The church I attend is a repurposed warehouse. While a majority of the light in the church comes from the lighting on the stage where the band plays worship songs (guitar, bass, drums and a singer), it is dark at the back of the church, which is what I like about One Harbor Church in Morehead City, NC. There are no pews but instead movable black cushioned chairs that you might see at a conference. Each row has 8 chairs and I try to arrive early enough to claim a chair on the back row. I always sit on the back row, ideally the end of the row. I arrive 5 minutes early to get my seat and as I wait for the service to start I can hear the industrial A/C unit running giving the room some white noise. Nothing stresses me out more than sitting in the front of the church or being crammed in the middle of two families I don't know.
My back-row habit started during college when I started taking notes during sermons. I am there to hear the preacher explain a passage from the Bible, to hear something spiritual to eat for breakfast to clarify my earthly existence. When God speaks to me through a sermon, I write it down. You can appear to be a religious dork for manically taking notes in a small black notebook. But if I am manically taking notes alone at the rear corner of the room, nobody really notices. What I write down on Sunday can change the whole course of my week and perhaps these words might sink into my long-term memory.
There is an unself-consciousness that comes from sitting in the back. There is an expectation during the singing of songs in a church service that one should stand up. There’s nowhere in the Bible that mandates anyone stand up or sing when the music is playing. I like to sit down, close my eyes and pray. To sit down in church during worship seems a bit non-conformist and may distract people. My prayer life in the morning often is one of angst and regret, so when I arrive I like to submit all my frustrations to God in silent prayers. I’d prefer to close my eyes and say private prayers to God, as I imagine David doing in the Psalms when he’s feeling inner anguish.
My church is flexible in terms of how people worship which is an advantage for me because I’m not a morning person. My normal routine at the back of the church relates to an unexplainable sense of morning anxiety I get that causes me to have seizures. My seizures are a combination of a lack of sleep and having a pressing sense of anxiety between the hours of 6am and 11am. Anxiety triggers my grand-mal seizures, so to make it possible for me to consistently attend church, I sit at the back so I can easily slip out of the service unnoticed if I feel like I am going to have a seizure. I’ve been attending One Harbor church in Morehead City for 6 years and I’ve not had a seizure yet in church. To watch someone have a grand-mal seizure is kind of frightening, so I’m trying to avoid that from happening.
The back row people are the “I want to check out this church but go completely unnoticed” people. We’re all into blending in, the people who are subtly trying to make a comeback to church, those who just moved to the area, those people who are trying Christianity out and non-morning people like myself trying to fly under the radar----all presumably----trying to connect with God. They sit next to me and in the row directly in front of me trying to gauge their unfamiliar surroundings. I do my best to work up the courage to introduce myself.
One Sunday I introduced myself to a guy named Jake who stood 6’3 with a t-shirt and Carharts on, looked to be about 26 years old and built like an outside linebacker. Jake was straightforward with why he comes to church: “Yeah, man. I like coming to church and hearing the sermon. I don’t know if I believe all this stuff. But it makes me feel better when I hear the sermon.” He cut past the small talk and then said “You know I don’t know if I fit in here man. All these people here got their shit together. All I do is smoke weed, work out at the gym and work construction.”
I found Jake’s comment refreshing, a breath of fresh air. That morning Jake and I exchanged phone numbers and two weeks later Jake and I went out to lunch after church to talk about Christianity and life. I love meeting authentic people.
The Back Row Strategy for Visiting A New Church
When I lived in Massachusetts this past summer I needed to find a church to attend. My friends invited me to attend an Anglican church right next to Fenway Park where the Red Sox play. I really wanted to go. What would church be like in the Northeast? Anglican churches traditionally integrate more liturgy into their services, so I wanted to attend.
But then again----this meant I would need a strategic plan in seizure prevention. What if I had a seizure in Boston at church? What if showed up at this Anglican church and someone ushered me to the front of the church because the church would be so packed? I thought to myself “An urban Anglican church next to Fenway Park? I bet a lot of hipsters go there and I bet it is packed.” The key then would be to find a way out of the service in case I felt like I was going to have a seizure.
I did my prep work ahead of time on the Church of the Cross. I talked to my friends and said “If we go to this church, can we please sit on the back row?” The church was beautiful inside. It wasn’t dark. But when I showed up I was pleased to find that the back three rows were completely empty. There was plenty of room on each row for me to sit. A kind person greeted me and I was free to just sit wherever I wanted. I did not have a seizure, I enjoyed the sermon, the Anglican-style liturgy and none of my worst fears happened.
My whole Boston church experiment went well, yet as I was writing this blog entry, I decided to Google The Church of the Cross to see if they had any photos of the interior of the church that might give a good visual. When I visited their website, I found a picture of the interior of their sanctuary, but then I also saw a picture of me on their homepage. I paused and stared at the homepage for about 5 seconds. Yes, that is me, there in the picture was me sitting on the backrow, in my ideal church position-------back row, end of the pew. Beside me was Esther, John and Lana, my three friends who attended church with me on the exact day I had first attended the church. Here’s the picture found on their website:
It seems I could not visit another church without being not only noticed, but caught in the act of doing what I love the most at church------taking notes about what I think God might be saying to me. There I am, in my favorite brown Kuhl shirt I bought at REI, my Sunday best doing my best to fit in. This is me trying out a new church, feeling anxious. Can you tell? But an hour before this I had been over-analyzing everything and slightly freaked out, looking like I got it all together, but that’s totally false. By this point in the service I had established my territory and I was feeling good that I took a chance at checking out a new church.
It can be hard to attend church if you are not a morning person. Yet my method for attending church is to claim my back row seat. I’ve made it work for 6 years now. I have the freedom of choice to stay home, but I make it work because I want to remember that Christ died for my sins and I am a mortal being that has a deep need for an infinite God.
If you ever want to join me on the back row-------I’ll be there. Just know that I may not talk to you very much, but I’ll give you your space. But beware, we live in the age of the photograph so----someone may take a picture of you and use it as part of their church branding strategy.
