Worship Evaluation

Does worship start and stop depending on the circumstances of life?  Is it put on hold while we go to work or school?  Is it suspended when we take our family to a baseball game or meet friends at the golf course or go on vacation?

If those of us who facilitate gathered worship are not careful, our actions can imply that “time and place worship is the primary, if not only, venue for worship, while the remainder of our life falls into another category.”[1]  In fact our focus, preparation, and implementation can even imply that the official time and place is a 30-minute segment (song set) during our weekend gathering and that the other 6 days and 23.5 hours of the week is something else.

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1).  (OK, maybe golf wasn’t the best illustration)

My daughter was a very good student in high school but is an even better student in college.  When asked why she determined to take her studies to a new level she responded with:  “God has called me to ministry and to this university to prepare for that ministry, therefore, I believe that making good grades in what He has called me to do is an act of worship.”  Don’t you love learning from your kids?

Harold Best wrote, “Because God is the Continuous Outpourer, we bear his image as continuous outpourers.  Being made in the image of God means that we were created to act the way God acts, having been given a nature within which such behavior is natural.”[2]  Best also writes that outpouring implies lavishness and generosity; it requires giving up and letting go; it is seamless; and it surpasses measuring out or filling quotas, even to the extent that it doesn’t matter if some spills over in gracious waste.[3]

If this is true then a Call to Worship at the beginning of a worship service is redundant.  In fact, calling a congregation to worship might even be more appropriate at the end of the service just to remind them as they disperse that the entire life of a Christ follower is a call to worship…even on the golf course.

Who is your worship leader?  Most of us immediately picture the platform personality who leads the music portion of our service in skinny jeans with guitar, business casual with worship team, or coat and tie with choir.

Scripture tells us, however, that Jesus as our high priest sits at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and serves as a minister in the sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man (Heb. 8:1-2).  Earlier in the book of Hebrews, the author writes that Jesus sings God’s praises and declares His name to His brothers (Heb. 2:12, Ps. 22:22).

So who is your worship leader?  Jesus Is! He is our minister, our leitourgos (Gr.)…our liturgist.  He is the high priest, the worship leader who is holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens (Heb. 7:26).  He sits at the right hand of the throne of Majesty and mediates worship from us to the Father and to us from the Father.

If our understanding of worship leadership could begin here…maybe we could stop drawing lines in the sand over style and preference.  Maybe we could end the expectation that platform attire and song selections determine if God shows up since Jesus, as our mediator has already settled that for us.  Maybe congregants would no longer need to fight for their perceived musical rights since Jesus lives to intercede for them with a plan superior to their own…a covenant founded on better promises (Heb. 8:6).

Jesus as our liturgist gives us worship confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by His blood, by a new and living way that allows us to draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith (Heb. 10:19-21).  Embracing Jesus as our worship leader is a lofty goal. It is, however, a biblical one and also could be a healing one.

Is your plug and play worship preparation and leadership really just the modern version of sliding the hymn numbers into the hymn board?  If so…why does your church need you?  Deep calling unto deep worship that reminds congregants that the Lord’s song is with us in the night may never occur until you lead as an artisan instead of an assembly line worker (Psalm 42).

Assembly Line:  A repetitive, monotonous, inflexible process in which a succession of identical products are turned out in a mechanically efficient, though impersonal manner.

Artisan:  A craftsperson or technician in an applied art who with great care, skill, and precision handcrafts a high quality, distinctive, and unique product.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.  Albert Camus

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.  W. Somerset Maugham

Dr. Edmund Clowney was an influential pastor, theologian, and educator, serving many churches and seminaries. He served as president of Westminster Theological Seminary from 1966-1982.  Clowney authored ten books including Called to the Ministry, Christian Meditation, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament, and The Church.  Dr. Clowney completed How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments shortly before his death in 2005.

