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Posted on Wed, Apr 20, 2011 : 5:30 a.m.

Chocolate chip pancakes and electric guitars for Easter

By Darcy Crain-Polly

choc chip pancakes.jpg

Photo by Joyful Abode

Imagine your Easter for a moment. If you come from a Christian background, you may think of church. In fact it may be one of the few times you attend church that year.

You can smell lilies and anticipate Easter brunch. You see little girls in white shoes and pastel dresses and little boys who pull at their ties and dress shirts. Kids of all ages are hyped up on jelly beans and chocolate bunnies, and parents are a little sleep deprived from the hectic morning.

This Easter, I invite you to expand your vision, just a bit, so that your Easter imagination leaves room for chocolate chip pancakes and electric guitars.

I serve an Ann Arbor church that offers both traditional and contemporary services. On Easter, you can hear the organ and a brass quartet, go upstairs for a breakfast break of (you guessed it) chocolate chip pancakes, and then hear the sounds of an electric guitar and drum set wafting through high cathedral ceilings.

This Easter, the sounds of electric guitar will feature the familiar music of Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical that examines the life and death of Jesus. One of the joys of Easter is that it is one of the few Sundays that all those who gather for worship will be hearing the same message, whether accompanied by organ or guitar. It’s a message of hope and new life, and after a lingering winter and long year; it may be just what we need to hear.

Whatever you may be accustomed to in your own Easter traditions, I invite you to expand your imaginations this year to include the unpredictable and the non-traditional. You never know when chocolate chip pancakes and electric guitars may deliver a message of new life.

Darcy Crain-Polly is the Associate Minister at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. She can be reached directly via email here.

Comments

Dog Guy

Wed, Apr 20, 2011 : 3:05 p.m.

Some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there Alexander Pope