GOD’S Country

WIST THE FM DIAL IN DALLAS, AND BY THE TIME you hit 92, sawdust covers your shoes. By 108 you’re ankle deep. Dallas is to fundamentalist religion as Rome is to Catholicism: the epicen- ter In Dallas it seems almost any Holy Joe with talent and a tent pole can wave his Bible and a decade later erect a megachurch seating thousands.

Texans like their churches big: the biggest Baptist church, the biggest Methodist church, the biggest Protestant Episcopal church, close to the biggest Jewish temple and the world’s biggest gay church. It’s not the place of innovation; California gets that prize. But Dallas is the place of size: big, bigger, biggest.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as in other urban centers, pluralism of faith traditions is now a reality. Mega-congregation conservative Christians now share turf with Muslims, several dozen Buddhist, Hindu and Jain groups, Native Americans, New Agers. Wiccans and even a vibrant congregation of Free Thinkers.

D Magazine asked me to visit an extraordinary group of congregations. I visited 21 worship sites, mostly Christian, also Jewish, Islamic and Hindu. More than half the worship sites I visited were first-rate.

I have rated them one through five stars. Five stars denotes world-class, full-service institutions, models of excellence, places where I sensed a strong presence of the Holy Spirit. From this select group, one was exceptional for the incredible emotion of the service. That the Cathedral of Hope is a gay congregation represents a remarkable achievement. Readers who find my admiration shocking should visit the place. The worship experience, I believe, will speak for itself.

Four stars indicates places of excellence-some of more modest size and limited programming-where I am confident any church shopper will find satisfying worship. Three stars shows deficiencies that can be easily corrected. Most American houses of worship would fall here. Two-star sites, in my estimation, need major reprogramming. They are apt to abuse worshipers more than bless them.

One-star ratings designate houses of worship thai are in need of prayer. Their future is in doubt.



Our Lady of Dallas (Cistercian Abbey)

★★★★MOST CITIES HAVE AT LEAST ONE WORSHIP SITE, KNOWN GENERALLY only to insiders, where extraordinary expression of spirit is standard fare. First Friday vespers al the Cistercian Abbey off Highway 114 in Irving is such a site. Here the Collegium Cantorum from the University of Dallas sings mass.

To step inside this rough-hewn limestone chapel is to go back a millennium, with just a few hints of the late 20fh century-like a post-Vatican II altar and dramatic up-and-down lighting.

The monks, garbed in albs, sit up front in the choir flanking the altar. The congregation faces them. Mass here is formai. There is no script for the audience to follow and little opportunity for them to participate in the liturgy. Here the awe is to be found in the music, not the spoken word.

I heard a mass of Felice Aneiro. Music of this 16th-century Italian master blended angelic and earthly voices. These were mystical moments.

Acoustically this is the best hall I’ve ever heard for music, and the sound is 100 percent au naturel. The chapel supports musical speech. It surrounds the listener with forceful sound reverberating off the stone in all four directions. The space amplifies bass. The effect exceeds the rich, full-bodied tone supplied by a bi-amplified sub-woofer with no mikes in sight. No pipe organ either, although this space yearns to have one. Here one finds the crystalline sound of voices blended a cappella. I refuse to believe that angelic voices are not joining in.

If there was a point of irritation in the chapel that night, it was only the intrusive sound of train whistles. Can’t Southern Pacific mark the Abbey area as whistle-free?



First Baptist Church, Dallas

★★★★

JEWS AND HOMOSEXUALS-FIRST BAPTIST WANTS TO RUB THEM BOTH clean with born-again Babo. Neither group welcomes the scrub brush. This does not stop O.S. Hawkins. First Baptist’s senior pastor jumps into the fray of controversy with aplomb and relish. Under his leadership, the church of fabled W.A. Criswell continues to thrive: 26,000 members strong, it remains the nation’s largest church.

The weekend of my visit Hawkins was in full charge on both issues. Earlier in the week, The New York Times had carried a story quoting him about Southern Baptists evangelizing Jews. That week First Baptist also sponsored one of those Exodus conversion meetings to straighten out gays. With wire-rimmed spectacles, Hawkins looks as though he stepped off the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. His sermon echoed pages of Cyrus O. Scholefield, the 19th-century cataloger of a dispensational scheme. Biblical events point to the so-called Rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4:17) and the Second Coming of Christ.

