(From 2003)
Is this the church of the Mystic Pizza? Sometimes we wonder! It is more than a year ago now that we sold the old church building and moved into the restaurant next door to “Andrea’s Pizza”. New folding chairs are starting to look like they came with the old oak altar and the brass cross from the Fellowship hall. The bar is well stocked with coffee supplies and plastic plates and forks. The screen for our power point worship order hides the waitress station/sacristy with the help of an old handmade altar cloth refitted as a curtain.

The dwindling congregation  knew it was time to take risks if we were going to survive in our Worcester community. We can’t yet see what we will look like, but we have found new ways to live as the body of Christ. While maintaining basic giving to each of our three denominations (Disciples, American Baptist and United Church of Christ), our mission efforts have become very local.

Bethany adopted the Rape Crisis Center of Central Massachusetts as our primary local mission. In addition to funding, we have members trained as hotline counselors, a member on the board of directors, small group leaders, and assisting with planning the spirituality focus for Center’s upcoming 25th anniversary events. We have begun a weekly healing service and are studying biblical stories of rape.

Our new location has many surprise blessings. Our morning worship, with attendance around 20, feels comfortable in the small restaurant. Evening worship is followed by a delicious Italian meal provided by the take-out restaurant next door. Bible study around the bar is friendly and welcoming to new comers. Game night includes pizza; we are considering “dinner and a movie” as a possible after school program.

Can we build a church by selling a building? We still don’t know the answer to that question. But we have learned that the journey from place of the steeple to place of the pizza is a faithful journey.

So work weekends remind us that cohousing isn't just about living with people you know or getting to know people better, or building community, or getting someone to deliver applesauce and bannanas when you literally can't leave one room of your house. 
 
No, cohousing isn't really about fun, cohousing is about work! Work to make decisions, work to eat, work to get the toilets cleaned and the kids room picked up, and work to get the garden planted and weeded and tilled, probably not in that order. And work to get the food turned into dinner and work to get the environmentally friendly hand rags into the environmentally friendly washer, and then, if we really wanted to be environmentally friendly, we'd get them hung up on the line and then down and folded and back in the rest room. Which is, as I mentioned earlier.
 
So I'd like to tell you a story about getting work done in here at Mosaic Commons. I’m a minister and the stories I hear are of course confidential, so I'll tell you this completely true story by changing some of the details, and by adjusting parts of it to be more fantastic, and of course by changing the names of those people involved. In fact, I can tell you that you won't have any idea who I am talking about...
 
So, in my religious tradition, the whole world was created in six days. We don't know how long those days were, maybe they were a billion years, maybe 1,575,652 years, maybe each year took a different amount of time, but there were six of them, count'm one two three four five six. And then some time to rest.
 
In cohousing, where there is such an emphasis on work, you might guess that we'd get things done faster. But you would be wrong.
 
So let me tell you the story about changing a light bulb at Mosaic Commons. So a certain person who shall not be named, but who looks exactly like Judy, noticed once, here at Mosaic that there was a light bulb out in the common house. So she asked one of those people who seem to act like they know everything, and who make up answers if they don't know everything, and still act like they are in charge what to do. We'll call that person, um, say. Liz.
 
And Liz said, look there is a tall man over there, sitting with his son and his cell phone doing, well, lets call it "research". Let's call him, a completely made up name, say, um. Dave. 
 
So Judy asked Dave about the light bulb, and he said "oh yeah, it is dark in here" and he picked up his phone and wrote some things down and headed out of the room, we imagined to fix the light bulb.
And it was morning, and it was light, the first day
But two days later Judy noticed the light was still out and made a comment to, lets call him, um, Ken. And this person we are calling Ken explained in great detail that we have ballasts and the one the builder put in is not right, and the bulbs are burning out early and the problem is not the light it is the ballast. And half an hour later you have to go and you go away relieved that Ken knows what to do.
And it was evening, and it was night, the third day.
 
And three days later this person who likes the common house to be neat and organized and spends much of her time emptying out the lost and found, and returning glassware and flatware to there homes, this woman, I'll call her, say, Mary, Mary noticed that the light was out.
This was the sixth day. 
 
She also asked someone who claims to know everything, and makes up the answer if she does not, we'll call this person, um, Liz. And Liz suggested she email bng and so she did. So Mary sends an email and it bounces, because she is not on the bng list. So she sends a note to geekery to say that the BNG list didn't accept her note.
And two days later she's sees a computer professional and asks for advice, and this person, shall we call this person Dwight? or Tim? or Cat? or Ellen? Any way some person who knows all about computers and the ways they go wrong, this person says "we didn't get your email, but we'll check on it".
And it was evening, and it was night, the eighth day.
 
So Ellen sees your email and reminds you that is not the usual email address you use for mosaic stuff, and that is why it didn't go to bng.
So the note is rewritten, and resent from the correct email and reached bng. And they order new light bulbs, and new ballasts, and they realize they need a taller ladder to get to the light.
And it was evening and it was morning, 12 days and the light bulb is now here, and that is good.
 
