10 Things I Hate About Messengers

Greetings and welcome to the Tuesday Top Ten: my favorite moments from chapel this morning.

10. The Pow Wow advertisement video that took a classic SNL skit out behind the woodshed and and raped it harder than Thomas Jefferson did his kitchen maid. Don't do this to us again, SGA. Also, you do have some split ends. I'm a friend.

9. The Messengers carrying His Holiness off stage like a roll of old, dirty, flea-infested carpet. Seeing Brad carried away like a rag doll left me rejoicing. That is until I realized that his absence meant that the Messengers would be in charge. Maybe after Obama shuts down Guantanamo Bay he can send international criminals to SNU chapel services instead of waterboarding them.

8. The screech. You know what I'm talking about. It took about three minutes and five tissues to get my ears to stop bleeding. Maybe Messengers took over the tech booth too. . . . Pro of this technical failure? I couldn't hear them leading worship for three minutes. Which brings me to my next point.

7. The band. Oh God. How long has "Blessed be Your Name" been out? Six years. Is six years not enough time to learn to play a song with four chords in it? With at least an average level of proficiency? Oh, and on this note, Matt Redman: you have a moral responsibility to stop writing shitty songs that are simple enough for even shittier worship bands to play. I know you mean well, but you're doing more harm than you are good.

6. The band. Again. I've seen bad worship bands, and today's certainly ranks close to the bottom of my list, but if there is one rule that no worship band should ever break, it is this: Do not, for any reason, ever stop a song after you have started playing it. In addition to making for an extremely awkward moment, it makes you look unprofessional and unprepared. Excellence, people, excellence. Hell, after this morning I'd settle for a healthy portion of good old-fashioned mediocrity.

5. One-liners: "I need the hard stuff, Coke." So do I. Right now. So I can forget that I'm being forced to sit through this shit.

"It's a fiery passionate love that will flip over tables. . . " break dishware and wine bottles, spill dessert all over the floor, flip that bitch over the counter-top and fuck her senseless in a puddle of vintage red and chocolate ganache.

"They met me where I was." Where was that? A Lord of the Rings convention? You went as Gimli, didn't you?

"I've Bible-thumped them umpteen times." That's what she said.

4. Eminem, the Beastie Boys . . . . Messengers? Yeah, the rap was funny [and pretty fly for a couple of white guys], and so was the crotch-cradling, but if you're light skinned with no melanin and your name isn't Marshall Mathers, Robert Van Winkle, or Snow, you have no buisness trying to spit some lyrical eloquence.

3. Skits. My feelings about poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly produced chapel skits are well known, and just in case you were wondering, they didn't change after this morning. Here you go Shatner, act your way out of this.

2. Social dancing. Andrew, just in case you were wondering, the social dancing line was stupid. And it made you look stupid. And then you brought it up again at the end of your mumblings, which made you look stupid. Again.

1. The Messengers' hilarious attempts to put together a decent chapel program. I'm sure you've revolutionized nursery ministry and you're a big hit with the 8-and-under set, but we all hung up our Osh Koshes a long time ago. Seriously, we're in college. If anyone at OU presented a program as mistake-ridden, thoughtless, and poorly planned as the one you presented this morning, they'd be laughed off the stage and off campus. I can honestly say that I am ashamed to have the Messengers represent SNU.

Did Brad not preach all last year about "putting away childish things?" Can we now please put away the Messengers?

And now for some substance.

First, witnessing. 99.99999999999999% of witnessing should be done without the use of words. If you start talking about Jesus, chances are you're going to get tuned out. Remember that love is the greatest gift that Christianity has to offer the world.

Second, love. Loving others is one area in which Christians fail. Miserably. If Andrew was correct about anything this morning, he was correct in pointing out that the Christian church, especially in America, has a terrible track record when it comes to loving people in the way that Jesus commanded us to. [Which begs the question, "If we're not actively loving everyone around us, are we really Christians?"] Remember the poor, the widow, and the orphan? Yeah, those people didn't disappear in 28 CE.

Third, students should not be allowed to speak in chapel. It's hard enough to find a pastor who has anything meaningful to say, so why should we think that pastors-in-training have anything better to offer? Granted, I realize that there are probably a few students on our campus who could take the stage in chapel and say something intelligent, but the overwhelming majority of my experiences with student speakers have been negative [shallow, cheap, inane]. Please take off the training wheels before taking the pulpit.

Fourth, and last, believing, or not believing, in God should not be a decision made solely on the basis of how you have been treated by other Christians. Andrew said this morning that he spent a portion of life before SNU apart from God because of some negative experiences he had with a specific church congregation. Such reasoning is shallow and naive. The choice to believe or not believe in God is one that has drastic consequences for one's worldview, relationships, lifestyle, and favorite ice cream flavor, and it should not be left in the hands of everyday laypeople. [Because if you leave it up to the laypeople, you'll be a Half Baked type of person.]

Oh, I suppose I should mention in closing the only valuable piece of information presented in chapel this morning. There is a chapel committee meeting later this week. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what it's all about. If we want to fix the problems that plague our chapel services and bring a mite of respectability and thoughtfulness back into our religious gatherings, we need to take these chapel committee meetings seriously. Talk to the students on the committee. Tell them what you want to see changed.

We're paying for this shit, we ought to at least be involved.

"Keep near me and you will be safe."

Daedalus