Hawkins fixes on rumors of “one world government.” “Daniel knew of all this 2,800 years ago,” said Hawkins. Daniel, who never heard of one world government, might have been stunned to hear Hawkins’ take on his text. I was, as Hawkins skipped with abandon from Old to New Testament to Isaac Watts’”Joy to the World.” Though the man appears to be a meticulous scholar, I got confused as I tried to follow him, Maybe it was just an off Sunday.

I found people at this downtown landmark incredibly friendly. Perhaps it was just my good fortune to sit in front of the Sibley family for the 8:15 a.m. service. We chatted. They invited me to their Sunday School class and introduced me to a dozen people. Later I received a letter of welcome from Sunday School class leader Ed Yates.

These classes at First Baptist, as at other area Baptist churches, are sub-congregations within the larger whole. I counted 221 separate classes covering a range of ages and family traditional lifestyles. Extraordinary friendliness and one-on-one evangelism win high marks for this flagship congregation, more than the pulpit power of its spiritual leadership.



Temple Emanu-EI

★ ★ ★ ★The sheer magnitude of Temple EmanU-El’s congregation of 8,000 places it in the top five Reform Jewish congregations nationally. Team size with the affluence of the Temple’s mercantile families, and the national significance of this house of worship becomes apparent. Not surprisingly, Emanu-EI commands top talent, In its new rabbi, David Stern, the selection committee grabbed a brass ring.

Great sermons require an original thinker who shapes lucid images on multiple levels of abstraction. The best homilists speak fluently without a manuscript. Handsome and affable, Stem meets these demands. He moves easily among his congregants, pressing flesh, before the service.

Rabbi Stem focused sharp criticism at First Baptist for its evangelism tactics with recent Russian Jewish immigrants. When the reporter for The New York Times article about Southern Baptists inquired whether a Rolls-Royce parked in First Baptist parking lot belonged to Hawkins, the Southern Baptist powerhouse had replied “What? Do you think I’m paid like a rabbi?” That dig prompted Stern to add a coda to his sermon: After the service he would be returning home, driving his 1986 Volvo.

The Hawkins-Stem spar does make for good press and lively semions. Like interesting policial candidates, I suppose each needs the other.

Emanu-EI services are dignified, not Spirit-filled. Stem receives support from an excellent choir and fine organist. Still, without service music or hymnals, congregational singing at Emanu-EI is at best spongy.

Like other Reform rabbis, Stem labors under a pall of Shabbat apathy. I estimated attendance somewhere about 80, including the choir, a scant one percent of Emanu-El’s 8,000 dues-paying members. Each week 99 percent of Emanu-El’s membership are the losers by dint of their absence. This word to them: By your absence from Shabbat worship you-all 7,900 of you-impoverish the spiritual treasure of your faith tradition. By your absence, you rob your brilliant young rabbi of the support and influence he can and should have in shaping moral values of Dallas as it enters the 21 st century.

But Temple Emanu-El’s staff and trustees actually have much to leam from the visitor-friendly Southern Baptist congregations of Dallas. At Emanu-EI no information center guided me how to plug into this Temple. While greeters at the front door proved helpful, during the post-service oneg, cliquishness overrode sensitivity to strangers.



Center for the Course

★★★★★

The location in a Richard Neutra-designed house and garden at 3100 Carlisle Ave. failed to draw people despite its supernal loveliness. I thought it a Shangri-la.

Lee Bennett is a former Southern Baptist minister with eyes that twinkle when he talks about his discovery of the Course. A Course in Miracles was a revelation to a secular Jewish atheistic professor at Columbia University. Helen Shucman, Ph.D. began channeling the weighty tome “clair-audiently” in the mid-1960s after competition and power plays threatened to destroy her department. “There ought to be a better way,” a colleague had remarked. Privately circulated, this “formula for the better way,” considered by followers to be the latter-day words of Jesus, became readily available in the ’80s as discussion groups gathered around it.

Although there are several centers around the nation where devotees of the Course meet, very few congregations have been gathered around it. Marianne Williams has one in Southern California.

In Dallas, efforts are much more modest, but in a way purer to the spirit of the Course.

The Sunday service is very simple: an antiphonal reading of a section of the Course, recorded music as a background for meditation with a brief homily based on the Course, usually by Lee. Small groups gather at Monday and Wednesday discussions. Highly recommended for people of any faith tradition when resentment and hate block progress.



New Hope Baptist Church

★★★★

The New Hope Baptist Church in East Dallas is the City’s oldest African-American congregation, dating back to 1873. The building is architect-designed and tastefully fitted. The floors in polished Sautillo tile and coordinated clay lighting fixtures tell the story. Few black congregations know this luxury.