Following are selected worship quotes from his writing and teaching:

“Praise his name, we are called to doxological evangelism: Salvation is of the Lord! Let that song die and we have nothing to sing to the nations. They don’t want to hear those old patronizing songs of missionary colonialism and they don’t need our help in learning the chants of revolutionary violence. But when the people of God sing his praises, then the nations listen.”[1]

“Growth in true holiness is always growth together; it takes place through the nurture, the work and worship of the church.”[2]

“Reverent corporate worship, then, is not optional for the church of God. It is not a form of group behavior to be accepted just because of its long tradition or its acceptability in many cultures. Rather, it brings to expression the very being of the church. It manifests on earth the reality of the heavenly assembly. The glory of God is that to which and for which the church is called.”[3]

“When Protestants speak of going to church… they are not thinking of a building but of a congregation. The congregation, not the building is holy… The church is holy because the congregation is the house of God.  They are not merely an audience; they are a congregation assembled by the call of the Holy One.”[4]

“Our preaching is an act of worship but often lacks the punctuation of the exclamation point of praise. Unlike the Scriptures, our sermons are so centered on men that they neglect to bless God.”[5]

“Worship is always an echo, reflecting the word of grace with the cry of praise.”[6]

“The pulpit is not a psychiatrist’s couch or a seminar room. The preacher is a herald, an announcer, not a pollster.”[7]

The following quotes are taken from an Edmund Clowney sermon titled John 4: The Worship God Seeks, preached at Christ the King Presbyterian Church, Houston, Texas.  Transcript available online:  http://www.edmundclowney.com.

Jesus does not start with the worshipers’ quest for God, but with God’s quest for worshipers. Our media culture disdains arguments about religion. Well it may. If worship is man’s invention to fill his needs, then let everyone make his own idol. There is no point in arguing about taste in idols. But if worship bows before the living God, then it cannot be shaped by what we want. It must be shaped by what God wants, yes, by what he is. God’s Word, not our traditions, must decide all questions of worship.

True worship is not temple-less worship. It is worship in the true temple: Jesus Christ. All worship of the true God must be brought to the feet of Jesus. Only Christ is the true worshiper, with clean hands and a pure heart; only by being united to Christ may we ascend God’s holy hill (Psalm 24). Only he is the true Priest, who can minister in the heavenly sanctuary, the only Mediator between God and man. Only he is the final sacrifice, God’s own “Isaac” offered on Mount Moriah. Only he is the Way of approach to God, the true Temple where God meets with man.

Our worship is heavenly because it is real. When we gather with God’s people here, we join the festival assembly there. By faith, not by sight, we see Jesus. But because we do see him by faith, we must cast aside not only the idols of the heathen, but every prop that would substitute the imaginations of men for the realized glory of God. Jesus is our only Mediator and therefore we must come to him directly.

Most Americans are not that philosophical about worship. They rather suspect that God can’t afford to be so choosey. Given the competition of business, sports, and television, God should be grateful for any worship he can get. That attitude is plainly the exact opposite of worship. It assumes that God is there for man’s sake, not man for God’s sake.

An idiom is an expression with a figurative meaning.  Although the common phrases and terms are often metaphorical, their intended point is often pretty accurate.  Hopefully you haven’t heard any of the following idioms at the end of your worship service.

• Failure is the mother of success.
• Better luck next time.
• Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
• Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
• All hell broke loose; Recipe for disaster.
• Another nail in his coffin; Days are numbered; Keep your options open.
• By the seat of your pants.
• Dog and pony show.
• Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
• From the sublime to the ridiculous.
• Give someone enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.
• Quit while you’re ahead.
• Shot from the hip.
• Silence is golden.
• Like watching paint dry; Asleep at the wheel; Dry as a bone.
• Right church, wrong pew.
• What can you expect from a hog but a grunt.
• Speak of the devil.
• Stop the music.
• Left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.
• There but for the grace of God I go.
• Jumped the shark; Missed the mark; Went south.
• On a wing and a prayer.
• Even a broken clock is right twice a day (for those doing two services).
• Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Shelf life is the length of time certain items are given before they are considered unsuitable for use or consumption.  It is the time in which the defined quality remains fresh, acceptable, viable, usable, and effective under normal or expected circumstances.

Ministry shelf life has been impacted negatively in response to the desire for a younger presence and fresh image from ministry leaders.  Forced termination or demotion of leaders as a result of this epidemic reminds us that the ministry shelf life where we serve is not always ours to control.  What we do control, however, is that we serve and continue to do what we can to remain viable and usable even if it is no longer here.

