The 7 pm Service: A Place for Stories

By Erin Rodenbiker // Originally published in the November UPC Times

7 pm worship service

Last November I entered the UPC Sanctuary on a Sunday night at 7 pm pretty beat down. I had just spent the last year living in the San Francisco Bay Area working at a job that drained me spiritually, emotional, and mentally. After that job I was unemployed for several months, living in a hippie house in Berkeley, and figuring out how to feel productive and accomplished with all this new free time. Nothing worked.

Several months of unemployment took its financial toll as well. It didn’t take too long to realize that I would have to do what no college grad wants to do… move back home.

I began to pack my stuff into a little 1996 Saturn sedan to drive back home to Seattle. The drive through southern Oregon was beautiful that November day, but through the mountains the Saturn decided it had had enough and it broke down. I was stranded at a rest stop in the middle of the woods, six hours from Seattle, with the sun going down.

My father drove down to Oregon that night to pick me up and help send the Saturn to the junk yard the next morning. The cost to repair it was more than the car was worth. So long, freedom of transportation.

So I returned to Seattle, after a year in San Francisco, with little money, no car, no job, and my childhood bed waiting at my father’s house in Mill Creek. It deflated my sense of independence, to say the least.

I had worked as an intern for University Ministries, so that first Sunday in Seattle it was second nature to drive down to UPC for church. Of course, I had to get permission to borrow my father’s car. As I said earlier, I entered the Sanctuary for the 7 pm service feeling pretty crushed.

I had heard that things were changing at the 7 pm service—some young blood was given the opportunity for leadership and it was going to be a service that took more risks and experimented with worship. Risk? Experiments! At UPC?! But this isn’t science class or mountaineering, this is church! I must admit I was skeptical, a little intrigued, but mostly desperate for any place to go that wasn’t Mill Creek.

The Sanctuary was the same as I had always remembered. The stained glass windows were beautiful, the large ceilings provided a sense of awe and wonder, and the sculpture of the Last Supper always sends an electric jolt down my soul.

Up front I noticed younger faces, interesting facial hair, more jeans and T-shirts than the typical Presbyterian attire of “business casual.” As someone in the target-market age for most churches, I can sniff out right away when a service is trying too hard to appeal to younger audiences. Before the 7 pm service started, this trendy-church spidey-sense was tingling.

The room was dark, candles were lit, and the service began. There was an introduction by a familiar face, someone I knew from my days of working at the church. Things did not feel very different, but then the music began.

Music is not everything in worship, but that night I particularly remember melody and rhythm enveloping me in a very true sense of God’s presence. It might have been a number of things—the mood of the night, my hunger for community after a year of turmoil, being lampooned in Oregon, a future of jobless suburban living—but that night I began an important relationship with the 7 pm service.

I introduced myself to the new leadership and thanked them for such a reverent, surprising, and engaging service. And then I realized that there was more going on at 7 pm than just a change of musical style and leadership. There were amazing people gathering together in community and fellowship.

I had spent many Sundays the previous year attending church services in the Bay Area with this sneaking feeling that most people were going through the motions. Sunday was the day to hear a sermon, drop the kids off at childcare, listen to some nice live music, and politely connect with acquaintances or folks from the small group. Watching people go through the motions always made me feel disconnected from the point of church as a community of believers. What do these people believe? I concluded that, for these people, going to church on Sunday must be as mundane as going to the grocery store.

After a year of observing such stale communities I was overwhelmed by the close-knit fellowship at the 7 pm service. It wasn’t like I was bombarded by friendly greeters or asked to share the state of my soul to a pew neighbor, but the camaraderie in the room was very apparent. People enjoyed being together.

And people were happy to see me. From my time as an intern with UMin I saw students I had worked with, church staff that were still around, and old friends from my time as a college student at UW. This was a place where I was well cared for and well known. This is what I lacked for the year in San Francisco.

If we think of church like a house then UPC is kind of like your grandparents’ house. It may not be the edgy college house with the rock band in the basement, but it is warm and inviting, consistent in its love and support. People may leave UPC to explore the world or other communities, but when they return from their explorations UPC is always there to listen, encourage, and supply a place to hang your hat.

Most people my age don’t want to spend their Sundays at their grandparents’ house—they want to go on adventures, carve their own path in the world. I do not blame them; I carved my own path that year in San Francisco, but I wonder if things fell through so epically that year so that I could arrive at a place of utter dependence on God and community in Seattle.

The 7 pm service seems to be the place that met me right where I was. And funny that our theology about the incarnational Christ, God taking human form, to meet us where we are shows us that God’s presence is intimately involved in our lives and stories.

This service has been home for me this past year and I am indebted to it as a place of grace, truth, and surprise. My father joins me for church at 7pm now—this is the first time he has been to church since he was a kid, nearly 50 years ago. I don’t live in my father’s house any more—I have started seminary at Seattle Pacific University—but he still drives down from Mill Creek to be a part of the community. Words cannot explain how meaningful it is for me to share that time with my father.

So even though UPC may be like your grandparents’ house, there is something happening around 7 pm where people old and young gather in the cool of night for an intimate community that plays fantastic music, prays together, listens to God’s word from the sacred texts, takes communion, and connects with a community of believers. Sounds like spending a Sunday with the grandparents might be cooler than you think.

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