humc is weezer
(and that's not an altogether good/bad thing)


once upon a time, there was a band called weezer. in 1994 (my junior year of high school), weezer burst onto the scene with their self-titled album and their hit single, "undone - the sweater song". weezer was unique in the midst of the angst-y, self-important early nineties for several reasons. they didn't look like rock stars, in so many words. rivers cuomo and his thick-rimmed glasses looked like fifty guys that i would walk past in the hallway at school. when they played music and made music videos, they looked out and into the crowd and the camera versus staring at their shoes like so many of the scene grunge bands of that era. their songs had an edge to them, but they were poppy as all get out, immediately accessible and fun. cuomo's lyrics were incredibly self-deprecating (and still are), removing the pretense from whatever criticism they would inevitably receive from "making it". on the strength of "...the sweater song", "buddy holly", and "say it ain't so", weezer (the blue album, to fans) went multi-platinum and weezer was everywhere.

a couple years later, weezer would follow the blue album with their masterpiece, pinkerton. not nearly as accessible as their debut, pinkerton found cuomo at his dark and witty best. the songs took several listens to conjure up the same magic as their previous effort, but, once ingrained, you couldn't let them go. pinkerton, to this day, remains one of my top ten favorite records ever, and i can't imagine enough records coming out and into my "old dog" consciousness to knock it from that perch.

a funny thing happened to weezer, though, after pinkerton failed to make their record label mounds of cash. commercial success pulled cuomo in directions he was obviously uncomfortable moving, and his band was asked to change. over the last ten-plus years, weezer has spent record after record trying to recapture the mythical glory that was their early years. over the course of their last four or five records, the band finds itself in an unenviable place. they are a cover band, a weezer cover band that has spent the last several months on tour for two nights in each city they've visited, one night playing the blue album on the whole, the next night the same with pinkerton. don't get me wrong, as a fan that has written off five of their last six albums as "totally not pinkerton" (i gave maladroit an good, honest shot. still don't like it.), i would've loved going to one of these doubleheaders. but, in the end, i would've been sad for a band that i once loved whose "adoring" public had refused to let them move forward and mature into something more than that band that makes me feel better about being a teenager/college student.

as i sat around yesterday thinking about weezer, i started wondering and worrying about the place that my church currently finds herself in.

for years now, probably since before i came on staff in 1999, our congregation and her leaders and her pastors have been busy, maybe/maybe not intentionally, repackaging what was our blue album. in the late 80's and early 90's, we wrote a figurative album that many, many people found accessible and enjoyable and relevant.

nowadays, we are still very relevant to the majority of the group that has stuck around through thick and thin, but we can't quite figure out a path to our future. i wish on most days that we could forget about our past, stop talking about being 140 years old, and just pretend that we happened upon 200 or so nice people in the middle of huffman that were interested in establishing a united methodist church in the middle of a community that could use some tender love and care. having said that, i realize that wouldn't be fair. you can't ask people that have been around the church for way longer than my 30 years served to forget about our history and tradition any more than you could ask weezer to erase the blue album and pinkerton from their catalog. we will always carry that part of our identity with us.

the question remains, what good is it to us now? it is just a cause for celebration, that we've been able to survive for 140 years, or somewhere buried in all those years can we excavate and discern a map that points us toward 2100 a.d.?

our long range planning committee resumes its work this coming sunday, out from underneath the constraints of natural church development for the first time in months. here's hoping we can renew our energy and focus from this time last year and help create a vision that will energize our congregation to become something we didn't know we could be.

if we can't, i worry our 140th anniversary celebration in october will feel less like a party and more like a viewing, full of characters from our past gathered to pay their final respects to an old friend.

#whatwouldjesusdo