My family and I have a trip to Puerto Vallarta planned in just a few days, leaving on July 27. We noted on the travel.state.gov site that air travel to Mexico temporarily doesn't require a passport, only proof that we have applied for same. We also noted that it is currently taking 7–10 days from the time of application for proof to show up in the system that the application is in process.
With all of this in mind, we applied for our passports at our local post office on July 7. We sent the two renewals (Vanessa's and mine) and two first-time applications (the kids') via USPS Priority with all of the appropriate contents. And then, the waiting game began.
The travel.state.gov website has a tool one can use, when it's actually working, to check the status of one's passport application. It is the printed copy of that status page that allows one to travel to Mexico via air without a physical passport. I would check the status page for all four of us every morning and every evening. Eventually, Vanessa and the kids showed up in the system... but I never did. I thought about calling the emergency appointment hotline, but the website said not to unless I were traveling within 48–72 hours.
By the time last Friday (July 20) rolled around, I wasn't interested in counting the number of hours until my flight departed to Puerto Vallarta without me. I had less than a week to get in the system, and a healthy dose of skepticism that the passport agency HADN'T just lost all of my information. I called the hotline to make an appointment... but the system was too busy to take my call. The automated system was too busy, not that they didn't have enough operators or whatever. I envisioned a computer smoking somewhere, heavy-laden with the hundreds of thousands of calls it must be trying to handle.
By yesterday (July 23), I was in full panic mode. I had sent a half-dozen emails from the website asking for status; not one had been answered, much less acknowledged. The appointment line was unusable, always too busy to accept applications. The mouth-breather on the other end of the status phone number simply read the website results to me and sent off an email inquiring about my status, much as I had been doing a handful of times daily for a week. All of a sudden, I was seeing (timely!) articles on CNN about how the Department of State has screwed up so many honeymoon plans, vacations, etc. by turning a six-week passport application process into a three-month nightmare.
Sick with worry, I spilled my guts to friends and coworkers. Ron had a great idea that had worked for a couple of friends: why don't I contact my representative and see what they could do? The thought hadn't even occurred to me, largely because I see politicians as the source of all governmental problems, not their solution. But I called Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R, CA 22nd District) at his Bakersfield office and spoke to Whitney. She assured me that they deal with passport issues "on a daily basis". She took my information and told me that they would take it from there.
Today, I finally got through to the emergency appointment line. (I was still skeptical that my congressman would give a rat's behind about my problem, and wanted to set up an appointment as a contingency plan, if nothing else.) I finally found the ONE appointment that was available between now and Friday... at which point, Verizon dropped my call. When I called back, the one appointment was gone.
I found that there's something beyond full panic mode. I don't know what to call it, but I was nearly in tears, frustrated at the thought of not being able to go on vacation with my family because of some idiotic, incompetent government office. I started looking at the possibility of driving to Puerto Vallarta, which would have made for a miserable time. I wanted to scream at someone, but no one at the passport office would answer their phone (probably wisely so).
And then, my angel of light called. Whitney just wanted to let me know that they had everything squared away with my passport, that it would be overnighted to me today and that I'd have it tomorrow. Just like that.
So what's the moral of the story? I could rail against the State Department for making it so freaking difficult to get a passport, or for implementing ridiculous policies without (apparently) analyzing their impact, or for putting absurd statements on their website (why should I wait until my travel date is 2–3 days out to make an appointment if it will take me that long to even get through, only to find out that the next appointment is a week or two away?!), or for having a wretched website that is somewhere between completely broken and ill-conceived (who has a contact form that doesn't acknowledge the sending of an email?!). I could recognize that we could have applied for our passports much earlier and (theoretically) avoided much of this mess. (Never mind that there's no guarantee we'd be in the system if we had applied a MONTH earlier.) I could lament the fact that, as always, in government, the squeaky wheel gets the grease; I complained to my congressman, and I got results.
But I'd rather focus on the good things. Ron, thank you for a great suggestion. Whitney, thank you for listening to my problem and resolving it so quickly and with such care. And Rep. McCarthy, you have my vote the next time you're on the ballot... that is, if I vote. :-P
Irony: responding to a spammy urban legend email (about Islam) with, "We need to be guided by reason and rationality rather than blind faith..."
A number of the comments from my last post focused, basically, on the struggle between church and culture. Even more central than that (at least, in my original thoughts) is the attitude of a worship leader. Is it wrong to expect excellence out of worship, potentially at the cost of "the worship experience"? To elaborate, when worship music is half-heartedly executed, I get TERRIBLY distracted, especially when I'm up there leading. Like Steve, it's all I can do to play, sing and actually worship while I'm up there. One distraction and I'm derailed from one of the three, and worship is always the one on which my grasp is most tenuous, the easiest from which I can slip.
I have been told that I should just relax, that the participation of the congregation should be my focus, not the music. I'm glad the congregation enjoys the music, but I have a hard time being satisfied when things go wrong. It's almost as if we're not called to excellence but to a weird, holy game of "the end justifies the means". Who cares if the music was really off this week -- the people loved it!