And few have had the privilege of having a minister like Derrick Harkins. In his five years at New Hope, Harkins galvanized the church and helped establish one of the city’s most extensive social service programs. Unfortunately for the congregation. Harkins left Dallas in August to become pastor of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., but the programs and the atmosphere of civic responsibility that he cultivated at New Hope Baptist still remain.

The cornerstone of these programs is Showers of Blessings, the New Hope social service delivery program in south Dallas. Funded entirely by the church, Showers of Blessings has a food pantry for those in desperate need, as well as an emergency utility-bill-paying service. In addition, Showers of Blessings operates a once-a-month soup kitchen in collaboration with other area churches. Add to that New Hope’s AIDS ministry and summer program for grade-school kids, and you have a civic-minded church that would benefit any city.

At the service I attended, the sermon was from Micah 1 ;8, about mercy and justice and walking humbly with God. Under Harkins ’ guidance. New Hope Baptist has lived up to those words. One can only hope that this special congregation can choose an equally dynamic minister.



Baruch Ha Shem Messianic Congregation

★★★★★

“HOW CAN I WORSHIP LIKE THIS?” THE QUESTION CAME, ACCORDing to peripatetic bard Paul Wilbur, behind closed doors from the rabbi of one of the largest Jewish congregations in Texas. There is not a rabbi across the country-minister, priest or imam, for that matter-who should not ask that same question.

When Paul Wilbur leads worship, the air crackles. An alumnus of Reform Judaism, the unrepentant mystic is now the artistic force behind the klezmer harmonic minor melodies and kibbutzim dance that rock Messianic Jewish (Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah) congregations from coast to coast. George Beverly Shea and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are limp beside him.

To “worship like this” means worship with body prayer. It means to hi! with ecstasy and energy, to sing with heart and voice, to clap one’s hands, to move the body, to dance, to lift hands on high before the face of God and feel that Holy Presence in every pore, muscle and fiber. Here the parking lot is full (unlike those at other area synagogues and temples); inside every seat is filled.

Says Wilbur of the Messianic tradition: “It’s been said that with every movement of the spirit of God. someone needs to speak it or preach it, and someone needs to sing it. So we’re delighted to be able to sing this identifiable movement of the spirit of God through music… I believe that God is speaking a fresh Word to the earth and bringing back the spirit of the psalmist-someone who delights to sing and hear the Word of the Lord, to press through to the spirit realm and…allow God to minister to the people.”

These enlivened Jews also say someone needs to dance to the spirit of God. Amen! Distinctive to the worship are both line and circle dances. Recalling Sufi dances of universal peace, these dancers move energetically throughout the sanctuary, rendering prayer and praise rapturous.

For more conventional Jews who twitter at the thought of confessing Yeshua as Messiah, Wilbur’s texts are mostly Psalms, and all from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). This is distinctly Jewish worship, not a bunch of Jews sitting shivah over Fannie Crosby and the Nicaean Creed. Religious celebrations such as Christmas and Easter do not move them. Instead they observe Pesach, Purirn and Yom Kippur.

I have Paul Wilbur’s video, Shalom Jerusalem, filmed during a sizzling 1995 Pesach concert in Jerusalem. Through beats of joy and tears of praise, it moves me also to lift holy hands on high and declare, Baruch ha ha B’shem Adonai, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Texas Krishnas, Inc. ★★★★

In the holy city of Vrindaban, India, the Godiya Math Vaisnava followers of the late Chandra De command attention as newcomers on the temple block. Americans know the movement he founded as Hare Krishna. Krishnas revere him as His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who was already past 70 when he arrived in New York in 1965 with a satchel of books and $7. He planted congregational Indian faith in Western soil-around the world really-in less than a decade.

Local Krishnas command respect in their East Dallas neighborhood. They’ve reclaimed area housing and turned a redundant church into an exotic temple and ashram.

Vaisnava worship sites I’ve visited have the mystery of Chartres. The chapel on Gurley Street is no exception. Inside the opulent temple room proper, liturgy, here exquisitely performed, addresses every sense-sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell-with spiritual potency. Couriers present guests the fire of Agni, the scent of flowers and a sprinkling of water.

The monastic day begins at 4:30 a.m. with a chanting meditation named joppa after the rosary-like beads that guide the count of prayers. The 7:00 program the morning of my visit lasted one hour and 42 minutes. The faithful first focus on the life-sized murti (statue) of Prabhupada, then on statues of the flute-playing Krishna and his consort, Radha, both clothed in sartorial finery that changes daily.