Ministry leaders who coast and ignore steps to actively increase their shelf life often find themselves only prepared to lead a church or ministry that no longer exists.  What they once learned is not nearly enough to sustain them for their entire ministry.  So, what can leaders do now to increase their shelf life before their freshness date expires?

Recalibrate – Plan or devise carefully so as to have a precise use, application, or appeal; Fine-tune; Make corrections or adjust; Revamp; Recast; Refashion; Reform; Remodel; Reconstruct; Renovate; Revise; Rēcreate; Start something new; Refurbish; Reimagine or form a new concept; Reinvest; Refabricate; Reinvent.

Redux – Reboot or Restart; Go back to the beginning and do it better the second time; Restore life or vigor; Reawaken once again in strength and potency; Reinterpret an older work; Discover something that was weakened can be brought back to full strength with the capability to again be a force to contend with.

Rĕcreate – Engage in recreational activities other than work; Occupy oneself in a diversion; Play; Relax in order to attain equilibrium; Reinvigorate; Revive; Refresh mentally and/or physically; Rest; Impart fresh life; Lighten up; Seek contentment; Engage in an activity of leisure; Take discretionary time; Enjoy; Be amused; Value pleasure.

Rededicate – Be set apart again for a special use; Impart new or fresh life; Yield complete and wholehearted devotion; Recommit to where He has called you; Revive spiritually; Renew consecration to a life of ministry; Give of yourself entirely; Go all in again.

If you are saving your best for where God will call you next…why would He want to?

Taking a canary into a coal mine previously served as an early warning system for mines with inadequate ventilation systems.  Canaries are especially sensitive to methane gas and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for detecting a dangerous build-up of gas in the coal seam.  The canary showed signs of distress in response to small concentrations of gas before it became detrimental to the miners.  The first sign of imminent danger was when the canary stopped singing.

If certain generations, cultures, or even the majority of your congregation has stopped singing, it is probably an early warning sign of danger ahead.  And it is often difficult if not impossible for worship leaders to detect those warning signs from the platform.

The idiom canary in a coal mine has continued as a reference to a person or thing that serves as a warning of a looming crisis.  Enlisting trusted individuals from your congregation to regularly ask questions not only about the worship singing of your congregation, but also about the way you lead the singing could alert you and your congregation to imminent conflict while there is still time for curative care.  The key is to intentionally implement a pre-emptive process since the asking of similar questions will inevitably occur in the halls and parking lots anyway.

Note:  It is vital to enlist individuals to ask evaluative questions who love God, love the church, and love you enough to honestly evaluate your leadership and assess the level of congregational participation.  The humility necessary to initiate a process such as this can only occur if you also love God, love the church, and love the people enough to sacrifice your own interests for the greater good of the church.

Sample Congregational Singing Questions:

• Are characteristic traits, character flaws, or idiosyncrasies of the leaders encouraging/discouraging congregational participation?  Examples:  genuineness, preparedness, platform presence, vocal clarity, empathy, grammar, arrogance, aloofness, chattiness, selflessness, service, selfishness, and deep spirituality.

• Is congregational singing passive or participative?  What are leaders doing to encourage/discourage passivity or participation?  Are the leaders depending on song selection only to accomplish this goal?

• Do song selections include a balance of familiar and new?

• Do songs include expressions that are:  vertical and horizontal, celebrative and contemplative, comforting and disturbing?

• Is the song text theologically sound and does it affirm scripture as central?  Is it trite or archaic, repetitive or diverse?

• Are song selections culturally appropriate for our congregation?  Are leaders selecting worship songs giving primary consideration to the culture they hope to reach, the culture of our existing congregation, a mixture of both, or neither?

• Do our songs encourage conversational worship… including God’s words to us as well as our words to God?  Are leaders incorporating musical elements that distract our attention from that conversation?

• Does our worship space encourage participation in congregational singing?  Examples:  inclusion of icons, art, symbols, colors, lights.  Does our worship space discourage participation in congregational singing?  Examples: poor acoustics, sound/volume issues, poor lighting.

• Do the service songs flow well?  Do transitions link other worship elements?  Is the pace satisfactory?  Is the volume appropriate?  Are the keys routinely pitched too high or low for the average singer?

