Swingin' with the Lord

Part nightclub and part Bible study, the Sunday morning jazz service at Minnetonka United Methodist Church is all about tapping toes and saving souls.

The service, begun last fall, is conducted cabaret-style: Worshipers sit around tables and sip coffee while the Rev. Ken Ehrman wends his way through the crowd like a lounge singer.

"Let me tell you our ground rules," he announces to worshipers, 20 percent of whom on an average Sunday are first-time visitors to the church. "If you need coffee, get up and get it. Don't worry that we're right in the middle of something, because we're always right in the middle of something."

The 45-minute service is the only one of its kind in the area, according to the leader of the five-piece combo that provides the music. And if anyone would know, he would. He's the Rev. Fritz Sauer, an avid jazz trumpeter who recently retired after 15 years at Advent United Methodist Church in Eagan. He knows everything that's going on in the local jazz world and most of what's happening on the church scene.

The service contains everything you'd find in a traditional one: hymns, Bible readings, prayers, a message, a tip jar ... ah, offering basket. It's just done to a slightly different beat. Take the opening hymn on a recent Sunday, for instance. The words were from the church's hymnal but the tune was cooked up by the band.

"You'll know this," Ehrman promised as he activated a PowerPoint projection of the words, "and we'll just see what kind of a beat we get."

Jazz service 'felt right'

Tim and Amy Texley and their two children were officially joining the church. They could have attended a similar ceremony at that morning's traditional service, but they chose the jazz service because it's the reason they were interested in the church in the first place.

"We're from the South, where contemporary services are much more common," Amy Texley said. "We moved up here two years ago, and we must have visited every church within 30 minutes of our home, looking for one that felt right. Then we came here one Sunday for the jazz service and said, 'This is it.'"

The service, which starts at 11:15 a.m., embraces the same theological theme as that morning's 9:30 traditional service, but it's not a repackaged version of it. In fact, it's so different that about a fourth of the attendees are people who go to the first service and stick around for the second one.

"I stay at least half the time," said longtime member Ron Ball. "I love the jazz, and I love the experience."

Like the music, the service is free-flowing.

"We look at the whole thing as an improvisational experience," Ehrman said. And that includes his message. He spends a few minutes talking about the day's Bible reading, then throws the topic open for discussion.

The church, at County Road 101 and Lake St. Extension, was looking for an alternative service to accompany its traditional one, but didn't want to go the route of a contemporary service with a so-called "praise band" because there already were so many of those.

Worship goes improv

"We were looking for a way to reach out to the community in a way that was different," Ehrman said. "That's when we came up with the idea of jazz, which reaches people of all generations."

He didn't know much about jazz, he admitted. But he did know Sauer, who offered to put together the combo, which is called the Restoration Jazz Band.

"This is the only time we play together," Sauer said after the service. "We all play professionally, so this is the only chance we have to get together. All our rehearsing is done in the half-hour before the service. The members of the band are good at picking up a piece of music and playing it. We just have to decide what the tempo is going to be and when we're going to do what."

In retrospect, church members realize that there were hints that a jazz service would find an audience. The church booked a jazz band for last year's annual Fat Tuesday pancake supper and could hardly keep up with the throng.

"We were expecting the usual 50 people that we get whenever we try to do something unusual on a weeknight, " said 30-year member Sally Colburn. "Nearly 250 people showed up."

Sauer thinks that the reason the Minnetonka church is the only one doing a jazz service is that all the other contemporary services are using praise bands, but Ehrman teases him that the real reason is that it's so hard to get jazz musicians out of bed on a Sunday morning.

"Actually, we thought 11:15 might even be a little too early for them," he said.

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392