The Upper Room Theater Manifesto
This is a safe place. But beware – by no means does “safe” mean “void of risk.”
Quite the opposite. If you come here, if you take part in this somewhat peculiar ministry, you will likely be confronted with tasks you never imagined being confronted with at any “normal” Lutheran church. In fact, it may be the riskiest thing you’ve ever done at a church. Unlike collecting canned food or passing out worship folders, here you are vulnerable. You will be asked to step out on stage and present yourself, your best performance. No pews allowed here, no cheat sheets – none of the normal anonymity. You will be asked to strip away all barriers – all social conventions and good church behaviors you’ve learned over the years. They are not wanted here. But you are.
It’s hard to do, at first. These barriers - these invisible walls – keep us safe, somehow. They protect us from going too deep, from knowing each other too well.
You almost always know what to expect at a church. The people are usually nice, if sometimes a little uppity. They sit down, stand up in their pews (or chairs as the case may be). Sing hymns and collect the offering. Send their children to Sunday school, perhaps join Bible study or choir themselves. You know them at a glance, these church people. They are usually a little boring – never anything out of the ordinary, never much to ruffle your feathers, and you wonder if there is something more underneath. Some interesting, exciting, dangerously rich character they don’t want anyone else to see. In this place of forgiveness and absolution, they fear judgment. With one false move, there might be condemnation that they are not good enough, holy enough, or respectable enough. So you get just what you might expect – the outer shell, glossed and glazed.
The Upper Room Theater...
...is something else entirely.
The Upper Room Theater, a recent and rather daring addition to Zion Lutheran, is something else entirely. It is certainly not what I expected when I came to audition on a whim (and a bicycle) one Saturday afternoon. In fact, I’m not sure what I expected. But in staging a drama in this place, I found that my inner most personality began to be revealed. By letting my outer self go – my conventions, my niceties – I was starting to expose my true self to my fellow believers. And that is ok. It’s good, even – very good. In fact, it is exactly what is needed in most of today’s churches.
Yet how can theater – that which attempts to pluck us away from reality and carry us off to a completely different time and place – bring us closer to who we really are? How can in bring us closer to each other, and how can it bring us closer to God? This is how: drama may attempt to create an artificial reality, but it does so in a very honest, unguarded way. You may be playing another character, but an essential part of yourself goes into creating that character. And in doing so, you begin to discover gifts, talents, and a trusting audacity you never knew you had. Additionally, there is this: an essential part of any fellowship of believers is their comfort level with each other, as well as their knowledge of each others weaknesses and needs. How can we be expected to share our innermost spiritual questions and hopes with people if we do not know how to laugh with them? How are we to help each other avoid temptation and form more godly habits of living if we do not know how to both tenderly criticize and effectively uplift one another? How can we be expected to grow in faith, trust and joy, if we cannot let go of our decorous – yet internally quite petrified – ego, and ripen our ability to stand in front of people and say: this is me, all of me. With all of the love and passion I can gather, I lay it upon your lap. It was built with words that were not my own and people I did not know. But I have taken the words and shaped them so they are mine. I have taken a communion of candor and mirth with these strangers, and they have become dear to me. I have prayed; I have tried and disappointed, and tried again and succeeded. It is a testimony to the God I try daily to serve. Take it, or leave it.
Would not our time be better spent doing service projects, our energy better invested in “real” ministry? There are many kinds of ministry, each with its own value, its own way of serving. What makes something real ministry? It’s heart. There is a lack of hypocrisy here, in the heart of this ministry, which would do well to infuse itself into many other Christian venues. It comes from a sincere openness I have not often found, which is, to quote Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “…the spontaneity of now, the vividness of here… the basic substance of life.”
This is a safe place. A good, trusting place.
You will be challenged, but not judged. You will be coached, but not trodden upon. You will be encouraged, but not inflated with pride. You will be changed, but not misled.
More will be asked of you than you think you have – and you will find it.
You will be loved, and you will love.
There is joy here.
Come.
19 February 2006