Extreme Worship Leading Brings that Nagging Sense of Unease

I've been left wondering a bit about Drenzul's "Evening Reconciliation" tonight. I think that maybe - just maybe - he's going a little too far in his worship leading style.

Now don't get me wrong.  I will never criticise anyone who uses a sensitive nudge here and there - a reminder that God is good, our loving Parent. Nothing wrong with that. A suggestion that we, fallible, weak, uncertain, unpredictable, limited, imperfect, fragile, created as we are - that we should approach this awesome Creator with a certain trepidation - with awe and, for want of a better word - trembling - nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that at all. Not in a leading-into-the-presence of God kind of way.

If, on the other hand, you lead into a time of confession with a PowerPoint gallery of the people in your congregation, actually caught in or roughly around the time of the iniquities for which they will shortly be confessing - that would seem a little edgy. I mean,  the shot of Young Keith walking into the wall of the White Horse - we've all seen that a hundred times. He's got broad shoulders, has Keith. Though they've been broadened, admittedly, by the frequent contact with the walls of the White Horse.
No, more concerning was the fly-on-the-wall footage of Burton Dasset scoring at the annual Accounts v Actuaries cricket challenge match. And before you all leap to condemn him, I will say it's not the worst thing that has ever been filmed in a cricket scorebox. Not even close.

In fact, i would personally call this an act of kindheartedness, or at worst trying to save face. No results were affected by this act of minor fraud. But imagine the scene.

Burton is scoring during the Accountants' innings. He is running the scoreboard - one of those proper, big ones like a brick shed with strings to control the numbers - and the score book. Sat next to him is the wife of the captain of the Actuaries, doing their score book.

She was quite attractive, sure. And if you were to accuse Burton of the kind of adultery which would result in us all losing an eye, rather than go to the Smoky Place, if we took things literally - well, yes. I suspect he was guilty. But that was all. But maybe the excitement of sitting next to an attractive woman in a confined, relatively darkened space, resulted in Burton concentrating somewhat less than normal.

In any case, the Accountants' opening bat had a great innings. Even via the Web cam that Drenzul had clearly hidden in the back wall of the scoreboard, you can hear the cheers as he knocks a four through cover-point for a century and Burton delightedly rings up the third digit on the board.

Even in the half-light, with muffled sound, you can see and hear Burton's panic as he realises he's cocked it up, and the opener's only got 90.

We go on to see low-level fraud on a massive scale - unreckoned since the game began - as Burton systematically gives every extra - or every bye and leg bye, at any rate - to the unsuspecting batter. You can almost hear the sweat falling from Burton when there's an appeal.  You can only admire the way he occasionally "forgets". to ring up the second when they run two, and - with the collusion of the other scorer - rewrites a few bits of history. By the time the opener is out, the score in the book matches that on the board. Burton is a broken man.

But not as broken as when Drenzul played the whole sorry affair, and then spent ten minutes accusing Burton of being, if not the father of all lies, certainly a close relative of all lies - a cousin, or maybe uncle-in-law. This kind of thing was repeated for everyone Drenzul had some dirt on. And there were many.

I know I should have stopped it. After all, I've been blackmailing some of those people for the things we were watching. No chance now. But it was gripping stuff. I've never seen such a heart felt act of confession at the end of it all - although the concluding prayer, "Know you're forgiven and we will never mention what happened here" seemed unusual.

And so we moved on. The logical conclusion of being these kinds of broken people in a broken world, according to Drenzul, is that we need fixing. Turns out he knows a song about that.

And it's not like I've never heard "Fix You" used like that before. And it's not like it can't be quite moving. But I've never seen it played over a PowerPoint montage of sick and injured puppies and kittens before. People were really taken into the whole thing.

In fact, as Chris Martin warbled towards that last dramatic pause, and the baby labrador - having had the plaster cast removed - gambolled across the sand dunes - it would have taken a hard heart not to think that, tough and unfair as this world may be, there's hope and beauty in it.

Just a sneaking feeling of unease, though. I know Drenzul is committed, sincere and a great and sensitive worship leader but - and maybe it was just me - I wonder if the service, taken as a whole, was just a little bit emotionally manipulative?