• Are physical actions actively encouraged?  Examples:  raising hands, kneeling, bowing head, palms upturned, or clapping?  How do leaders convey to the congregants and guests what is appropriate and/or acceptable?

• Do the songs give participants an opportunity to connect with one another?  Is this intentional or assumed?

• Are guests able to participate in the congregational singing without confusion?  Are elements presented that are generally accepted by the congregation that might be unfamiliar to a guest?  How do you know?  Are musical elements explained or assumed?

Hughes Oliphant Old wrote, “For many generations American Protestants have prized spontaneity in public prayer.  One has to admit, however, that the spontaneous prayer one often hears in public worship is an embarrassment to the tradition.  It all too often lacks content.  It may be sincere, but sometimes it is not very profound.”[1]

In his latest book Dumbfounded Praying, Harold Best wrote, “I believe more than ever that the age-old craft of writing prayers should be re-visited by all of us, for it accomplishes three things. First, the writer is literally forced into levels of thought, scriptural usage, and architectural cogency that are not possible in the kind of spontaneous praying that one usually does in private, and sad to say, is often found in the typical pastoral prayers in corporate worship.  Second, even though writing prayers takes time, time is the very thing we need and must take to bring prayer into a greater sweep and cogency.  But third, what goes around comes around:  the more we tackle and work through the really tough issues and the more we force these into thought-out and written form, the more skilled we can become in extemporaneous prayer.”[2]

My friend and ministry colleague, Dr. Georges Boujakly is particularly adept at scripted praying.  Georges writes a prayer each week that is widely distributed through a Cyber prayer site.  He has set a goal to write a morning and evening prayer for every day of the month and is convinced that this rhythm of prayer is wholesome and needed.  He wrote, “To go to bed with the language of God on our minds, and to awake with the language of God on our lips are excellent ways to end and start our days.”

 
Below is Georges’ profound prayer offering for this week:

James 1:2-8; Matthew 7:7-8

Wisdom, mercy and holiness belong to our Maker. Our image is Yours and Yours is ours. In Your wisdom You numbered our days. Make us true sons and daughters of the Wise, Holy, and Merciful One. Blessed be Your Name.

How of little wisdom, how short of mercy, how unholy am I? Yet how blessed that Jesus is mine and the foretaste of glory divine is mine! In Your mercy You see how little of Your wisdom I know, in Your wisdom You see how unholy I am. Yet unwilling for me to remain in my state, You delivered me, and daily are remaking me after Your will. Bless You Father Most Holy, Most Wise, and Most Merciful for the faint throb of my heart to partake of Your divine nature.

My sin has not stopped You from desiring my fellowship today. Have mercy, I pray.
My willful distance is no hindrance to Your pursuit of me. Draw near me, I pray.
The hound of heaven dogs my steps on the path of peace. I rest in Your peace.

I resign my will yet again and submit it to Yours.

How may I come before such a Holy and Merciful God? With humble heart and chastened will. I may come as a redeemed son by the blood of the Lamb.

My Jesus, dispel my anxious thoughts, tonight! Purify my desires. Take away my jealousy and envy with which the world lures me. Give me health and long life so to praise You all the days of my life. Heal my sin-broken heart and give me the hope of the eternal cleansing that awaits all the faithful. Make my heart ache for godly beauty. In Your beauty I delight and from Your gracious hand I will receive the desires of my heart.

Where shall I find my peace except in my Father’s will?
Where shall I find my rest except in my Father’s love?
Where shall I find my joy lest I find it in serving my Father?

I remember tonight friends and foes. For _________ and ___________ and _________ I pray for blessings from above.

For those lamenting the tragedies of life, I pray your constant presence.
For those with heavy burdens, I pray for the easy yoke of Christ to keep them close.
For those who are reaching unreached people groups in the uttermost parts of the world, I pray for the arrival of the kingdom of God in their midst in repentance and trust.

Father, be near me tonight. Watch me and delight in me as your beloved son/daughter. Be pleased Abba. Hear my prayers in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Personal Reflection:

1. As you ponder the wisdom, mercy and holiness of God, what have these truths meant to you thus far in your journey with Christ?
2. What friend of yours may benefit from hearing of the mercy of God in your life? How will you go about sharing such mercy? Ask the Teacher to show you and to whom.
3. What will you hide in your heart from this prayer?

