News from SBCRC

We Have Signal: Nomo from We Have Signal on Vimeo.

Here are the services that will take place April 1 – 4, 2010:

Thursday – 6:30 pm: A Maundy Thursday meal. This meal, fashioned after a traditional Jewish Seder, helps to point out some of the historic roots of our faith, and how Christ changed them, and made them His own. This is the meal in which, for example, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. Communion will be celebrated, and child care is provided, though we encourage you to use it for very young children who cannot sit through the meal (it will be fun for kids too!). The meal (which is the service) will begin promptly at 6:30.

Friday – 7:00 pm: A series of readings and musical depictions of the events of Good Friday. This service contains fairly graphic images of Christ’s suffering, parents, use your discretion about bringing your children. Child care is provided for this service also.

Saturday – 8:00 pm: The Holy Vigil of Easter. In this service we light the new fire for the upcoming season, and we wait, in hopeful anticipation for the return of the Lord. Heather Ghormley, our Youth Pastor, will be preaching and we will celebrate two baptisms. Nursery is not provided for this service.

Sunday – 10:30 am: Easter Morning. There is no church school on Easter Morning, and a light Easter brunch will be served afterward.

These services each have different significance, and help us to follow in Christ’s path through the events of Holy Week.

Click the link to see the newsletter received from the Kapteyns.

newsletter link

I’m glad that people appreciated the intercessory prayer yesterday. There is something about placing headlines and images like that within the context of prayer that moves us to see it as something more than just news and information. It generates those “sighs too deep for words” that Paul talks about. It also helps to have a great song playing in the background. In this case, it’s the Soweto Gospel Choir singing “Khumbaya.”

Staff Writer Ken Bradford wrote a pretty nice article on Subkirke for Sunday’s South Bend Tribune.

Sarah Sanders couldn’t believe it.

She’s been a huge fan of the Great Lake Swimmers.And there she was on a Thursday night in October, just minutes from her home in South Bend, in the third row for a Great Lake Swimmers concert.

For 12 bucks.

In a church.

What are the odds of that?

Actually, if you’re a fan of alt-country/roots/folk music, your odds of seeing your favorite band locally are better now than ever.

That’s because Subkirke, an experiment in outreach to college-age music fans, has opened at the South Bend Christian Reformed Church on North Hickory Road.

“It was a collective brainstorm,” Subkirke organizer David Banga says. “We talked about how we can be useful in the community. One of the things that’s missing is a venue of this sort.”

The big-time greatest-hits acts have the Morris. The head-bangers have Club Fever. The cover bands have the bars.

What Subkirke — a phonetic acronym for SBCRC — offers is a 500-seat place with great acoustics for quieter bands with fans who really want to hear and study the music.

Banga believes South Bend, with its colleges and location, is a perfect place for what his church is trying to do.

Last fall, he managed to snag the Great Lake Swimmers for what would have been an off-day between concerts in Chicago and Grand Rapids.

“You can sit in a hotel room for two nights, or you can come meet your fans in a place like this,” he says.

Already, the word has gotten around that there’s a stopping-off place between Illinois and Michigan.

“There’s a lot of interest,” he says. “Some really well-known national acts are interested in coming here.”

If you haven’t heard of the Swimmers, that’s part of the problem.

In other parts of this country, the Toronto band is really big. Before its South Bend concert, it had a gig at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, and it headed to Europe for another tour in November.

The band’s played on NPR and you can find a clip online of singer Tony Dekker being interviewed by Brian Williams on MSNBC.

But the Swimmers haven’t toured here. There isn’t a local radio station dedicated to its genre of music.

If you knew the group, it was a sign you did your own homework.

The first Subkirke show, Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers, drew a small crowd on a Notre Dame football game night.

The church breaks even if it can sell 150 tickets for a band such as the Great Lake Swimmers, and it did, Banga says.

“And the average age in there is about 22,” he says. “We’re hitting the age group we’re looking for.”

Four seniors from the Trinity School at Greenlawn lowered that age average during the Swimmers’ concert.

“I’m really glad they have this,” Theresa Behrens, who was there with Yana Jones, Kelsey Timm and Kelsi Schmidt, says.

They’re all fans of the Swimmers and know the music well. “One of my friends actually covers some of their songs,” Schmidt says.