Devotees-the women in saris, the men in monastic garb and dhotis-sway, dance and jump to music throughout the devotional service. For some this is a sweaty isotonic workout.

After the service, articulate, engaging Hlandini Shakti Das was quick to extend an invitation to breakfast. Inside the spartan prasadam hall, devotee chefs serve five-star exotica. For breakfast I had a chapati, potato sabji, sweetened milk, oatmeal with raisins, fruit in sweet cream, a farina-based halvah and a milk sweet flavored with saffron and rose water. Earlier the food had been offered to Radha and Krishna, thus making it eucharistlike prasadam.

Hare Krishnas have passed through bumpy times. Seven of the 11 gurus Prabhupada appointed to succeed him have fallen into sense gratification or crime or have left the movement. These East Dallas monks command respect as very good people. Still most Dallasites will probably find anything more than a friendly visit biting off more prasadam than they can chew.



Calvary Assembly

★★★Counterfeit or genuine? As popular thirst for authentic firsthand encounters with divinity intensifies, so does temptation to lower standards to make the numbers kick in. Authenticity of Spirit goes back to Paul and is a long-standing problem in Pentecostal circles. Among Assemblies of God, news of a rip-roaring revival in Pensacola last year has stirred pastoral aspirations in a denomination where decisions for Christ are the ticket for ordination, upward mobility and status. In Dallas, Calvary Assembly prayed in the challenge.

I visited Calvary’s revival in its twelfth big week, as the tally of souls saved climbed towards 2,700. The ballyhoo of Pastor J. Don George and Evangelist Marcus Lamb made it obvious to them revival was a numbers game.

Worship leader David Carpenter was the first to raise red flags. His music revved the crowd. Metronomic beats exceeded 144 per minute. Hands clapped furiously, pumping adrenaline. Carpenter all but ordered God to shower pentecostal blessings on the expectant crowd. The Baptist in front of me may have been typical. His comments revealed he was there to be slain in the Spirit-a juicy experience of God his home church does not afford.

Lamb’s pump of Spirit echoed Carpenter’s. “I need fifty people to call out to the Holy Ghost in tongues with prayers of intercession.” One man spoke in tongues and, against the rules, interpreted his own glossolalia. Around the room, women began crying convulsively. Later Lamb would claim their tears, as well as acts of intercession, had been entirely spontaneous without any prompting on his part. “Your tears came from the heart of Jesus.” he declared without epistemological reservation.

Lamb’s sermon was clearly organized, dramatic and surely raised expectations of the charismatic events that were to follow. At altar-call time, Lamb resorted to coercion to swell the ranks down front. Counting from 30 to zero, he pressured with poppycock he knew to be untrue: If people didn’t make it down before zero, the door to salvation would be forever shut. He interrupted the countdown with tricks. ’Turn to the people around you. If they’re not saved, take them by the hand and bring them down. Don’t worry if they get mad at you.”

The woman behind me began pestering me. Finally I told her I was a journalist and asked her to leave me alone. My heart cried for the good men I know in Assemblies ministry who would never stoop to these strategies. When I visited the men’s room before exiting, the guys next to me at the urinal told the story of Calvary’s revival as a game more of numbers than of spirit: “Whew! That crowd sure was thin tonight.”

Cathedral of Hope, Dallas

★★★★★

The sanctuary is triangular. Window; are triangular. The central altar is a triangle in pink marble. In Nazi Germany, Hitlei forced gay and lesbian Germans to wear the pink triangle as a stigma. Today the pink tri angle is a symbol of gay pride and hope.

With more than 2,000 members, the Cathedral of Hope is the nation’s largest gay church. Thename is not just marketing hype. This church lives its name.

Sunday mornings the service is liturgical. In the center, senior minister Michael Piazza deftly balances scholarship and contemporary context. Urgency fills his voice as he paces, free of manuscript, about the dais. He gives people thirsting for spiritual manna the hope they crave.

The Cathedral’s parent denomination is the Metropolitan Community Church. MCC services center on the eucharist. Here the prayer rail of the Assemblies of God and the communion rail of High Church Christianity meet. The morning of my visit three clergy sang it with the congregation responding antiphonally. This open communion rail is for many couples the only public place they can appear as a bonded pair. Here they receive the elements, then clergy embrace them and pray with them.