Corporate Reflection

1. The mercy, wisdom and holiness of God belong not only to individuals but also to the church as a whole. Before God, confess any absence of these truths from your church’s life.
2. Confession is humbling but refreshing and comes with the desire for change. Ask God to change you and your church to be more of his image to your community.
3. Name some of your friends and foes upon whom you wish to pray God’s blessing. Collectively, join with others in praying the blessings of wisdom, holiness, and mercy of God into their lives.

My goal is not just to be the best runner I can be where I live. No, I want to be recognized, revered, and emulated as one of the best runners in the world. I do have degrees from some of the most prominent running schools and have attended all of the most famous running conferences. I read all of the leading running guides, books, magazines, websites, blogs, and tweets. I also make it a habit to imitate world-class runners as much as possible.

I regularly buy the hottest equipment recommended by the most elite runners and even sport their running attire. I put in the same amount of training each week as they do, including mimicking their long runs on the weekend. It is not always easy, but I continue to follow their running guides and model their running regimens even when it doesn’t always resonate with my running partners. My group just needs to learn how much sacrifice is actually required to achieve world-class running status.

My running ability has opened some doors for opportunities to lead and coach other runners. I have even written some of my own running guides with moderate local success. These accolades continue to give me hope that I am on the most expedient path to world-class running status. I am encouraged that my preparation is in fact on target when I hear how my running inspires and influences others.

It is true that some have indicated that the pressure of running at this tempo has taken their joy out of running. I am not oblivious to the rumors that some would like to consider looking for a new coach, while others have just drifted off to run in other places. But, world-class running requires sacrifice! I have to continually remind others and myself that losing runners who constantly complain each time the mileage increases or the course varies is not that great of a loss. Anyone not up for the challenge should probably connect with a slower group anyway.

Sometimes running ahead of the pack can be lonely, but slowing down to look over my shoulder and wait for others to catch up will never allow me to reach world-class status. Besides, if I am asked to slow the pace too much I can always just look for another place to run. I am sure there are other running groups who would be more progressive, more appreciative of my abilities, and more supportive of my goals.

Many of us just completed another designated Sabbath or day of rest, which included numerous worship services, meetings, leadership responsibilities, and rehearsals…only to be reminded again on Monday morning that Sunday comes again this week.  Spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical resources are again completely depleted.

If your life of ministry constantly feels like being caught in the force of a riptide that pulls you away from the safety of the shore…If the swift current regularly drags you under, rolls you on the sandy bottom, scratches up your shoulders and knees, and fills your swim trunks with sand…If it seems to take longer each time for the rip to lose its strength, release you, and allow you to swim to shore…You’d better look for still waters to restore your soul before you no longer have the resolve to kick to the surface and gasp for air  (Ps. 23:2-3).

Ministry can sanctify busyness rather than free us from it.  Our church culture often values motion as a sign of significance, believing our efforts are essential to God’s success in His mission to the world.  Stress of ministry and the demands of congregants, teams, and staff constantly vying for our time and full attention may have exhausted our reserves.

If this is true for you, how can you expect to lead others to a place where you no longer have the emotional or physical strength to go yourself?  In his book, Pastors At Greater Risk, H.B. London wrote that over 45 percent of pastors indicate they have experienced depression or burnout to the extent that they needed to take a leave of absence from ministry.[1]

If you are constantly rolling in the deep you might consider asking some of the following questions of your life and ministry:

• How often do I engage in personal prayer or Bible study not related to the role or function of ministry?
• Have I ever considered a private spiritual retreat?
• How often do I participate in worship when I am not the leader?
• Have I enlisted a spiritual friend, mentor, director, coach, or counselor with whom I meet regularly for prayer and reflection to consider my own personal and spiritual journey?
• Do I participate in an accountability group other than with my church staff or personnel team?
• How many days off do I take each week?
• Do I take all of my vacation?  Have I ever taken at least one portion in a two-week block?  Do I take church-related phone calls and respond to texts and emails while I am on vacation?
• How much time is reserved for home life?  (For example, four nights a week?  Two nights?  Saturdays?  Rarely?)
• For married pastors:  How often do I have a “date night” or other planned opportunities for a special time with my spouse?
• For single pastors:  Do I spend time with friends or family members on a regular basis?
• Do I have friends who are not members of my congregation?  If so, do we have conversations that do not always center around or circle back to my church activities?
• Do I have an annual physical?
• How often do I engage in physical exercise lasting at least 30 minutes?  Am I more than 10 pounds over the recommended weight for my height?
• How balanced is my current diet?
• Do I have interests or hobbies outside the church?  Are those the first things that I set aside when I get too busy?
• What am I willing to do to stay in ministry for the long haul?[2]

