head a column of numbers faster than I could input them in a calculator).

My grandmother never worried about make-up or hair styles. She had neither the time nor the money to spare. She dressed clean, neat, and modest. When she went Home, she had only a few pieces of jewelry. Her clothing was barely fit to donate to the homeless. She had spent her life being honest and hard-working, rather than beautiful, and I so honor her for that.

The American culture—the American Church included—puts the wrong emphasis on outward appearance and focuses too much on trying to look and stay "young." As Christians, we are trying to look like the world in order to attract the world and we are suffering for it! God tells us that gray hair is a crown of splendor. Why? Not because one simply becomes old, but because "it is attained in the way of righteousness." People who are older than us have lived longer and may know how to better live righteously than we do. The apostle Peter wrote: "In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders" (1 Peter 5:5a NIV). Those who have neglected to listen to elders have lost so much. Older doesn’t mean non-relevant. Older means wiser, if only for having had more experience.

Body shaming in America needs to stop. Fat doesn’t mean stupid. Old doesn’t mean outdated. Ugly doesn’t mean irrelevant. "Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the 1incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God" (1 Peter 3:3-4 NIV). As Christians, we need to put aside outward appearances and seek out the treasures that lies within a person’s heart and soul. We may fail to find a hidden treasure if all we look at is how a person appears.

© 2016 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.

 

The Cost of Complementarianism -- A Personal Perspective

The complementarian doctrine within the church is new . . . and old. It’s new in the sense that it has become quantifiable, more clearly defined, and named. It’s old in that it has permeated the church for a long time.


It was alive and well 30 years ago when I got married. It influenced how I defined my role in this marriage and how I dealt with what I know now to be systemic problems between my husband and me. Had I been more firmly educated in egalitarianism at that time, perhaps I would have dealt differently with the severe problems that I faced year after year after year.

My ex-husband is a serial adulterer. But more than that, he is an addict, addicted to being addicted. From the beginning, he gravitated toward anything and everything that would satisfy his lusts. And literally they have been lusts . . . plural.

For years, I submitted myself to his horrible choices because I felt that he was the head of the household and I must submit to his leadership. Even as I felt compelled to step in—little by little—to take control of situations that were clearly out of control, I also felt guilty. I was stepping into the areas which clearly (or so I thought) belonged to the area of my husband as the family leader.

How much did I fail him by refusing to take a tougher stand earlier on? If I had taken a stance as an equal partner, if I had felt that I had a responsibility as a Christian woman to confront my husband’s sinful behavior, would things have ended up differently? If I had felt that I had rights I could demand in the relationship, I truly believe that things might not have escalated to the point that they have. In that sense, I failed my ex-husband. I failed him by allowing him full reign to make decisions that were clearly flawed, clearly wrong, and then protecting the family by mitigating the resulting circumstances so that my children and I wouldn’t suffer (at least as much as we might have).

I think back to other non-marriage situations in which I was a collaborative partner and where I felt I clearly had the authority to step in and help the process. In every situation, where there were others who were making decisions I felt inappropriate or had the potential to become disastrous, I stepped in. Every time. I have a gift of often being able to objectively see the "whole" of a situation, often long before others do. If I had exercised that gift in our marriage—if I had taken a stand, rather than timidly making suggestions—I’m convinced that our future might have been different. My timidity, my refusal to truly understand an egalitarian marriage became part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

There are those within the comp-egal discussion who believe that the complementarian view is simply another doctrinal view. I disagree. Aside from the developing theological problems, the functional problems which allow male ego to explode, often unchecked are significant.

Just this week I've been introduced to the Quiverfull (http://www.quiverfull.com/), a conservative Christian movement that moves from complementarian to patriarchy (though one might wonder where the line is drawn between the two). I was struck with sadness in reading the blog of one newly married woman:

"Before I was married, much of who I was, what I believed and understood was wrapped up in my father’s vision. Since marrying I’ve undergone a surgery of sorts to replace Dad’s vision with Pete’s.

