Tuck and Roll

This morning I behaved badly in church. That’s difficult for an old preacher’s kid to admit, but there it is. I got kind of huffy with a “difficult” person in Sunday School. You may know the kind—the one who wants to hijack the group discussion and allow no opinions to be aired that disagree with theirs. Now, normally I do not roll my eyes at people—not visibly, but –well, to make a long story short, I made sure my opinion WAS heard.

Then service started, with my praise team singing a few hymns. Then the pastor came up to make a few announcements, and we were just standing there behind him. I was all for going and sitting down. I was tired, we looked silly, etc. But the other singer said something about waiting until after the announcements, when we would be doing greetings, then we could get down discreetly when attention would be elsewhere. FINE. Stand here and look silly, leave the platform discreetly. As you can see, my mood was a little off. Plus, I’ve been rethinking church anyway. Why does it have to be this big production? Does everything HAVE to be perfect and smooth? Can’t we just leave the platform when we’re done singing? Can it just be about believers getting together to learn from each other so we have steam to go out and be salt and light for the rest of the week? Yes, I was actually thinking all that while the pastor was talking about upcoming donut sales and such.

So then it was time for greetings. Our church has this greeting thing—lots of churches do it. It’s where you go around and shake hands with everyone around you. The “shake and howdy.” My church’s shake & howdy used to be this stilted affair where you shook hands with someone close by, mumbled something polite, then moved on to the next person. A few people later and your duty was done and you could sit down. Nowadays we hug, laugh, chat a little, and it’s hard to get us to stop. We’ve come a long way. Still not exactly meaningful relationship, but at least we loosen up, enjoy each other, the single people get a hug to help out with that touch deprivation problem, and it’s really a good thing.

So it came time to go shake some hands. I warmly greeted my fellow praise teamers, and headed for the rest of the flock.

Maybe it’s because I was really tired this morning. Maybe I was anxious to go say howdy to some fellow believers. For whatever reason, I stepped to the edge of the platform, fully expecting another step before I got to the stairs. I was quite wrong. I stepped out with full confidence and planted my feet firmly on—air.

In that split second I had a decision to make. The most dignified route would be to catch myself as quickly as possible, maybe turn an ankle in the catching, risk an injury but the service would receive only the very mildest of interruptions.

The other choice was to put dignity behind me, tuck and roll into the fall. And that’s what I did. I tucked my head in, curled up and took all four steps completely without the benefit of feet. At the bottom I landed on my shoulder, rolled through my back, rear, and came to a stop (finally) in this fetal position type thing. Not a dignified choice, but a necessary choice, since another injury to the cartilage-torn ankle could have been devastating.

I slowly stood up, surprised to be okay, and got a good laugh out of it. It was one ridiculous little tumble, and somewhere between my shoulder and the final roll to a stop, I decided that church wasn’t meant to be a big show. It’s meant to be us together, encouraging each other, teaching, exhorting, and really getting charged up before we head out there into a tough world. If a singer wants to go sit down, go sit down. If he/she wants to go pray, maybe that’s okay too. If you fall, don’t worry about what you look like. Extricate yourself as necessary.

Most of my life I’ve been stuck thinking that church is supposed to be this big production every week, where somebody has planned everything out, and somebody executes the plan, people are entertained, or learn something, or whatever, then everybody goes home and discusses the service over fried chicken. Right now I’m trying to figure out if that’s what we’re supposed to do. I mean, it brings a degree of order, right?

But maybe we need to make room for the people there who are going through a messy fall. Maybe we don’t need to be glossing over those kinds of things for the sake of a smooth service. Maybe if you’re in a bad situation, your fellow believers should have the grace to let you tuck and roll.