‘Pastor Chris’ brings his sermon to a TV congregation

Children were doing what children typically do. Some were giggling, others were gabbing, a few were whining and all were restless. But their pastor, the Rev. Chris Bowman, didn’t mind a bit.

“The sign of a healthy congregation is a pew that has teeth marks,” Bowman lightheartedly told his congregation at Oakton Church of the Brethren in Vienna, Va. “We could have a quiet sanctuary if we wanted to. We don’t want that.”

Bowman’s informal style is appropriately intimate for his small assemblage that numbers about 100 people each week. But his message will reach a much larger audience tonight when he delivers the sermon during CBS’ nationally televised annual Christmas Eve service.

For Bowman, it will be his first time on television and his largest audience.

“This was a real honor and a real gift to the church, and my goal was to provide a real gift back to the viewers,” he said.

Bowman, 42, taped the sermon last month at a small chapel in the Church of the Brethren’s only seminary, in Richmond, Ind. Fifty Brethren members from across the country were on hand to hear his sermon, which had the theme “Enter the Light of Life.”

“My hope in the sermon was that people, wherever they were in life, would feel God’s invitation, God’s tugging, to let him in,” he said.

The CBS service will include readings and hymns. The 51-member choir of Juniata College in Pennsylvania will sing traditional Christmas songs such as “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” An 11-member children’s choir will offer a rendition of “Away in a Manger.” The Brethren is a small Protestant denomination with 130,000 members nationwide that emphasizes compassion, peacemaking and simplicity.

Each year on Christmas Eve, CBS runs a religious service in the spot that “Late Show With David Letterman” normally fills. It begins at 11:35 p.m.

The Church of the Brethren’s selection involved a bit of luck. CBS first approached a Los Angeles-based Protestant church, but it backed out at the last minute because its retiring pastor had booked one too many farewell ceremonies.

So CBS called Wendy McFadden, head of the Church of the Brethren’s publishing unit, who quickly got the thumbs-up on participating.

Choosing Bowman was a no-brainer, McFadden said. “He has this warm, conversational style that I thought would be perfect for a diverse audience that would be watching him on TV.”

The taping involved a five-camera setup that Bowman said he was somehow able to mentally block out. “I didn’t even see the cameras,” he recalled. “I knew they were there, but it didn’t feel oppressive to me.”

He said the entire service, which will air as a one-hour program, took about four hours to tape and -- like a pro -- he had to yell “Cut!” only once to reconfigure a thought. Bowman said, however, that he struggled to fit his sermon into 11 minutes.

Bowman may be new to TV, but he’s no stranger to addressing crowds. As the current moderator of the Church of the Brethren -- the highest elected position in the church -- he addressed nearly 5,000 people at the annual conference this summer. He also spoke to thousands of people during a missionary trip to Nigeria in 2002.

Bowman’s journey within the 300-year-old Brethren denomination is steeped in family tradition. His father and grandfather were pastors, and “it goes back further than that,” Bowman said. “I’m not sure how far.” Besides maintaining that family tradition, Bowman was drawn to the church because of its unassuming nature and rejection of materialism.

“It’s not a highfalutin church,” he said. His official title is the Rev. Dr. Christopher Bowman, but he prefers “Pastor Chris.”

“Our lives and lifestyles are not pretentious,” he explained. “We try not to get into an ongoing battle of keeping up with the Joneses. It doesn’t mean that we try to do everything on the cheap. It simply means that we try not to get wrapped up in overconsumption.”

Before coming to Virginia, Bowman served as pastor for nine years at a Brethren church in Martinsburg, Pa.