Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

So what happens to us? 

All of this talk about the changing church,the emerging church, new styles of worshipping, new ways of being community makes some of us "Preachers" nervous. For most of our professional lives we have focused on preaching. It's not just that we like to stand up there on Sunday (some of us in big dresses) making people and the heavens, shake and listen to our take on the Word of God, it's also that the church has liked, applauded and rewarded us for doing it. To this day, when searching for a new minister most churches will send delegations to hear the candidate preach. They don't send folks to sit in hospital waiting rooms or church board rooms to see how the potential incumbent handles grief, administration, annoyance and day to day to workings of a church - they want to hear the good Reverend "Preach for a Call."

As we move to a time when the expressed desire is more for a "guide on the side" than a "sage on the stage," what are all us stage savvy sages supposed to do? Is there no place for us in an emergent congregation?

When I was younger, I was trumpet player. Still am, I guess, but in those days I practiced many hours a day, I played in bands and orchestras, I was pretty good (we pause now to thank the sweet charity of memory). In a jazz band or orchestra you had the First Trumpet and you had the Second Trumpet. Now, most of us would aspire to be being the First Trumpet, after all, it was the #1 spot, above the Second and Third Trumpets, but once I got involved, I realized that I preferred to be the Second Trumpet. The Second Trumpet had all the solos. In a Second Trumpet you looked for the big tone, the flowing melodic ease of a pro. People old enough to remember Glenn Miller can still hear the sounds of Bobby Hacket playing the cornet on "String of Pearls," but he was the Second Trumpet. Very few people can remember the name of the First Trumpet (it might have been Billy May). The Second Trumpet is often the personality of the band, the warmth; the feeling and in his/her playing, the message of the song. That's what we preachers like to be, we like to be the Second Trumpet of the Church, playing lots of solos and being the face of warmth, feeling and revealing the meaning of the song.

Alas, these days fewer people want to hear a single soloist, they want to contribute and play instruments as well. It might be time for some of us Second Trumpets to become First Trumpets (or Lead Trumpets). The Lead Trumpet isn't the personality of the band, but rather plays the note on top, the high notes that help lead the whole band.

I once heard the following: "A Lead Trumpeter is the guy who tries to cross the 401 at rush hour...and makes it!" (To decode: the 401 is a multi-lane highway dividing Toronto to the south from the rest of the world. In those days there was a definite misogyny in jazz bands that made it almost impossible for women (gals) to be First Trumpet Players.)

The point is that Lead Trumpeters need to be risk takers willing to venture forth into traffic and into the unknown so that others can follow. We need to make mistakes so that others need not fear failure, we need to do small things so that others will not disparage their own gifts as being too small, we need to sound some high, loud and prophetic notes - but then allow others to carry the melody or even write the song.

I may have carried this metaphor as far as it will go (do you think?). But this Lead Trumpet just might be the new role that some of us "Preachers" have to adopt. We need to take risks, not just with flashy rhetoric, but with trying new things -- providing a top note, but encouraging the community to fill in the sound of the band. Inspiring others to play their instruments and helping to create a sound that belongs not to a single soloist, but to a collective orchestra.

I just hope that I still get to wear my big dress on Sundays, but I suspect that I'm going to have to let that go too.