More than 50 small groups provide fellowship for members and friends. The congregation runs a full-time counseling center. A web home page keeps a current archive of sermon texts and calendars of events. Services each week are televised with plans to spread them via cable across the nation.

The bulletin did contain a few ironic twists. I visited the day of “Heterosexual Pride Sunday.” And Piazza baptized a baby boy, the son of two women. The Cathedral’s Sunday School now boasts an enrollment of 30 children.

The biggest flaw that assaulted my critical eye was street signage. A Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse sign marks the point of entry.

Here I found worship that wrenches tears from dry eyes (my eyes anyway) and sends the rush of energy up the spine. This spiritual vibration is one I can never predict, and no amount of planning can force. It’s worship with a capital “W.”

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox

★★★★

CERTAINLY THE MUSIC AND LITURGIES OF EUROPEAN NATIONAL orthodoxies-whether Byzantine. Russian, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Syrian or Coptic-are a prized part of spiritual treasure. This is church that assaults the right brain with ethereal other-worldiiness. Inside the new sanctuary of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in North Dallas, the eye moves upwards to vaulted ceilings where the lilt of a cappella singing reverberates with a full four-second echo. Up front under a vaulted niche, a screen of six icons conceals the holy of holies. The faithful talk to these icons and pray to them. In doing so they open channels to the Divine Presence.

I did not hear the choir, but a quartet of priests caroling pristine harmonies; leading them with a John Denver-like voice was the bearded, shamelessly handsome Father Jordan Brown. Ethereal as it was, after 100 minutes of standing, leg pain began to overtake my appreciation of the liturgy. My advice to visitors: wear comfortable shoes. Father Nick Kaunas’ homily brought blessed relief. Speaking eye-to-eye, without notes, he told of Constantinople, where huge churches lay crumbling because there are but 2,000 of the faithful remaining in the city. All churches are but one generation away from extinction. So Father voiced fear that parents are not sharing the pearl of liturgy and faith with their offspring.

Father Katinas is on to something, as I personally discovered. Jennifer, my delightful young assistant at D Magazine, told me she was bom into Holy Trinity. She rarely attends. To resource successful programs for youth I recommend Holy Trinity look beyond its own denomination. Certainly worth investigating is the Teen Life Program emanating from the church I top-rated in Phoenix: St. Timothy’s Roman Catholic Church in Mesa, Ariz.



Highland Park United Methodist Church

★★★

My entry into Highland Park United Methodist Church was bumpy. If there is a parking lot, 1 didn’t see it. That meant a search for a curbside spot. The policeman hired to direct traffic across from the church snapped at me when I asked him where to park. The guards in orange vests were inattentive and offered no help.

By 9:20 a.m. a crowd jammed the church’s small narthex for the morning’s second service. The first, 1 was told, had started at 8:30 and was not yet over. That’s pushing the time envelope too closely. Reports had it there was an information table for visitors in the vestibule. If so, I never got near enough to see it.

Once inside I found worship here advances several notches above standard Methodist fare. An acolyte with a processional cross leads the choir down the aisle. The congregation stands as clergy read the Gospel.

Pastor Mark Craig has a wonderful absent-minded professor quality that lends an energetic, conversational, working-this-problem-through-as-he-speaks quality to his pulpit delivery. I’d really like to discuss theology with him over a beer (or whatever it is Methodists drink in front of each other these days). However, his deep discount of non-Christain faiths shocked me. I thought his attitude atavistic, especially for a pastor serving a faith-pluralistic academic community.

St. Jude’s Chapel

★★St. Jude’s storefront chapel on Main Street is centrally located in the shadow of Neiman Marcus and the NationsBank Tower. Worshipers entera pleasant reception area with sales desk, information center, plus casual seating forgathering and conversation. Behind the glass an elegant grotto with seating in a U around the contemporary marble altar and reading desks awaits them. Mosaics on the wall suggest mystical visions. Priests gather here to do liturgy at 11:30 a.m, and 12:10 p.m. daily, timed for the convenience of nearby office workers.

I arrived at 12:10 to find the mass already jump-started. Fifteen minutes later it was history. No feeling here. This was liturgy at its worst. The priest might as well have been mumbling the phone book. His assistant sat outside chewing the breeze, apparently missing his entry cue. The receptionist at the information desk did not know the celebrants’ names. This team needs to get its act together. A McEucharist Drive-Thru would be an improvement.