In his book Leading on Empty, Wayne Cordeiro used surfing to illustrate how ministry longevity is possible.  He wrote, “Veteran surfers possess an uncanny sense of the ocean’s currents and how waves behave.  Their intuition tells them which ones to catch and which ones to let pass.  They seem to discern which waves will carry them in and which waves will do them in! But one of the true marks of a veteran is not how he catches a wave, but whether he knows when and how to get off the wave.”[3]

If we agree that worship is not just what we do on Sunday but also who we are in the world then why do we continue to spend all of our focus, dialogue, study, creativity, and rehearsal time getting ready for what occurs on Sunday?

If all available resources are depleted preparing for what we can control here, then we rarely have anything left for what we should deploy there.  Worship control is easier and cleaner but is limiting in its ability to deploy worshipers to fulfill Jesus’ final commission to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18-20).

Control is exercising authoritative or dominating influence over.  It is directing, requiring, regulating, containing, moderating, and restraining.  Control holds in check, reduces or prevents from spreading, and retains the power to make decisions in order to influence results. Deploy is to strategically arrange in a position of readiness those trained for a specific responsibility.  It is to move into a location for a definite action.  Deploy spreads out, utilizes, and arranges for a defined purpose.

• Control holds worshipers captive to style, tradition, form, and structure.  Deploy sets worshipers free with the understanding that worship cannot be contained in one artistic expression, vehicle of communication, style, culture, or context.
• Controllers are gatekeepers who identify, count, monitor, and supervise ingress to or egress from.  Deployers are liberators who set people free to initiate what they have been called and trained to do.
• Control prepares us to worship one hour a week.  Deploy prepares us to worship 168 hours a week.
• Control points everything and everyone to the sermon.  Deploy points everyone and everything to the Word and as a result, the world.
• Controllers are managers.  Deployers are leaders.
• Control identifies worship relevance according to style.  Deploy identifies worship relevance according to lifestyle.
• Controllers justify ministry positions.  Deployers fulfill ministry callings.
• Control is what I want, need, deserve, earned, like, and prefer.  Deploy is where I sacrifice, send, give, and go.
• Control focuses on the institution.  Deploy focuses on the mission.

Alan and Eleanor Kreider wrote, “Our worship services have integrity when they attune us to God’s project and when they align us with God’s mission, so that our lives as individual Christians and as Christian communities are invested in who God is and what God is doing.  Further, our acts of worship ascribe worth to God when we allow the God we worship to transform our allegiances, behavior, and priorities in light of God’s character and mission.”[1]    

Are those who gather for worship in your church ever given the freedom to openly admit that they do not have the strength to trade sorrow, shame, sickness, and pain for the joy of the Lord?[1]  In light of our suffering culture, is an offering of happy songs only enough at the expense of confession, mourning, contrition, penitence, and petition?

We are conditioning worshipers through our worship atmosphere and actions that it is more spiritual to avoid expressing deep-seated feelings of grief, pain, anger, and sorrow.  Worship that never addresses these issues publicly communicates two messages:  either you must not feel that way or, if you feel that way, you must do something about it somewhere else – but not here.[2]

If our worship is authentic it must mirror and reflect authentic life.[3]  Authenticity is the willingness to admit in public worship that events and circumstances often cause us to cry out to God in despair and even demand vengeance.  Healing, hope, and even trading our sorrows can begin when we admit as a community that those circumstances can shake our faith.  Ignoring them will indicate to those who are experiencing a season of darkness that worship in your church is not the place to express those feelings and therefore, not the place for them.

