Who else would allow a really bad singer to sing with such gusto?

[The Great Open Dance]

Week after week after week he sang, and they listened . . .

Small miracles happen here. When I was in seminary and needed to earn some extra money, I preached regularly at a small Presbyterian church in north Philadelphia. It was a dying White church in a largely Black neighborhood with at most twenty attendees on any given Sunday, mainly elderly. Still, they conjured religious beauty.

George (name changed for privacy) sang in the church’s small choir and performed most solos. As a boy, George had a physically abusive father. To escape the abuse, George joined the army, which sent him into combat in Vietnam. Returning home, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and spent years on the streets of Philadelphia in alcohol addiction. Through Alcoholics Anonymous he achieved sobriety, met a woman from the church, got married, and became a regular attendee.

Together, they never missed a Sunday. Although he was the church’s main soloist, George couldn’t sing. At the risk of being disrespectful, for which I apologize: George couldn’t carry a tune, and his voice was cracked by years of drinking and smoking. But George didn’t know this himself, and he never held back, praising God with full-throated gratitude. His cracked voice reminded the congregation that, in the words of Leonard Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

No one complained about the quality of the music. The music director kept asking him to sing, and the congregation kept listening, in respectful attention, grateful that he was in recovery, grateful that he had married, grateful that he had found redemption. Their joy in George’s joy overwhelmed any discomfort with the performance.

George’s years of alcoholism caught up with him, and he was hospitalized with cirrhosis of the liver. Only 10 percent of his liver was still functioning, his body was too weak for a transplant, and the doctors gave him a few months to live. George returned home, jaundiced and out of breath. Naturally, the music director called and asked him to sing a solo for the congregation, of his own choosing.

George chose “How Great Thou Art.” We gathered one Sunday to watch a frail man, beaten by his father, scarred by war, and poisoned by alcohol, sing from his soul to the glory of God, in joyful rapture. Grace so flooded the sanctuary that, to our ears, he sounded like an angel. George died two weeks later, in the presence of his wife and members of the community.

Imperfect love is good enough. That was a good church. It is closed now. It wouldn’t have impressed anyone with its spreadsheets, attendance, or preaching, but it loved Abba, our Parent. Sophia, the Holy Spirit, was active there, flowing through the parishioners, from one to another, inspiring them to be like Jesus and love their neighbor through thick and thin.

Some churches promise earth-shattering miracles that defy natural law, but that church kept its eyes open for small miracles, the kind that we too easily overlook. Its openness to small miracles produced them—warmed hearts, settled spirits, and courage in the face of death.

Churches are supposed to practice the universal, unconditional, celebratory agape of God— the unifying love that is our source, our sustenance, and our destiny. This belief may appear idealized, or even naive, since churches can’t actually attain these heights. Imperfect persons form imperfect institutions that express the love of God imperfectly.

Nevertheless, even in our imperfection, unreachable ideals serve a function. The ideal transforms the real because it gifts us with discontent, spurring us out of complacency and into possibility. The ideal tells us where we are and where we should go. Then, the ideal serves as the mark by which we measure our progress.

I write in full recognition that many people suffer from religious trauma syndrome (RTS), and that their RTS has been caused by very bad churches. Bad churches threaten their parishioners, even their youngest, with damnation for disobedience, censure for disagreement, shunning for leaving the faith, etc. Bad churches want control, and fear is their tool.

But there are good churches, too, whose practice is love. And the existence of bad churches doesn’t condemn the existence of good churches, any more than the existence of poison condemns the existence of medicine.

The perfectly loving church does not exist in any pure form. But any honest observer will recognize that there are many good churches of many different stripes that aspire to loving unity and do much good in the world. They seek to serve rather than control, foster rather than restrict, and heal rather than harm. And sometimes they work small miracles, which come to us like manna from heaven. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 211-213)

*****

For further reading, please see:

Campbell, Ted A. The Sky Is Falling, the Church Is Dying, and Other False Alarms. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.

Oord, Thomas Jay, and Fuller, Tripp. God After Deconstruction. Idaho: SacraSage Press, 2024.

[gopiscrap]

1. r u ordained

if so what denomination? I work with 38 church bodies

[The Great Open Dance]

2. PCUSA, but haven't been active for a while

I'm theologian-in-residence at Grace Community Boston, and frequent Stratford Street United Church as well, which is UCC/ABC.