Holy Trinity Roman Catholic

★★★　1/2

LOCATED IN TRENDY TURTLE CREEK, HOLY TRINITY CATHOLIC Church appears to be trying to break the mold of traditional Catholic parish mediocrity. Partially, but only partially, it has thus far been successful. For 90 years the parish has been run by the Vincentian fathers, rendering it more open to changing forms than parishes in diocesan hands.

Musically, Holy Trinity achieves high standards. Several volunteer choirs perform under the direction of organist, pianist and choirmaster Rick Owen.

Less successful has been the effort to start a Ministry of Hospitality. At Holy Trinity no greeters stood at portals the morning of my visit I found a recruitment brochure for the Hospitality Ministry in the vestibule. Perhaps participation is nil because requirements for service are unnecessarily fussy. Commitment is for a hefty three years.

Gay couples flanked me during mass. Though we exchanged peace greetings, afterwards they fled to seek out chatty cliques without so much as a glance backwards. Any parish whose constituency is as gay as Holy Trinity should minister to the special needs of these often-wounded faithful. Many Spanish-speaking people also attend Holy Trinity. In contrast, I saw masses and special program offerings for them.

Small groups are a sine qua non in today’s church. Catholic parishes have been slow to develop these, but someone at Holy Trinity understands their importance. A neighborhood network of house-based small groups has been established for members of the congregation who want to explore the Bible.

Will these sessions make [he Bible relevant to the everyday life of parishioners? Advertising literature stressed Vincentianality. Hate to say it, but that’s hardly a thing to race anyone’s motor, except another Vincentian!



The Hillcrest Church

★★★★★ONCE INSIDE THE HILLCREST Church, greeters met me, a staffed information table provided literature and more guidance, while television monitors at ceiling height pointed to locations of upcoming programs. Hillcrest is the most user-friendly church edifice I’ve yet seen.

Hillcrest was started a scant 13 years ago by veteran church planter-builder Morris Sheats. Knowing that he left a Baptist Church of 6,000 to start a church of 25 tells me either politics were afloat or he’s a man who can’t resist a challenge.

The man has avuncular charisma. I saw his aura and felt his love as he mounted the dais for his early Sunday morning service.

Standing before a Jackson Pollock-style rererdos, Sheats spoke a word of knowledge about people moving into new employment. He asked them to come forward for prayer. Several people did. I wept. If these people were guests, Sheats had made friends for life. If they were members, he surely sealed minister-laity bonds with them.

Sheats’ exemplary character emerged as he repeatedly emphasized in his sermon the importance of gracious nonjudgmentalism of others: of the “’pagan,” a good man who took him to lunch, of Roman Catholics he had just met with in the Vatican, of Pentecostal colleagues whose methods of reaching the lost are “all good.”

He explained that in crafting Hillcrest’s many small groups he has encouraged use of hours that will allow people to attend other churches. I thought this open spirit extraordinary and exemplary.

Among the most unusual of its offerings is the celebration of the “eucharist.” Vestments and equipment for this liturgy are kept in a “sacristy.” This is high church language, rarely found in Protestant churches-never, save this special place-in evangelical churches. Why? My guess is that in targeting “mainline dropouts,” Sheats gets many former Catholics. They love the liturgy, but have problems with the Church.

Here they find a church they can love, one that, in turn, will love them. Here also they can find the liturgy they love. ’To the Greeks, I was as a Greek. To the Jews, I was as a Jew. I have done all these things that 1 might share the Gospel of Christ.” So wrote the apostle Paul. Few churches have the flexibility to act on this principle. Under Morris Sheats’ leadership, Hillcrest does. Church shoppers, take note.

Dallas Central Mosque, Richardson ★ ★ ★

The copper-topped minaret glistens in the North Dallas sun, but from it one does not hear, alas, the cry of the mullah.

Mosque worship is difficult for Westerners to grasp. Some say this is the fastest-growing sector of American spirituality. If this is so, the growth must be from immigrant stock-first generation Middle Easterners coming to American soil, those who are accustomed to Muslim manners.

Muslims have much to learn from architects designing user-friendly megachurches with their entry atriums and information desks. Here portals are foreboding, not welcoming, to guests.

Half an hour before the announced starting time the imam Jusef Kazakci led a class. The week of my visit he discussed simah, the light of the heart that flows out and influences the world. Goodness begets goodness; evil, the opposite. The message is universal, though the language is Arabic. The admixture of the two tongues challenged my powers of concentration. Throughout this time, men continued to enter the mosque. At length they packed the hall tightly. They listened courteously, but did not laugh, nod in agreement or disagreement. I wondered if they were listening, praying or simply gathering wool.

