Let me start this blog with a little background. I am an orthodox christian, african-american, and a reformed hardcore punk rocker. I carry a lot of emotional and cultural baggage with me and some of that will, no doubt, make its way into this blog. I apologize ahead of time for anything that may be offensive to readers. That said, I shall not restrict my opinions on subjects for the sake of being polite or politically correct.
Background research:
St. Stephen's Baptist Church has been in the forefront of Baptist news in the last few years and the former pastor, Reverend E. W. McCall, has been interviewed from subjects such as homosexuality and the growing African-American population of the Southern Baptist Church. The church, itself, has not appeared in any subsequent articles and the voice of the church seems to have dropped off of the map since the resignation of Reverend E. W. MacCall. Although Reverend Anthony L. Dockery seems to have the proper credentials for his acquisition of the role as the pastor of the church, he has not had the ability to grasp the attention of the media, as his processor could. These are the following articles that Dr. E. W. McCall has been featured in.
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=18505
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-19-southern-baptists_x.htm
In site experience: I have not attended a Baptist church in almost eight years. As is the case with most African-Americans, I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, with tinges of Pentecostalism. I decided to visit my childhood church and see how things had changed since I, myself, had become to change. The first thing that I noticed was that the religious pomp of the Baptist church and I was immediately captivated by the visual splendor of the church. All of the windows of the church were stain glass and had depictions of various Bible stories, which cause the morning light to break into the church in an amazing array of blues, golds, and reds. The congregation was immaculately dressed and I was hard pressed to find a man in the aisles who was not wearing a two or three piece suit; even I had made sure to dress accordingly for I had not forgotten the do's and don't of church. The worship service started as the last of the stragglers made their way through the back of the church. As the first chord of the organ was struck, I was suddenly aware of the overwhelming blackness of St. Stephen's Baptist Church. There was not one Anglo-Saxon within the entire building. This was, and never shall be, a comforting fact to me. There are very few occasions in which I feel that a church should be predominately one race or another. I do believe that specific situations create specific needs but I could not see either need or situation barring any excuse in the case of St. Stephen's, which is located in a city that is, more or less, lacking in afro-centricity.
The worship was loud and boisterous, full of all of the glitz and glamour that Baptist worship is known, revered, and feared for. The congregation shouted and screamed, swayed and danced as the Spirit of God filled them. Yet, I was, and am still, very hesitant to accept such actions as purely within the Spirit of God. The worship was so charismatic that I found myself wondering whether or not this was nothing more then mass hysteria. It seemed as if each person who was filled with the Spirit was doing nothing more then competing with their neighboring Christian for God's attention. Whichever Christian is the loudest wins the prize.
The message was almost beyond words. One of the reasons for this is because there were so few intelligible words within the sermon. Although I do appreciate zeal and vigor within a priest, pastor, or whatever you wish to subscribe to, I can tell the difference between a practiced act and sincerity. The delivery of the message was formulaic, as most sensational preaching is. Reverend Dockery began very quietly, slowly mulling over his words and taking time to give justice to each syllable. The verse of the sermon was finally introduced and the Reverend seemed to be overcome with the Holy Spirit once the Word of God had passed from his lips. He was hardly able to contain himself and burst into song, the choir echoing his repeated words, as if they were a refrain or chorus from a contemporary blues and gospel group. This framework continued throughout the entirety of the service. That was until Reverend Dockery was so overcome with his passion for the Word that he shouted his sermon for the rest of the service. The choir continued to play the "hype man" to his Pentecostal mutterings until service finally concluded with worship. I must hand it to the attendants of St. Stephen's, you must have some kind of endurance to be able to handle such breakneck vigor and excitement. I, myself, do not have nor wish for that kind of endurance.
Prayer Journal:
Part 1: The idea of revisiting my former church had wrought me with fear and general apprehension. During my five minutes of silence, the fear of the situation began to well up within me. I slowly realized that this fear was something that I was going to have to get over to do this assignment. I read through my favorite Psalm, which has absolutely nothing to do with fear or anything of that matter - completely read out of situational context, and commenced to pray. Fear was the only thing that kept popping into my head. Fear of everything that I had grown to hate and everything that I had grown estranged from.
Part 2: Throughout the second part of the pray segment, I began to be reaffirmed in my decision to revisit my old church. In my younger years, it had been a church that I had felt neglected and abandoned at and it was about time that I made some kind of reconciliation with that. The situation began to take on a different tone and it was not long before I had stopped looking at the situation as a negative thing and rather as an act of closure and a reawakening of some sorts.
Part 3: This section was the longest and there is not much to add, other then that I felt a kind of fulfillment and began to truly look forward the revisiting of my old church.
The website for St. Stephen's Baptist Missionary Church:
http://www.st-stephen-mbc.org/
