The Luxury of 400 Churchladies

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 19 November 2004 21:14:06

I was expecting 300, but there were almost 400 women at the luxury golfing/white beach resort.

Now that is the kind of place to hold a spiritual event, IMO! Beauty and outrageously good food everywhere you turn.

There were 22 of us assembled on a bright cool (for here) Friday morning, ready for the trip. We wore matching grey-heather T-shirts that said "Jesus Keeps Me Singing" on the front and the church name on the back.

I felt odd wearing it when I no longer worship there -- but I'd only recently switched congregations, and I was traveling in a van-caravan with my old friends. So you dance with the one that brung you.

We were in for that night, all day Saturday (except for some time on our own the afternoon -- others shopped, I looked for the spa...), and Sunday through worship time. 400 women together, with (mostly) Jesus on their minds.

We were expected to deliver a cheer at the roll-call that evening (the drive took about 9 hours, what with stopping for lunch at a real pig-out of a buffet and all).

Have you seen or participated in the traditionally Black sorority/fraternity sessions, where groups vie to out-do each other and one-up each other with the excellence of their cheering chants, dancing, etc? The feel of the evening was a little bit like that. An icebreaker, you know, to give the ladies a chance to get familiar with the congregations represented.

The host congregation (for 21 years now) always sets up a special event. Special speakers, luxurious surroundings at a great price because of our numbers, time for reflection and fellowship and -- oooooh -- shopping! Their appointed cheerleaders called us out by congregations and worked each group into a call-and-response sort of cheer. You could see right away who were the shy types and who were the hams! (Guess which I am!)

Each church was to submit/perform its own cheer. Everyone did such a nice job. Some were more musical, some more chanted. Some were cheerful, some deadly serious. (Well, it was a churchlady event! Can Hellfire and Brimstone ever be far from our minds?)

As for our little group -- we never have it together enough to do some great, organized, smooth thing at these events. If it's a skit, we ad-lib. If it's a song, we try to do something gimmicky to make up for our nice-but-not-exalted voices. (We still have people asking us for an encore of a Vacation Bible School song with hand motions we did years ago.)

In this case, there wasn't anything set up ahead of time. So we made up the cheer in the van on the way.

I took the "verses", since that way I'd be the only one with something to memorize. The "chorus" simply required stomping of feet and clapping of hands and a repeated simple refrain... so all the other women in all the other vehicles weren't too horrified to be informed at the rest stop in Mississippi that they were to perform that evening in Sandestin.

You know Queen's "We Will Rock You"? I shamelessly stole that beat, and used the lyrics as a framework for the "cheer". (Well, one of the ladies' son had suggested the possibility. He heard what she was going to do as a back-up if we didn't come up with something fun, and he asked her, "What are you trying to do? Bore them to death?")

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The lights were dim, evening-dining dim, candlelight dim. 400 women sat at tables of a dozen, filling the elegantly decorated ballroom. Some of us had come in tour buses, most from other states, to the Florida resort.

The women came up onstage church-by-church, delivering their well-thought-out cheers. Some were in simple costumes, most in matching shirts at least. Almost all there were African-American, except for my group. (Whatever other odd things there are about us, one beautiful thing is the way we are "mixed" -- united around the Lord, all colors and ethnicities of us.)

Folks identified their churches and cheered mini-sermons and admonished and encouraged, and it was lovely. Beautifully sung out, or rhythmically chanted, often choreographed. Beautiful work.

Then it was our turn.

Some of our group were too shy to get up on the stage. I dunno why not -- we were all so cute, in our matching shirts and jeans! And we had little plastic cheerleader pom-poms in every possible color. Hee.

Anyway, most of the girls lined up across the stage behind me. Shannon let out her perfect piercing whistle. We began the rhythm... stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap... The 400 churchwomen took it up and began to rock the room...

I was to sing the words, but to put them out clearly over the sound system in that ringing cheering room, I had to chant them -- my goodness, I thought, I sound like a rapper!

"Ladies we are here / in this great place
Rest a little while / share some love with the girls today
Then we'll hold out our hand / to our fellow man
Next week! 'Cause here we allow no men --"

And the room rang with "We will, we will praise Him! We will, we will praise Him!"

There were a couple of verses -- me leaning into the mic and trying very hard to enunciate -- pointing out different ladies I knew, involving them -- the whole audience on their 800 feet, waving, singing the chorus back at us, throwing linen dinner napkins into the air...

"Standin' in His grace / Seekin' for His face
'Cause the Shepherd came to die for the human race...
We will, we will praise Him! Praise Him! We will, we will praise Him! Praise Him!"

Ah, it was wonderful. Nothing quite like a pep rally for God.

I got two record offers out of it.