Call to prayer is over the mosque’s amplification system. The imam’s nasal voice lacks vibrato. There is no reverberation in the carpeted hall, and the volume is almost painfully loud.

Osama Abdullah, chairman of the mosque, delivered the chopah (sermon). He told us that he would depart from his prepared comments for the morning because three people connected with the mosque just died. Though he spoke with animation, I had a hard time following his comments. Whether the presenter is a priest, a minister, a rabbi or the chairman of a mosque, impromptu addresses have a way of wandering. I lost 10 minutes of the sermon. Soon it was over.

The last mosque I attended, laity and clergy alike spotted me as a visitor, accommodated my needs and rushed toexplain things after the service. Here I found men civil, their smiles warm, but there was no handle with which to bond. Were I a woman, I would have been turned off and probably been hostile at the treatment the mosque imposed and the segregation of the sexes.

In another decade we may expect mosques to change as Muslims integrate into American society. I hope also thai cities will welcome the cry of the imam throughout the day as he calls the faithful to prayer from the minaret tower. Though this mosque forgoes the traditional call to prayer in deference to the neighborhood, as with church bells, so with the cry of the mullah. The two go hand in hand as celebrations of our religious pluralism.

Until then, this handsome mosque needs trained greeters and an information center in the entry.

Preston Road Church of Christ

★★

A FRIEND AND I ATTENDED THE CHAPEL OF THE PrESton Road Church of Christ for the 8:00 Sunday morning service. The building is handsome, not out of place in its upscale University Park setting.

No usher greeted us. In the pews we found no bulletin, no hymnals. Insiders knew they were to pick up a hymnbook and bulletin. We didn’t. So there we sat while others sang. The man who sat nearest us noticed but stared coldly at us as we struggled to sing suns hymnals.

Then a pretty young woman took a seat in the pew in front us. Suddenly he was all smiles and rushed to offer her his hymnal. Had the man given us the same attention, his deference to the woman would have been just one more sign of his friendly. Christian heart. But that’s not what it looked like.

The topic of the morning’s sermon was adultery, delivered by thirty something pastor Scott Sager. The homily lacked subtlety and sensitivity. Sager reduced adultery to the clash of plumbing, then ran a black-and-white, right-and-wrong gloss. He needed to rethink his subject matter in light of life’s realities.

Churches of Christ eschew accompaniment when singing, a penchant they share with conservative Jewry and Hutterians. They carry us back to an age before pipe organs as they sing a capella in angelic, four-part harmony. The congregation sang as might the best-practiced choir, in perfect ensemble and pitch.

Just at the end of the Preston Road service, a man I took to be another of the church’s pastors bobbed in. He urged his congregation to welcome strangers. No one-not one single person–heeded his words. Were I a Dallasite. this first visit to Preston Road would also be my last.



Charismatic Catholics:

The Christian Community of God’s Delight

★ ★ ★ ★

OUIDA BOYD TOLD ME WHY IT’S EASY TO LOVE THESE FOLKS. EVEN though she’s Catholic, she sings. Not only that, she sings with joyful abandon. Even though she’s Catholic, she acknowledges the people around her. Even though she’s Catholic, she talks to strangers after the service. She welcomes them. She bids them return. Even though she’s Catholic, she hugs and allows others to hug her.

The charismatic Catholics of Dallas, formally known as The Christian Community of God’s Delight, say “yes” to those radical practices.

They come together Sunday afternoons from around Dallas/Fort Worth for prayer and praise, not for mass. They receive that in home parishes Sunday morning.The joyful spirit of the sawdust trail that infuses Jewry at Baruch Ha Shem infuses Catholic celebration here. The repertoire is much the same: Integrity, Hosanna, Maranatha, Word.

One man gave an extended testimony, detailing (perhaps too much so) his life trials. It seemed to me he was still on the battle-field and optimistic, though no victory was in sight. The people prayed for healings-for George and Marianne, for Sister Euphrasia and Martha, for the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Crusillo on Glory Hill. Chris Cavenaugh, on electric guitar, led the 10-mem-ber musical ensemble.

Outside the afternoon sun warmed the yard in front of the convent chapel. There we discovered Ouida has a canine counterpart when Ebony, the convent’s Labrador Retriever, brought a Bible and lovingly laid it, slobber and all, at our feet. All this warmth and enthusiasm, even though they’re Catholic. Praise the Lord!