This issue is the one that has caused me to question whether I'm really cut out for being a worship leader. I find myself caring very deeply what the music sounds like. I want to stretch and try more difficult songs. I want to stretch the congregation and not just allow them to sit in the pews week after week, putting in their time. It doesn't seem like those desires must be contradictory to the desires of a "true" worship leader, but time and again I'm unsatisfied with things with which others say I, as a worship leader, shouldn't be unsatisfied.
Some salient quotes, and my own points of struggle:
The good news, I guess, is that I'm about to have plenty of time to reflect and think about it... which is probably something I should have done a bit more before opening my big mouth and blurting out that I'd love to be the worship leader. :-P
After nearly two VERY interesting years, Vanessa and I are stepping down as worship leaders for our church. I'd love to say that we are leaving the post in better shape than when we inherited it, but I seem to remember something in the Bible about lying.
I find myself with more questions than when I started. Back in the fall of 2005, Vanessa was asked to take responsibility for the worship team for six weeks while the interim leader took a break. We had both been a part of the worship team for a while, whether singing (both of us) or playing guitar (just her). So when we had a chance to take a shot at the service, it was a pretty exciting and natural thing for us to do.
It seems like much more than two years ago when we sat in a room with the elders and I said, "I feel like this is what God MADE me to do." A worship team member (drummer) left because we chose to buy a new drum set, rather than using the starter drum kit he brought in. Another worship team member (drummer; what the heck?) left because... well, we STILL don't know why; after telling us that he was leaving, he and his family stopped answering/returning phone calls. A Sunday morning service of 60 English speakers grew into a service of 80 bilingual members, which split into a Spanish service of 30 and an English service of 50. For the past four months or so, the numbers have been pretty steadily declining, as has the bank account and overall fervor in the congregation. A few families and individuals will staunchly refuse to come to our bilingual services; there's always an excuse, but it's because they don't like "those people". Nearly every member of the service has a specific complaint against one or more of the leaders — they were slighted, they were hurt, they were ignored, whatever.
Through all of this, and especially since January (when we began leading worship in the Spanish service), our kids have been fish out of water. They are in a pure Spanish worship service without knowing any Spanish, unable to understand the songs, sermon and prayers. Vanessa and I have been fish out of water as well; spoken Spanish doesn't come easily for either of us. Nor do we fit into the Hispanic culture terribly well, as we both tend to be fairly introverted, as well as very direct in speech and action. We've been leading songs to which we have trouble worshiping; I can count, on one hand, the number of times I've been lost in worship over the last six months. (By comparison, worshiping only in English on Sunday mornings, prior to September 2006 [when we moved to a bilingual service], was so incredibly easy. It was easy to get back into that English worship, as well, while we were at Spirit West Coast.)
This is not to say the past months have been lost. I've been stretched, both musically and spiritually, in ways unimaginable to me two years ago. I've had such a wonderful time playing music, and have discovered that I really, really love it. (Besides which, I'm actually pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. :-) If nothing else, I have learned a lot about leading worship.
It was at the aforementioned Spirit West Coast that I first had the thought: "I'm not sure I'm really meant to BE a worship leader." I've learned that there's a difference between playing worship songs, worshiping and actually LEADING a congregation in worship. Reading through an issue of "Worship Musician" magazine, reading that excellence and progressive music sometimes takes a back seat to ministering to the congregation, I realized that maybe I'm in the wrong "business". We struggled for so long to make the music at the church culturally relevant — "struggled" because the people reared and bucked at the change, rather than embracing it as Vanessa and I so easily did. Now, I'm reading that the purpose of worship leaders is not to be culturally relevant so much as it is to be relevant to the congregation they're leading.
I'll be honest about two things: I think that statement stinks, and I think I may not be a good fit for that type of responsibility. That statement stinks because I think worship leaders are uniquely positioned to advance the church's relevance in their community, even while leading the church in worship that might include "oldies but goodies". As for the second part, assuming the statement is correct, I think my attitude is not necessarily one of a worship leader. Not that there's anything wrong with that: not everyone is called to be a worship leader. But reading that was sort of a 2x4 between the eyes as I thought, "Am I really in the right place?" Not just at our current church, but leading worship at all.
I don't know, though. The last little while has been so trying and the church has been so unresponsive (DEAD, really); I'd hate to evaluate things when I'm feeling so tired and sick of trying to lead permanently disgrunted people. I've also never really had an active worship leader under whom I could learn the ropes. Instead, I've made every mistake humanly possible all along the way — miscommunications, frustrations, poor choices, you name it. (Although let's be honest: I'm stubborn enough that I probably would have made all of those mistakes anyway.)
For now, all I know is that we're no longer the worship leaders as of July 22 (though I prefer to think of it as a hiatus). We're going out with a bang, though; July 21 is an outdoor, outreach concert in which we will be playing songs by Kutless, Jars of Clay, Jeremy Camp, Jessie Daniels and more. It's been a ball just rehearsing for that, and has really encouraged me to continue playing, even if we're not leading worship. After that... who knows where we'll be or what we'll be doing. I really hope, though, that this isn't the end of the music story; maybe it's just the end to a chapter and the next chapter will start later.