So Perley sends a note to common resources (whose email address is furnishings); common resources says yes, we'd love to buy a ladder, but they need to know what kind bng would like. So they wait for three days and Perley doesn't respond and someone notices that they forgot to include Perley in the reply, since he is not on that list he didn't get the message. So it gets sent again.
Evening, night, you got it.15 days.
 
Perley looks up ladders, and sends a proposal, but they seem crazy expensive so Sarah starts looking on craig's list for used ladders, but after a week she hasn't found one so now she thinks it's ok to buy a new one.
22 days.
 
So we order it online and it is cheaper if it is delivered to Lowes, so we have it delivered. Three days later we hear that it is in,
24 days.
 
Sandy says she can pick it up, but we figure out that her car is not long enough to hold the ladder. So a few days later Steph borrows the truck and goes to pick up the ladder, but she is told that only the person who paid for the ladder can pick it up. Diana is in Cambridge and can't get it until tomorrow.
27 days.
 
So the ladder, the light bulb, and the ballast are here and it is good.
 
And Ross, who I will not name, but who is very tall,  walks into the common house, and says wow, it's dark. And he walks over to cabinets around the fire place, pulls out a light bulb, and reaches into the hanging lamp and replaces the bulb.

​So actually it just takes one person about five minutes to replace a light bulb.

​It snowed when I visited Bethlehem in January 1983. I remember this clearly not because it was beautiful, in fact the small amount melted before we had finished breakfast. I remember this because the hotel I stayed in did not have heat, and so I was miserably cold, and I remember it because snow in the holy lands is a very rare occurrence.

And so, at a Christmas Season worship the other day, I found myself giggling a bit at "In the Bleak Mid-winter" with its snow filled images, and then laughed out loud as we sang about Mary wrapping the little baby in a fresh-killed rabbit skin. Christopher Duraisingh, presently teaching a contextual theology course, turned and smiled, and we commented after worship on the words, and on the use of a minor key that gave a plaintive tone to our alleluias.
 
What about our music? What is the role of music in the success or decline of mainline parishes in the United States? There is research that says that most growing churches use drums in worship. Is that what we've done wrong, not enough drums? I went to the emerging worship service at the Episcopal General Convention, it was awesome, inspiring, uplifting, and God filled. It was not, however, an Episcopal Eucharist, suitable for Sunday morning worship. Another Sunday evening I visited, with my parish, a Methodist folk service in Western Massachusetts. This is the music I love, and pay money to hear, and in fact this worship service attracted many from the community. It attracted people just like me, white and aging.
 
The answer to music in worship isn't about  what I like, or what you like, or what, on average the people in the congregation like. The answer to the music question is this "what will help us find God, feel God, connect to God, worship God?" 

There is not a single answer to that question. The answer will vary based on our cultural heritage: our race, class, education, and connection to our ethnic heritage. And the answer will vary based on our generation. It also will vary based on our spiritual type: are we looking for God by being uplifted, by being reflective, by being exuberant, by being quiet?
 
As a congregation, our answer is also affected by who we want our worship to reach. Do we want to be sure that group of women in the back left corner are satisfied? Or is the choir our most important demographic? Or perhaps it’s the values of the pastor or priest, or of the altar guild or worship team that drive our music selections.

Another possibility is to ask about who is missing from our worship, and to ask what "those people" might find will help them in their search to find God. This is hard, of course, because "they" aren't here, and because "they" don't have a single answer. Some of them will want to hear drums, or rock, or rap, or techno. Some will want to hear taize, classical, easy listening, folk, some will appreciate silence.
 
The question about music in worship is not a question about taste, or about what is "right" in God's mind, or about tradition, nor is it a question about being modern or young. The question about music in worship is a theological question: who do you want to feel welcome in your worship, and how do you help those people to experience God. Those aren't simple questions, you won't answer them in an afternoon worship team meeting, or even in a month where you send out surveys and tally the results.
 
The question about music in worship is part of the formation and outreach efforts of your congregation. It is part of what you discuss in small groups, and in worship, and at committee meetings, slowly getting at how people who are "us"  experience God. And it is part of what we ask as we go out the in the community and get to know your neighbors and learn from them how they experience God.
 
All of this means that your music in worship needs to be open to change. I'll dare say it, it needs to be open to music that is not in your hymnal, and open to drums, and open to the fourth grader who is learning to play the violin, and open to music that sounds wrong to some of us who have been here forever.

Worship should help people find God, and that means that every time a new person is part of your worship you will need to consider new music, new words to old tunes, new tunes to old words, even new words and tunes and rhythms.  You'll need to experiment, and ask for feedback, and respond to the feedback by trying again, not by giving up.

​You'll need to tell those who think they are in charge of the music that they are not in charge, that there isn't a single answer, and that the music will keep changing as long as people keep changing, and that the music will meet the needs of those who are here, but also to meet the needs of those that are not yet here, but are looking for God.