breaking character...

A couple weekends ago sitting in the green room during the sermon segment of our services I wasn’t really expecting a conviction to fix itself to my spirit but apparently it has. That particular morning I was absorbed with solitaire on my phone but was still hearing bits and pieces from the pockets of conversation taking place among team members. There was nothing necessarily awful being discussed but nothing I would classify as edification either. The thing is, most of us jump into place, self-included, when “he’s down” and resume where we left off. There have only been a few times when I felt like we spent the “down time” as worshippers; the couple times we shared communion together and the couple times we prayed together. (All of these times memorable.)

They say the hardest part of staying in character for an actor isn’t when they have lines to say, but when they don’t. It’s staying in character while they listen that takes the most discipline. I just wonder if we’re settling for less when we use those 30 minutes the way we typically use them. In the course of a weekend we usually have an hour to invest in our spiritual growth as a team, not that the fellowship we enjoy can't be worship, but I think we could or should consider doing something more with the time we have. Something that would keep us from treating the song set as the only time we’re responsible for.

Ironically they call it corpsing when an actor tries to make another actor break character. It isn’t such a stretch to believe there are spiritual forces trying to get us to do the same thing and by doing so, maybe our worship dies a little. I’ll be the first one to blow it the next time we gather but I am going to try and use my time a little better and I’d like some company. If we’re going to ask the body to raise the bar and step it up a bit, we should all be prepared to do the same, if not more…

And scene.