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“Empathy is more powerful than possibility… It comes from inside rather than outside. When we act from the inside, we act out of love and not obligation.” On the second Sunday of Advent, more than 300 people who gathered that evening at Christ Episcopal Church in Bowling Green received an early gift, created to revolutionize them – and their habits of giving.
Many, possibly most, present were not members of Christ Church, the only Episcopal parish in the western Kentucky community. They came to attend a U2charist, for some their first Eucharistic service, that they had heard about from family members, friends and pastors or had read about that week in the local newspaper.
View more photos by Don Vish
The Dec. 10 service was crafted by youth and their adult leaders from Christ Church, Broadway United Methodist and Parker Bennett 
Before the service began, the 240 chairs set up in the parish hall were filled and its walls were lined with young and old. Remarkably, all silently were absorbed in the banners, art, music and a digital media presentation created and carefully choreographed to communicate their message—visually and viscerally—that global suffering is immense, relentless and avoidable.
A video featuring the endorsements of celebrities of all sorts – Sting, Michael Douglas, and Lenny Kravitz among them – educated the worshippers about world needs. Covering each of the MDGs, their messages varied about why one should join the campaign. “I want kids to have a childhood,” Alyssa Milano said in her segment. “We need the empowerment of women. They are the backbone of society,” Jane Goodall said. “Every three seconds a child dies from an avoidable cause,” Shakira pointed out.
Bono directly urged Americans to join the campaign. “When I was a boy, my first impression of America was a man walking on the moon, Neil Armstrong, in 1969. I thought, these Americans are mad. What can these people do when they put their minds to it? They are incredible,” said Bono. “…We have the technology, resources, know how to end extreme poverty…. We are going to make poverty history. We’re going to say, it’s not ok to have a child die for lack of a 20-cent vaccination.”
The Bowling Green youths and their leaders also projected their own digital statement of belief, each delivering a segment, asking the congregation to join with them in this campaign. All the while snapping fingers could be heard every three seconds. “This is a revolution, and we are the revolutionaries,” they said. Around the room, brightly colored paintings, all made by the youths, identified the MDG goals. “Bowling Green – are you up for a challenge?” the youth asked.
The genesis for the service occurred a couple of months earlier when the Rev. Jim Quigley, Christ Church’s associate rector, met with youth leaders at the Parker Bennett Community Center and the Rev. Ben Kickert, the youth minister at Broadway Methodist. Quigley said he and Kickert both approached, independently, the community center’s youth program organizers about the same time because they wanted to give the youth at their churches an opportunity to work with youth from other areas. The idea of holding a joint U2charist came out of that meeting.
The organizers and youth met for the first of several Wednesday nights in early November at the Parker Bennett Community Center to begin planning the program and the music, art, poetry and spoken word performance pieces that will needed. Explaining what a U2charist was and its purpose, Quigley told the youth that they were being asked to help with it because they have “something important to say to the community” about poverty (“Guess who is most affected by poverty? Kids,” he told them) and to the church (“At God’s dinner table, everybody’s got an invitation but not everybody’s able to come”). Although its purpose is serious, he noted, a U2charist is unlike a traditional worship service. “Instead of old hymns and things like that, the U2charist has poetry and music blasting and pictures projected on the ceiling and art banners going around. All of those things coming together so we can feed hungry people in the world. That’s what we’re setting out to do. All of you will participate in the service, and we’ll just blow people away.”
The basic structure for the opening media presentation came out of that first Wednesday evening work session. As Austin Lyons, one of Christ Church’s youth members, explained the plan, the media presentation was organized around a “a sequence of snaps every three seconds” with pictures in the lulls to make meaningful the statistic that every 15 minutes 300 children die. The media presentation was followed by the processional, led by drummers and art banners announcing the Good News and their purpose “to make poverty history.” Along with scripture, the service used technology and original spoken word compositions and music.
The homily, delivered by local poet Bonnie McDonald, pulled all the pieces together. Confessing that the assignment to give the sermon 
“U2’s campaign is not about patting ourselves on the back for work we should have already done….” she explained. “There are lives at stake…. We are obligated to work on ending the suffering in the world.”
Cultivating empathy in ourselves and others, she said, is key to seeing what is going on around the world and acting on this awareness. “Empathy makes fear irrelevant” and is our “godliest emotion,” she said, because it allows us no choice but to acknowledge another’s “whole personness” when “we look in the eyes of someone who is suffering and see ourselves.” She also said that “empathy is more powerful than possibility” because “it comes from inside rather than outside” and “when we act from the inside, we act out of love and not obligation.”
Cultivating empathy was also at the heart of the service and the ONE campaign, a grass roots movement of Americans united to make poverty history. Empathy, McDonald said, “is about opening ourselves up to feel the plight of our brothers and sisters, down the street and around the world. … Tonight you saw images, heard poetry and music so you would see and understand what is happening and would be compelled to act.”
The ONE campaign, she pointed out, shows that we don’t have to move to other countries and risk our lives to help oppressed peoples. We can simply be “more conscientious consumers” and become aware of the effect of our actions in the world. “Americans have some of the most destructive and draining practices…. If everyone lives like we do, we would need about seven and half earths’ worth of materials to meet our daily energy and resource demands”
We also need to become aware of the harmful practices of corporations and governments and act accordingly, she said. She outlined, for example, corporations that are inhibiting research that could help prevent illness, destroying sacred lands and native populations for the sake of profits, exploiting a nation’s workers and controlling their economies. “We can choose who we do and don’t buy from, donate to, and socially support, and it can make a big difference. We must educate ourselves about how our daily decisions impact the earth…. What we eat, how often we drive our cars…. We are ultimately responsible if we don’t, and if we don’t respond. We need to hold each other accountable.”
Quigley’s prediction that the service would blow the people away came true, judging by their reactions afterwards and by the offering of more than $7,000 collected for The Hunger Project.
Two first time visitors to Christ Church indicated before the service that they had come with high expectations. Diane Carter, a member of Broadway United Methodist, said she had never been to a U2charist before but she totally supports its goals because it “stands for a lot of good things” and “can change a lot, if people come together.” Her daughter, Dylan, a middle school student, said this was also a “brand new experience” for her but she, like her mom, expected “to see great things come from this.” They were not disappointed by what they saw and heard, they said afterwards.
The Rev. Howard Surface, who retired as rector of Christ Church and is a member, came away praising the service. “I expected a very inspirational service, and knowing a lot of these kids around here that Jim is working with, I thought it would be a little different from the average Episcopal service,” he said. “It was very good.” A priest for 55 years, Surface said he was reminded of the jazz and folk masses held 20 to 30 years ago. They, like the U2charist, he said, were very meaningful at their time.
Herb and Cathy Meister, members of St. Luke’s Church, Anchorage, who were in Bowling Green for a Cursillo Ultreya, likewise said they were glad they stayed for the service. Noting that Dec. 10 was his birthday, Herb simply said about it afterwards: “What a way to spend your birthday.”
Held at the beginning of the Advent season, the U2charist anticipated the Good News of another worship service, Christ’s mass, and the small group of energetic and creative youth delivered a huge gift: the lesson that that how we live in this world matters to them – and should matter to us – and that with empathy, our voices and dedication to giving a small percentage of our resources to programs in this campaign, when combined with others’ voices and resources, we should have what we need to achieve big goals – because “there are lives at stake.”
[Editor’s Note: The U2charist was filmed by two members of Christ Church who are professional filmmakers. One of the event’s organizers said the film will eventually be posted on a Web site. We will publish the details about the film’s release when the information is available.]