Because the place is smoke- and alcohol-free, people younger than 21 are welcome.

And there certainly is nothing of the honky-tonk feel at Subkirke.

The audience sits in a large room on padded pews or folding chairs. The band performs under a banner that proclaims, “Blessed.”

It’s a respectful crowd that waits until the final note has ended to applaud. It’s polite, almost to a fault.

There are no stoners yelling, “Free Bird.” No waitresses taking drink orders during a ballad.

After the two concerts in the fall, Subkirke took a two-month hiatus.

The main target audience is college students, and Banga wants to schedule when it’s best for them.

“We did two shows last semester, we’re going to do three this semester and likely five in the fall semester,” he says. “There may be a summer concert or two, but mostly just when the students are here, and when it isn’t final exam time.”

He suggests keeping an eye on Subkirke’s Web site.

He says word about concerts spreads mainly through campus publications and on The Globe, WGCS-FM (91.1), the radio station at Goshen College.

Dekker, the Swimmers’ singer and songwriter, says his band appreciates playing in venues like Subkirke.

Have they played in churches before?

“Yes, we have,” he says. “In fact, we like to record in places like this.”

Churches are built to allow sound to carry, and Dekker says the acoustics at Subkirke fit the Swimmers’ needs.

And although the Swimmers’ songs don’t typically have negative messages, anyway, Dekker says he didn’t feel inhibited in putting together the show here.

Instead, it gave him more options. “We did play a few of our more quiet songs here,” he says, “because of the space.”

Whatever the set list, fans such as Sarah Sanders came to the concert eager and left satisfied.

“It is so awesome to have them here,” she says.

She’s been listening to the Swimmers for two or three years and buys its CDs.

“I was really excited because we don’t have to drive to Chicago for a show like this,” she says.

Will she be back to Subkirke?

“If they bring in more good shows,” she says. “I’ve already e-mailed some suggestions.”

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On January 15, 2010, The BowerBirds will take the stage at Subkirke. This is an interesting band comprised of a husband-wife team, and one other member. They have a very unique sound (read the review below). You can see, hear, and read more about them at their website. Come, support this outreach, and hear a great concert!

Amanda Petrusich, from Pitchfork.com, writes:

Bowerbirds’ accordionist Beth Tacular paints– sometimes on paper, sometimes on craggy bits of salvaged wood– strange, whimsical landscapes, littered with critters and berries and plants and airplanes and skyscrapers and unicorns and feathers. Tacular’s visual art (already beloved by plenty) is packed with big, gnawing oppositions– industry vs. ecology, urban vs. rural, fantasy vs. truth, man vs. earth– and Bowerbirds’ tingly indie-folk is no less dynamic or indicting.

Tacular, along with partner/guitarist Phil Moore and multi-instrumentalist and producer Mark Paulson, churns out deceptively pleasing folksongs about plants and animals and the unforgivable things we do to them. Even in a post-Al Gore America (where Wal-Mart’s gone green– sorta– and hybrid cars are as much of an it-accessory as Goyard totes), it’s still awfully hard for a sweet-faced North Carolina couple to clutch their instruments to their chests and coo bits like, “It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth” without making everyone squirmy. But Bowerbirds’ pro-Earth proselytizing is more endearing (and inspiring) than precious or cloying, and if anything, all that earnestness will just make you adore them more (and, maybe, think a little bit harder about the interstates slicing up your hometown forests).

Snatching their name from an Australian chirper (bowerbirds are most famous for the inverse relationship between a male’s plumage and its ability to construct a mate-attracting nest), Bowerbirds’ debut long player (released by Pitchfork writer Grayson Currin’s label) will likely garner loads of comparisons to Devendra Banhart and Vetiver, but their brand of folk is more Appalachian than British (Carter Family over Bert Jansch), and less concerned with psychedelia than melody (think gypsy-influenced Sufjan Stevens). Opener “Hooves” starts small and modest, with Moore mewing about his mom over spare acoustic guitar (“Back when I was born on a full moon/ I nearly split my momma in two”), before the vocals double, drums kick up, and Tacular’s accordion starts to whine: the track is somehow quiet and jarring at the same time, and invites all kinds of twee analogies (a family of deer darting through a clearing! Thunderclaps at night! Rainbows!).

