From the candle to the cross

 On a Sunday evening a couple weeks ago I ventured to a UMC in Bjølsen, a neighborhood in Oslo. I had been invited by Rev. Steinar Hjerpseth to participate and observe a service call they host on Sunday nights that contains plenty of excellent music. It includes mainly young people who are led by André Storeng, a gifted local musician.

The music included a set of numbers that could be described well as from the “borderlands” of Christian music. The tunes are somewhat popular, sentimental, recognizable mainly to an audience that is potentially more at home at Applebee’s than a local church. All of the music was excellently executed and powerfully led. It included musicians on flutes, French horn, bass guitar, piano, and an awesome organ (think organ meets jazz if you can imagine that, not typical church usage). The music tugged at the heartstrings. I shared about what I was seeking and finding in Norway. I asked them about their perspectives and the conversation really took off!

It was fascinating to me that opinions on secularity and the state of the church broke along similar generational lines and in a similar fashion to the way conversations might in the USA. Some of the more senior generations bemoaned sports on Sunday and lack of spirituality among younger folks. Younger folks took understandable exception to the critique of their generation and insisted they are open to Jesus and spiritual conversations. What they crave, they insisted is honesty, real relationships, real friendship and doing life together. None of this makes for an easy shake and bake pattern of discipleship. Relationships that they crave are hard work. 

As the conversation wrapped up one of the members approached me and put to me a line of questions that gave me the impression that she felt my mission of seeking to understand secularity and explore how churches adapt was a bit of the wrong approach. I think she was under the impression that I was approaching secularity from only a critical pose, with only a negative impression. She wanted me to know that even though she wished more people were in church that she was glad that there was less coercion and oppression in the society. She was proud to live in a society in which people were genuinely free even if that meant they were free to not attend church. Her reminder is a helpful one. The shifts in society that move people away from religious expressions as we have known them do bring some positive elements in their wake. They can do this even for the church. 

 Another person who had reminded me of this reality was Rev. Arne Jor and his associate Anders Kartzow of Paulus Kirche. They are a Church of Norway congregation with many different efforts including language cafe, choirs, baby singing (it’s what it sounds like, people bring in their infants and sing songs with them), ministries of advocacy and community improvement etc. It is a lot of work and involves a lot of rubbing elbows with folks that stretch the Christians’ comfort zone. If you’ve seen our YouTube video you’ll recall me asking Rev. Jor if his church would have gone to such lengths 30 years ago to share the good news of Jesus with such different people groups. His response, “No, I guess you could say that secularity has pressed us to be faithful to the gospel in these ways.” I think it’s fair to say secularity isn’t just an enemy. It’s a context created in part by Christendom, the Protestant Reformation, Enlightenment, democratic societies, and a host of historic values we hold dear. It can also in some ways be a handmaiden to helping the church be faithful and authentic to its task.

Anyhow, if we move back to Metodiskirken på Bjølsen where we started they were engaged in a great effort of their own. As the service with music begins to wrap up they have a few little rituals that are comfortable and compelling even to people who don’t have much familiarity with church. The most resonant of these practices for me was the invitation to light a candle at the lysglobe, the globe shaped votive candle holder next to a few of their vocalists. 

 They vocalists give the invitation: if there’s something on your heart, someone you are missing tonight, or something you need to let go of, this is the time and place (all the joy of invitation without the shame of some altar calls I have heard). Write your prayers, etc. on a paper and slide it into a box and they guarantee it will be prayed for in a confidential way. Then they invite you to light a candle as your act of prayer. 

A word about the lysglobe. It’s a Lutheran innovation that has been picked up by UMC churches as well. Most pastors and laypersons report that when unchurched persons make it to church that they are drawn to the practice of lighting the votive candles. It’s easy to understand why. A person may or may not understand the liturgy or the music or even the sermon. The utter weirdness of Christian worship, to those unfamiliar can make it difficult to understand at first. Nonetheless, most people understand prayer and all people can appreciate the metaphor of lighting a candle as one prays. Ministries that do much work in ministry with the poor, sick, or that conduct “fresh expressions” such as coffee shop worship, etc. have all reported how this practice, at least in Norway, seems to resonate. It’s possible that this has something to do with the deeply Christian memory of Norway which contained 1,000 years of lighting candles in this way, people just respond to it. I would suggest there is something deeper however. It is a profoundly tangible way to express faith and understanding, something I can do. The act and invitation meant a great deal even to me.

Yes, I lit a candle and dropped in my prayers and it was a powerful night in Bjølsen. This small church may or may not continue to operate independently in the years to come, but in this night they made a mighty effort that touched my heart.

I was only left to wonder, once we find something like a candle that makes a connection, how do we move with people deeper into relationship with them and God? How do we move them- and move with them- from the candle to the cross?

Our last Sunday at Grünerløkka we got a sort of answer that question (extra points here for those of you that noticed that they have a lysglobe ad well!). 

A man connected with this congregation had immigrated as a refugee from Syria more than a dozen years ago. He was raised in a non-Christian faith tradition. When he came to Oslo he met a woman and they began to attend this church. They had a child, and eventually decided the marriage wouldn’t work. In the years that followed, however, they also decided that both Jesus Christ and his church would be the center of their family and for their daughter. They worked to make sure that their daughter was always in worship and most of the time they were both there also. 

After 10 years of the man hanging out around the church he made a clear and final decision to not just point his daughter in Jesus’ direction but to follow Jesus himself. Our last Sunday in Oslo he was baptized. It was moving to be present and to hear a bit of his story. It reinforces for me a hope that people can still find Jesus in an intensely secular culture. The journey from the candle to the cross can be long, messy, complicated, but is nonetheless possible and fulfilling especially when there are Christians around to tend those in the journey with care, honesty, and authenticity. The light shines in the darkness- and the darkness has not overcome it.