The Old Rugged Cross

We had just returned to our pews on that Sunday morning in Dungannon when the pastor announced that it was prayer time.  Now I had worked in a pretty wide variety of churches, and attended an even wider variety.  I didn't think anything they could do during a prayer time would surprise me.  The youth of the Union Church of Hinsdale were a different matter entirely.  Worship at UC was very formal and very controlled.  Nothing happened that was not planned- and then planned again.  Hymns were classical in nature.  There was great concern that worship not be "dumbed down."  Apparently this meant that worship should be intellectual, not emotional.  I had already heard this a dozen times in staff discussions during my first three weeks.  And I knew it excluded any music that was written after 1900.  So as prayer time began that morning I said a prayer and held on...

The pastor began taking prayer requests from the congregation.  And almost everyone had one.  Some were for physical needs; others for salvation for family members.  One elderly woman gave her testimony and then requested that we all sing the classic hymn The Old Rugged Cross.  So we did.  It was an old favorite of mine, but totally foreign to my youth group.  As I mentioned before, it was a very small church.  They didn't sing out very loud- except for the woman who made the request.  And she was singing at the top of her lungs.  She couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but the song clearly meant the world to her.  She sang with such vigor and passion that after a few giggles at the quality of her singing, the group was mesmerized by her.  You could feel the Holy Spirit moving in her.  It was a moment we would talk about for weeks to come.

But prayer time was not over.  After a few more requests, the pastor invited everyone to come up to the altar and pray.  In my experiences, when this happened the people would go forward and kneel and someone would pray for the requests.  Not that morning.  The pastor said "Let us pray," and everyone did.  All at once.  Out loud!  My first reaction was to see and hear it as total chaos.  My next understanding was much deeper.  They got it.  The God of the universe doesn't need us to sort out our prayers so He can hear them.  He doesn't need us to sing with beautiful voices in order to sing praise to Him.  He wants to hear us.  As the voices mingled together in a beautiful, confused noise, I knew God was listening.  I opened my eyes and saw my youth with mouths hanging open, unsure of what to make of this.  It would become a wonderful teaching moment later that day.  It was truly "beautiful noise..."

I don't remember a thing about the sermon.  We had already been to church.  Later that afternoon we went out hiking on a nearby trail, and as we sat around talking it was amazing to hear the reactions of these wealthy, big city students to what they had seen and heard that morning in that little "hick" church.  And I began to understand more about how this trip was coming together.  We were going to be doing some work for poor local families.  That was the Work Tour part of the adventure.  But the mission- the real opportunity to change lives in the name of Jesus- was about God opening the eyes of my own youth to what real faith and real worship are all about.  God was moving among us, and kids were coming face to face with Jesus- many of them for the first time.  It was time for them to understand why The Old Rugged Cross- the song and the event- is so meaningful to so many.  It was time to go to work.

Because of Jesus,