My loyalties had to undergo a change. I was used to thinking that Dad knew best. Now I needed to learn to think that Pete knows best. I used to do things and invest my time in projects according to what I knew Dad would want me to do. Now I needed to be guided by what Pete wanted me to do. When faced with a problem or an option I couldn’t think, “What would Dad have done in this situation?” Now I had to think, “What would Pete do in this situation?” These were exciting times and difficult as during this state of flux—learning to replace one man’s vision with another—the devil would come around and say, “But what about what you want? What about what you think?” (retrieved from http://visionarydaughters.com/2008/08/the-adventures-of-a-pioneer-bride-down-under).

Interestingly enough, I am just ending a week where my husband came to my work to help me with my goals and then, I came home to help him with his. It saddens me to think that this vibrant (and obviously talented) young woman has decided that it is unChristian to think for one's self.

Now, I'm one of the first to call to mind the admonition that we are to esteem others as better than ourselves. That is a fundamental tenet of Christianity and should never be forgotten. But when we wrap our lives around the lives of one other, what happens when that one other dies? I hate to think what might happen if this young woman lost both her father and her husband. If only think about their wishes and dreams is all that is Christian, then how can she continue in her faith if they both are gone?

The Feminization of the American Male

Recently, the CBMW blog hosted an article by Randy Stinson entitled “The Feminization of the American Male From Top to Toe.” In this article, Stinson criticizes Tony Glenville’s recent book, 2006 Top to Toe: A Comprehensive Guide to the Grooming of the Modern Male, with these words: “I was reminded once again how determined our culture is to make men more like women.” Stinson ends his article with these thoughts:

“Men reading Glenville's book will only be encouraged in their sinful tendency to look out for themselves. If men are focused on such trivial things as dry skin and pampering themselves with long baths, it will be all the more difficult to expect them to lead, provide, and protect. There may be a day when Lowe's and Home Depot have entire aisles dedicated to moisturizers and skin creams for that weathered carpenter. There may be rows of scented bubble bath for that overworked mason. But if the church continues to follow the culture, we will have plenty of 'Top to Toe' men, able to shop with the best of them at Bath and Body Works, but unwilling and unable to fulfill the Gospel demands that require toughness, self sacrifice, and self-neglect. We do not need prettier boys. We do not need softer men. What we need is a church culture that will call boys and men to lives of self sacrifice as exampled by the picture of Christ in Ephesians 5 who loved the church and gave himself for her to his own neglect and sacrifice. What we need are pastors who will boldly preach about and press for an ethos in their churches that expects this type of behavior from their men. What we need is a church culture that will require boys and men to do hard things, to cultivate toughness, resilience, and courage, top to toe” (Retrieved on 7/30/08 from http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/The-Feminization-of-the-American-Male-From-Top-to-Toe).

What distresses me the most about what Stinson writes is his strong inference that if one is focused on moisturizers, skin creams, and bubble bath, then one is feminine. In other words, one is a woman. The inference is that women can be (and are) focused on their outward appearance while men should be focused on self-sacrifice, self-neglect, and fulfilling the Gospel. That women are to do the “easy things” while men are to do the “hard things.” That women are to shrink with fear while men are to face life courageously.

I’m not sure that this underlying message is what Stinson intended to communicate, but it is inherent in what he wrote. What makes me sad is that his message of self-denial is one that is needed by the entire Christian Church (not just the men) and that both men and women are called by Christ to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and courageously follow our Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Jesus Himself. How much better might his message be if he were more focused on the spiritual aspects of being a Christian and less on whether or not men’s behavior might somehow give them girlish cooties.

