Church Basement Roadshow review

The Church Basement Roadshow rolled into New York City yesterday afternoon and put up a really good show--er... "revival"--last night at the church where I'm a pastor, Marble Collegiate.

We had everyone down in the Marble basement and I've got to say first that I can't imagine that they've had a better--or more prototypical--church basement in which to do the show. The 115 or so folks who came out last night fit nicely into the room. It was a good, live space... enough live bodies to heat up the room and make us all sweat a bit... give us an excuse to use the funeral home fans that were passed around.

I had volunteered to host, so I got put in the (damn) red longjohns and was lovingly coerced into joining the schtick. I had a good time and I do guess that the highlight of the night for at least a few folks was seeking their pastor wearing only red longjohns and a black tophat.

The show is a blend of an ironic parody of a 1908 revival meeting and a book reading. It begins with a short video framing the experience--introducing everyone to 1908, tracing some parallels from the world a century ago to the world today, and giving the fictional backstories of the evanglists.

Then, the evangelists come out in character, do some schticky stuff, get people whooping and hollering and "amen hallelujah-ing," and have us all stand and sing the shockingly infectious revival theme song.

One by one after that, Doug, Tony, and Mark come on stage alone to read portions of their new books and make observations about the world today. Each of their talks is highly autobiographical.

A few personal comments about the content of the show:

1) Each guy kind of uses evangelical Christianity as a foil. Doug riffs a bit on the limitations of evangelical doctrine, as does Tony. This is an important part of the show--setting up the emergent movement as something that has roots in and is responding to late 20th century American evangelicalism. Evangelical Christianity is a character in the show--from the parody of the revival, to the discussion of its narrowness and tendency toward theological reductionism.

2) There's a strong theme of incarnation that runs through each of the guy's narratives, most strongly in Mark Scandrette's story about his relationship with a lost and lonely guy in San Francisco, but also clearly in Tony's truck ride with Frank and time in South Dakota and in Doug's apartment complex story (don't worry, I'm not giving away key plot points). I really appreciate that this theme unified the show--I think incarnation is a scary thing to try and talk about. Most of the time, we think of incarnation around Christmas and it's an image of Christ appearing as the helpless infant. In the Roadshow, the incarnation images are in the lives of complex, multi-dimensional people.

Some general comments:

1) The pitch for the healing balm (ie, the books) wore thin... but it's a book tour, so all in all, this is a very clever way to sell books.

2) The pitch for Compassion was also heavy--I definitely was feeling a bit guilty for not stepping forward to adopt a child. But I'm also very happy that they included this in the show--it's just putting out there a concrete opportunity for people at the roadshow to do what the revivalists are asking them to do--witness to God's love and join in God's work of reconciling the Creation. I met a young woman last night who had decided to sponsor a child from Guatemala during the show; she was elated.

All in all, I'm really, really glad that these three guys are doing this. I think it's an incredibly challenging thing to go out and PREACH a thoughtful, progressive Christianity. Typically, people who embrace a less dogmatic, more socially-engaged Gospel are less inclined to evangelize, recognizing that to do so is to jump into a stream that has been carved out by conservative Christians who have radically different agendas. As a progressive Christian, you jump in and you risk being misunderstood, or simply ignored by people who would reflexively dismiss anything that even remotely smells like conservative Christianity and proselytizing.

These guys put themselves out there and recognize that there is a joyful message to proclaim to the world, even while we recognize and accept that the truth of the evangelizer can't possibly be heard and accepted the same way by the evangelized. I love the idea that even though truth is relative, we should be no less exuberant about proclaiming our truth. This kind of proclamation is possible if you believe, as these evangelists do, that Christian truth is relational. It may be personal, but it can't possibly be private.

The last thing I want to touch on that the show brought up for me (and Tony and I touched on this briefly afterwards) is the question of earnestness.

One thing that seems to characterize so much of "successful" Christian preaching is sheer earnestness. Joel Osteen. Rob Bell. Brian McLaren. Shane Claiborne. All deeply earnest people. By earnest, I mean that they communicate in a kind of guileless, "aw shucks" way.

Tony mentioned how hard that was for him to pull off. I did see a bit of earnestness in the show last night, so I'm not sure whether that was an act, or real. But I get where Tony's coming from. I've also been accused of--or complemented for--being earnest and sincere. Yet, I don't have a preaching/teaching style that relies on the proclamation of "big truths" (ie Jesus died for you, God loves you, etc). I'm earnest about small truths--glimpses of truth in the darkness.

This string about earnestness is probably more than I can afford to get into now while I should be writing tomorrow's sermon. But it seems important to me--how does irony fit into gospel proclamation? Is it more important for a preacher to stay positive and appear sincere or to mix in a bit of doubt and realism and be sincere?

Anyway, thanks guys, for this tour. You're giving people great stuff to think about and you're sharing a big dose of love and faith in the places you're visiting.