Remix #32. Lasers instead of stained glass.

A few weeks ago while walking in downtown Blowing Rock, North Carolina, I stopped my wife in the middle of the sidewalk. “Whoa,” I said, using that arm bar move you do when you’re about to brake hard while driving and don’t want your passenger to leave teeth marks in your dashboard.

“What is it?” My wife replied, looking around the dark October night as if I had perhaps seen cabin #458 that would be a great place for me to write a book and grow a beard, thus becoming 67% wiser almost instantaneously.

“Look at that. It’s beautiful. It’s glowing.” The object of my wonderment? A piece of stained glass in a small church off main street.

I didn’t grow up with a very “ornate” church experience. There was surprisingly little stained glass in the car wash we held church in and come to think of it, the middle school we rented was completely devoid of fancy glass as well. We eventually had a piece in the church we built, but my formative years were by no means bedazzled.

But for some reason, I miss stained glass. I miss the artwork of it and the way it feels like God’s sunlight brings it to life. At the same time though, I love my uber modern church, North Point. When Steve Fee is on stage just destroying it and lasers are going off and a light show is bursting, I feel connected to a genuine worship experience. But is it possible to have it both ways? To marry stained glass with lasers? Old with new? Traditional with rocktastical?

I hope so, because if I ever officially open my church, iGracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate, that’s what I plan to do. Here are a few things you might enjoy when you come visit:

1. Hymnal wrapped Kindles
I’ve been very open and honest about my affection for the smell of old hymnals. But I also love technology. So instead of having hymnals or Bibles in my church, we’re going to buy Amazon Kindles, the electronic book readers, and wrap them in old hymnal covers. You’ll get the feel of the old cover, the alluring smell of sweaty hands and singing, while still having instant Wi-Fi access to every song and version of the Bible ever written.

2. Hologram ministers
During the election, CNN played around with the idea of holograms by “beaming” a member of the Black Eyed Peas into their studio. (Which is perfect because my wife and I had just been saying to ourselves, “I understand the election, but has anyone gotten some feedback from what the Black Eyed Peas are thinking right now?”) My plan is to have some of our sermons delivered via hologram. But instead of the aerodynamic grey leotards every movie about the future seems to believe we’ll wear, a joke Seinfeld first made, I’m going to outfit our ministers in those baby blue suits that every minister from the 1970s had. That way, if you’re in the crowd and you’re freaking out about the hologram, you can take some comfort in the fact that a good old traditional suit is still onstage. And if you hate the suit, you can take comfort in knowing that at any point we might beam the minister into the seat next to you just to blow your mind. That’s just the kind of church we’ll be.

3. Organ driven laser shows
The other day at Costco, my five-year-old daughter L.E. changed the setting on a synthesizer to “organ” and started wailing away in the middle of the store. My first thought was, “whoa, who’s playing the church?” An old school organ just sounds like church to me, but I do love some lasers. So I’m remixing the two. Each organ key or pedal or pipe or whatever it is organists play will be tied to a different color laser. Just like in the movie Goonies, each note you press will cause an instant, wild reaction. And we’re going old school and getting a blue haired old woman to handle the organ duties, but fear not, she’ll be rocking a faux hawk and some white pumas.

4. Stained Glass Kid Tags
At North Point, I get a laminated number card when I drop off my kids at Sunday School. At one of the LifeChurch campuses they print out a sticker. I think those are great, but instead of those options, I’m going to have an artisan with a really big monocle create a credit card sized stained glass picture of your kid. We’ll hand you that when you drop them off. It might take a little longer, like four or five months to actually drop off your kid for Sunday School, but we’ll just feed them goldfish while they wait and tell you that patience is a virtue.

5. Make it Rain Offering Baskets
I grew up with woven offering baskets. They had holes in them so that if you put coins in they would fall to the floor loudly and we could all judge whoever was shortchanging sweet baby Jesus. I’m kidding, we didn’t do that. We just thought, if a basket was good enough for sweet baby Moses, it’s good enough for our offering. I’m kidding again, we didn’t say that. (Weird that both of those tangents involved sweet babies. Odd.) I see a lot of different approaches to offering these days. The box at the back, the plastic bowl, the offering plate. Those aren’t for me because I’m bringing baskets back. Only I’m going to combine them with the ever fun activity of “making it rain.” (I believe the technical definition of “make it rain” is “to lavishly throw money about when you are up in the club like it’s your birthday.”) You’ll still be able to give the normal way when we pass the small offering basket, but if you’re feeling a little hip hop, there will be a huge basket in the corner of the room where you can make it rain and throw your cash in like Diddy.

Up until idea number five, I was beginning to think it might be a little expensive to open iGracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate, but I think the make it rain offering basket is going to be a huge draw.

Is there anything I missed in my desire to create the most old school postmodern traditional relevant worship experience ever?

What would you add?