#134-The Front Row aka The 8 mile road of church

Note: Not only did SAL catch up to the 21st century last week by making a twitter, but we also scurried right on up to 2010 and made a facebook group page (right side of page as well)! Now we can be satirically cynical, but also encouraging to one another as a community to social networking believers in one place....




This blog is credited to a fellow Urshanite who once wrote an essay when he was at school (that I would randomly stumble upon months after the fact) that literally had me thinking C.S. Lewis' quote that defines friendship out loud: "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." He is also the primary source behind a future, more adventurous post that has been brewing for months....


Firstly, we have already addressed one aspect of the phenomenon of church seating with the post entitled "Claiming your seat in the sanctuary as a separate independent nation."

Now onto the most sacred part about church seating: The front row-


To quote the recommender, "the only place more sacred than the platform is the first row of pews." When I read this quote I wondered aloud...Is this true? Is the front row more unique in it's reverence than that the platform demands?


And I think ultimately the answer is yes....


The front row and those who possess claim to have the boldness to sit in it's hallowed seats do indeed hold a more sacred place amongst the congregation than that of the platform simply because the platform can include many of the lay congregation (through conga players, children's choir, etc...) while only the fanatic fancies him/herself ready to take on the great burden that is the front row....


In other words, the sacredness is not determined by the physical entity of the platform/front pew in relation to it's location within the church, but rather the sacredness is determined by the constituents who represent that sector as a whole....


And thus, we arrive at the front row as the most sacred location within the church....


For what religious zealot possesses the fervor to take such bold steps as to make the front pew his home? not I, who feels naked and ashamed in such a context....but rather those that have the guts of Abraham to kill the own son at the request of God...it is these amongst us and in our church who reside in this holy arena of the front pew....


The one advantage of the front pew zealot: He does not have the long walk of shame at the onset of altar call as the others (who must awkwardly push their neighbor to the side in the pew to stumble up embarrassingly to the altar if the message is one that demands repentance.) For the front pew sitter is already present at the altar upon the altar call. Essentially this can partially explain the ecstatic behavior of the front pew sitter: They treat the entire church service like it was one long altar call....


But when we think front pew possessor, we think of the fanatic. They dance...they jump..they shout....when we're struggling to simply lift a hand during a song...


Better yet is the fanatic of all fanatics: The front row seater at big-time youth event. This not only means that they got to church a lot earlier than everyone else, but they did so with a determination that they are not here to impress anyone but God himself....And they really mean it....


Where most of us go "that's awesome...I wish I could have the guts to do that." They are actually doing it.


Which leads into the second part of the post....


the Front Row as the "8 Mile Road" of church....

Some of you may be familiar with the 8 mile movie starring the rapper Eminem (if you're not, don't watch it.)...but essentially the movie is named after 8 mile Road in Detroit (my home).....8 mile road is the road that separates Detroit and all it's roughness, criminal, and ghetto-related connotations that come with the city and that of the suburbs where life is much more calm and orderly. South of 8 mile is Detroit and chaos. North of 8 mile is suburban life (I live on 12 mile and thus in a very safe and middle to upper-middle class town). Those of us who live north of 8 mile (basically all my friends) kind of have a romanticism of Detroit. We try to head down there many of weekends (only enough guts to hang out in certain areas) when we get the opportunity, and we admire the lifestyle and the anarchy therein of those who our age who live in Detroit. Just like there is a longing for us to return to nature in us all at times, there is a longing for suburbanites to want to return to the urban centers that once were but are no more.....


The reality is we know that we couldn't survive one day living in Detroit as a real detroiter. We couldn't keep up with the madness. We would get caught at gun point within the first week and go running home to our mommies....But that doesn't stop the longing


I hope you see the analogy in relation to the front pew fanatic. We think they're slightly crazy. We look in shock and their worship, wondering what in the world is going through their head, but there is also a longing where we wish we could have boldness in church to act so free unashamed of the onlookers behind us....


Of course for the evolutionary psychologist within me, I would call this front row sitting an act of signaling wherein the male who is looking for a female mate signals to the female that in their front row sitting and the exuberant worship therein, they are indicating more than anyone else that "they are spiritual." And when one is spiritual this closely implies a higher probability that they will grow up to be a preacher/pastor which is every good apostolics girl's dream: to marry a preacher because that is the highest respected alpha male office in our social setting. So the front row enthusiast is actually beating us all to getting the best girls....(i mention the part about apostolic girls wanting to marry preacher in jest).


And to think that after all this typing I did not get to another crucial aspect of pew-sitting: The further you gradually slip back in the pews, the more you are considered a backslider all the way to the point of the dreaded "backrow backslider." But alas, i will leave this to a future post.


(For all those concerned, I think that if we stopped accepting post suggestions now, we'd still have roughly 100 or so more posts to write...that said, keep sending the suggestions!)


Not only have we