Fellowship Of Las Colinas

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

FROM THE MOMENT A GUEST PULLS INTO THE PARKING LOT TO THE moment she leaves, her experiences at the Fellowship of Las Colinas will be unique. A team of greeters helps her find a parking place. They welcome her, answer questions and direct her to the Worship Center or Bible Alive class. The anxiety and frustration of entry to a strange place (which in acute instances might have led our guest to pass on by), does not exist here. A delegation from Holy Trinity Catholic Church ought to visit this place.

FOLC is a success story built around a better mouse trap. Actually the mouse trap had its origins in the imaginative and highly successful worship of Chicago’s Willow Creek Church. There, as at FOLC, a “worship team” communicates the Gospel exclusively in forms drawn from contemporary culture.

The music rocks, drama and video clips communicate the Gospel, sermons speak of real-life problems of the suburban families Pastor Ed Young Jr. targets. Saturday evening and three times Sunday mornings he fills the MacArthur High School auditorium.

I caught part of “State of the Union,” a series of “messages” targeting pathology in contemporary marriage. No snoozer “homilies” here. In this pulpit one does not hear blabber about the Hittites or the mysteries of the incarnation; no arguments about Disney movies, consubstantiation in the Lutheran eucharist, or fights about who led in the Edenic Fall. Instead catch these user-friendly titles: “The Real Deal: World Champion Marriages,” “Recipe for Romance: Sex that Sizzles,” “Checkmate$: Financial Harmony,” “Sunny and Share: Real World Stories.”

I took a friend and heard Ed discuss “Reconcilable Differences: Conflict and Communication.” My friend’s marriage is bumpy, but in his home church he has yet to hear a sermon about marriage problems; never a word on fixing them.

Young plays down his connection to the Southern Baptist Convention-as he should! Denominational names intimidate the unchurched. Moreover, FOLC is so different from most Southern Baptist churches,with their altar calls and squabbles over doctrine, who needs them? Not I; not the unchurched, either.



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Two thousand smartly dressed people packed the lower third of the auditorium. The bulk of them were black women charged with juices of hysteria. Jukes ’ music machines revved past the pain threshold.

Three-hundred-fifty bullish pounds of snorting testosterone, Jakes is to the art of preaching as Itzhak Perleman is to the art of playing the violin. The man preaches robust, confident sermons without crutch of notes. One minute he whispers in pianissimo. In the next he’s raging in five “f” fortissimo. He paces. He laughs. He interjects glossolalia. His metaphors arrest the imagination. There’s never a wasted word, never a hackneyed repetition. To pack so much meaty content into a sermon, most clergy would have to labor a manuscript for days. In contrast, the treasure cascades from Jakes’ lips in exhilarating torrent.

In short, the man is one fantastic preacher-certainly one of the best I ’ve ever heard. If he can woo drug dealers and prostitutes off back alleys, the more power to him. No bureaucratic government program will do as well because bureaucracy can’t move the heart.



Word Of Faith

★

SPIRITUAL POPULARITY ON THE SAWDUST TRAIL CAN BE FICKLE. Consider the case of Word of Faith Family Ministries. Once the ministry’s TV razzle-dazzle superstar, Elmer Gantry, aka Bob Tilton, ended up the subject of an investigative report on “Prime-Time Live,” the faithful started jumping ship. These days the ministry is in what leaders term “restoration.” There’s talk of healing and a new television ministry. Not even the church staff seems to know when Tilton will appear. About once a month he touches down in Dallas, the rest of the time leaving Pastor Bob Wright to rebuild the crowds. It’s not working. The parking lot had only 20 cars, and no more than 50 people were inside.

Pastor Bob’s sermon was sincere, but all stream of consciousness and lots of shouting. Through the wandering abstractions, the point was clear (one probably well-massaged in this sanctuary since scandal began plaguing Word of Faith): When you hear something negative about a person, stick with him. Turn your back on the embattled, and God will stand with the one you have scorned.

After calling the thin remnant of the congregation up to the front to hold hands and fee! the touch of Jesus, Wright shifted the focus to the greenback bottom line. “Hold that money high in your right hand. Come right here down front to deposit it.” Whatever the amount of the gift, under that kind of pressure, it was hardly voluntary.

Both the audience in attendance and the parking lot had the look of marginality. The donations probably did not cover the light bill for the night, let alone a restoration of ihe beleaguered church. My guess is that the Big Executive has already canceled the show.