In a recent blog, Mike Seaver (a complementarian pastor) posits ten questions for egalitarians (for a complete reading of this blog, please reference http://rolecalling.blogspot.com/2008/07/semi-pragmatic-less-theological-open.html). Although I responded to the ten questions, for me the questions themselves (the construct) was more revealing and more thought-provoking than their individual contents. In other words, the worldview from which the questions arose brought a question to my mind that---at least to me---seems to be more piercing that the content of each question.

In the questions, Pastor Seaver seems to be approaching life from the viewpoint of being male. In other words, for him the beginning of all things is his maleness. Another blog from the CBMW website offered this comment: "If you meet Christ, you will meet the greatest of all men" (retrieved from http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/Biblical-Manhood-and-the-Role-of-Mentoring on 7/25/08). Laid side by side (Pastor Seavers' blog and this comment by Dr. Peter Schemm, Jr.), I suddenly realized that the worldview of egals and comps might be completely different and that this difference in worldviews might be part of why we are so far apart doctrinally.

Take Dr. Schemm's statement: "If you meet Christ, you will meet the greatest of all men." How do you define the last word, "men"? I would define it as "human being." But for Dr. Schemm (and I believe for Pastor Seaver), the definition would be "male." I thought that this difference might reveal something very important. So I went to talk to my husband (who is obviously male) and asked him, "Do you see yourself as a Christian first or as a man first? In other words, which is more foundationally "you," being a man or being a Christian?"

And I think that becomes the issue. You see, I don't see myself first as a woman and then as a Christian. Rather, I see myself as a Christian who happens to be a woman, the woman part being much more incidental and unimportant. I see the woman part as being more of my fleshly nature which needs to pass away and my Christian part as being that which needs to become more Christ-like everyday. However, I think that comps see themselves as foundationally gendered; that their gender is something which is so inherently them that they must reclaim it; that when they are saved to a new life, they are saved as a male-Christian or a female-Christian and not simply as a Christian. And so, Jesus coming as a male becomes very important.

I thought about that. To be honest, it doesn't matter to me that Jesus came as a male. He could have come as a female and I wouldn't have reacted any differently to Him. There is a sense of genderlessness (for me) in God, God Who embodies all of both genders and who created both genders in His image. And so, when I read Dr. Schemm's statement---"If you meet Christ, you will meet the greatest of all men"---I read "If you meet Christ, you will meet the greatest of all people." Jesus is my role model. I am charged, as a believer, to imitate Him in every way. If, as a role model, He is decidedly male, then, as a believer, I am called to "imitate" maleness. Or I am left without a role model to imitate.

I choose to imitate Him!

I first sung The Messiah when I was a teen. Since then, I’ve sung, directed, and studied this glorious music more than a dozen times. Of all the music written by a person, some of this is the most wonderful.

Last night I stumbled across a Christian radio station and heard the familiar sounds of the organ introduction to the “Hallelujah Chorus.” I love that song! I was excited to hear it again . . . until I heard the voices. It took me a few moments to realize because the melodies were the same. You see, the “Hallelujah Chorus” is actually a four-part counterpoint, four ranges of voices singing similar phrases, but at different times. They all begin together and then the sopranos head off with a glorious phrase while the tenors, altos, and basses join in at different times and at different pitches.

Only the sopranos . . . and the altos . . . were missing. It was an arrangement for an all male chorus.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like all-men singing groups: quartets, choruses and the like. But there was something tremendously missing in the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus” without the women’s voices. The glorious soaring into the rafters, the gentle middle voices. It wasn’t the same to have men sing the parts (in their own range, of course). There was a tremendous dramatic and melodic element missing, even though the notes sung were the same.

It made me think about the current trend to silence women in the Church. Just as the women’s voices were “silenced” in the singing of this version of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” women’s voices (participation and leadership) are being silenced in many areas of Church life today. One almost gets the impression that women really aren’t welcomed at all except at ornamental wallflowers (and the doers of the less than glamourous church tasks).

It’s the “Hallelujah Chorus” with only male voices. I wonder if those churches realize what they’re missing?