“In Our Talons” is equally mesmerizing, jazzy and rich, with lyrics both gentle and barbed (“We’re only human/ This at least we’ve learned”), while “The Marbled Godwit” is Bowerbirds’ most classically freak-folk moment (and most Newsom-inspired title?), with acoustic guitar, high, meandering vocals, and cutting violin. Hymns strongest tracks– “Slow Down”, “In Our Talons”, “Dark Horse”– manage to be both hypnotically pretty and a little bit weird, characteristics of the very best kind of Americana music. Bowerbirds do for backyards what the Hold Steady’s done for parking lots– translated place into sound.

This is the second of four posts on the subject of pastoral care here at SBCRC.  As in the last post, the focus here is on “pastoral care” in a broad sense, on efforts made by church leadership (i.e. the pastoral staff and council) keep in contact with individuals and families within the congregation and alert to particular needs they may have.  We are working to make small groups the primary vehicle by which this accomplished.

This raises the question about the 60 or so individuals and families not in a small group.  What about them?  How are we keeping in contact with them? Despite how encouraged we are by the level of participation in small groups, these are important questions.

THE CORE AND THE RIND

It was asking these questions that led us to form the Pastoral Care Team.  The focus of this group is simply to keep in touch with members not presently in a small group, to care for them, and to remain alert to particular needs they may have.

There are two levels of involvement one can have on the Pastoral Care Team.  First, there are those who meet regularly to discuss the needs that have come up (as well as celebrate good news), determine what contacts should be made (and who will might them), and pray for our congregation.  We’ll call this “the core group.”

Second, there are those not interested in attending the meetings and overseeing pastoral care of the congregation as a whole.  They simply are willing to keep in contact with a selected number of people, give them a call, maybe meet them for coffee.

For lack of a better term, we’ll call this “the rind group.”

MS. A AND MR. B ILLUSTRATE

Both Ms. A and Mr. B are part of the pastoral care team.  Ms. A is part of the rind group and can commit to checking in with three individuals or families a month.  She’s most interested in contacting people newer to the church.  Mr. B is part of the core group.  He commits to making six contacts a month, and, while not contacting the same people each month, he prefers to keep ongoing contact with a smaller pool of people rather than someone new each time.

At its next meeting, the core team determines not only who they’ll be contacting before the next meeting but also compiles lists of names for people on the rind team.  I pass these names along to rind team members– including five names to Ms. A.  Ms. A chooses three from those five.  Over the next month, she may talk on the phone with one, meet for coffee with another, and chats with the third after the service.  Before the core team’s next meeting, she emails me an update on her contacts, noting any particular concerns or needs they may have expressed.  I add this to our database.

That’s right, I said, “database.”  Nothing says “pastoral care” like an Excel spreadsheet.

IN DEFENSE OF SYSTEMS

I realize all this sounds a bit clinical. But that is not reason in itself to dismiss it.  After all, the same could be said of vacation itineraries– it’s just dates, times, and locations.  But the point of a good itinerary is to enable a great vacation.  It creates space and structure for people to enjoy being together.

Similarly, the point here is to create a system or structure through which this level of pastoral care can occur for everyone in our congregation.  In a description like this, it may sound clinical, but it won’t be experienced as such.

THE APPEAL

We are still in the beginning stages of implementing this new system.  If you are interested in being either a member of the “core” or “rind,” we would love to have you on board and now is a good time to.  As mentioned, you are free to determine the number of people with whom you make contact in this capacity and the type of person whom you’d like to provide this kind of care for.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES

Pastoral Care at SBCRC (Part 1): A New Model

Pastoral Care at SBCRC (Part 2): Filling in the Cracks

Pastoral Care at SBCRC (Part 3): Council Members in Small Groups (To be Completed)

Pastoral Care at SBCRC (Part 4): Levels of Pastoral Care (To be Completed)

For those who don’t believe; I have attached photos of the SBCRC Ultimate Frisbee gang after a two hour Frisbee snow fest game!   We had a ball out there, and when we finished, we joined my kids in “the ditch” by the parking lot for some sledding!

Remember Frisbee Sundays at 2:00, come one come all!!!

Happy New Year!!!!

Roger Thomas