Worship Leader, if you have never experienced the darkness associated with pain and despair and find it difficult to empathetically lead those who are in that season…you are encouraged to enlist congregants who can help you plan and prepare worship which conveys empathetic understanding.  The pool of those who understand is usually deep and empathy cannot be faked.

Worship practices evolve. What may have initially seemed like a good idea didn’t always turn out that way when it was actually implemented or time tested. Consider the following practices and feel free to add to them since this is not an exhaustive list.

Special Music: The person who originated the moniker Special Music probably lifted the idea from 1950’s movie theatres that used subliminal suggestions of popcorn and coke in previews to encourage moviegoers to buy more concessions. It was obvious in many of our churches that just continuing to suggest the choir song or instrumental/vocal solo right before the sermon was special did not automatically make it so. Maybe if we had referred to all other music in the service as ordinary or common or defined special as different or peculiar we could have lengthened its shelf life.

Baptism: Whoever determined white baptismal attire inspired thoughts of purity should have market tested them for transparency in water first.

Offering: Passing the offering plate as a communal act of worship has devolved into the church version of the 7th inning stretch. Although many are faithful stewards, they have exercised the option of giving by monthly check, direct deposit, pre-pay, or on-line credit card. Creative giving options have proven to be successful but even so have contributed to the passivity of this element as a corporate worship act. Consequently, children and youth no longer get to observe or even know if their parents are faithful in financially sacrificing as a spiritual act of worship unless those parents somehow involve them during the week. Is it time to stop passing the plate or has your congregation developed a strategy for participatory worship during the designated offering time that would benefit us all?

Call to Worship: This service element is the spiritual version of the Indy 500 announcement, Gentlemen Start Your Engines! If Christian worship actually starts at the beginning of the service when we call it to start and stops at the end of the service when we call it to stop…is that an indication no worship occurs the other 167 hours of the week?

Hymns: In what setting was the Charles Wesley hymn text, To me, to all, Thy Bowels Move ever appropriate? Now that was Special Music.

Announcements: Have we added up the number of minutes spent in the worship service promoting the women’s Zumba class and the men’s Shoot to Grill Wild Game Dinner; and then compared that with the number of minutes spent in Scripture and prayer in the same service? Maybe announcements could contribute to rather than detract from worship if we spent as much time praying over and rehearsing them as we spend praying over and rehearsing songs.

Ordinances: The two ordinances prescribed by Jesus and practiced by the church are often forgotten in-between observances because the icons symbolizing those ordinances (baptismal font and communion table) have been completely removed or at least hidden with curtains/screens or cornucopias/memorial flower sprays. It is obvious we are not averse to all symbolism since we use props and stage sets to symbolize and remind the congregation of our current sermon series. Could it be that removing those two symbols which visually remind believers not only of what God has done in their lives but what He promised to continue to do has contributed to the monotony of those ordinances when they are actually observed?

We would all benefit from your responses to these comments and additions from your own experiences and cultures. To respond, left click the COMMENTS link at the end of the Posted by section under the post title.

The celebration of Easter 2012 is less than two months away.  Churches are formulating plans for a meaningful day of worship and ministry knowing they will potentially reach more attendees than any other Sunday of the year.  If those congregations and yours affirm Easter as the most important celebration of the church year and the basis for our hope, why limit its observance to one Sunday a year?  Has our concern with appearing too liturgical caused us to miss an entire season of remembrance, celebration, and worship?

The observance of Easter in the early church was more than just a one-day historical remembrance.  The celebration of the Paschal mystery was set aside not only to remember that Christ was crucified and rose again, but also to celebrate His appearance following His resurrection, His ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and His ultimate return.  Because of their great joy, early Christians began this celebration with Easter and continued for fifty days until Pentecost.  Revisiting the mystery of the resurrection through an expanded celebration could assist in worship renewal through the theological realization that this commemoration of redemption, sanctification, salvation, renewal, and victory must not be limited to one day.

Some congregations and even entire denominations have not traditionally embraced the Great Fifty Days and other elements of the Christian calendar primarily out of a concern of rigidity, conformity, loss of autonomy, or fear of appearing too “Catholic.”  Additional desire for worship creativity has caused congregations to look elsewhere out of concern that annual celebrations promote monotony.  Timothy Carson states that, “Exactly the opposite may be true.  Because it has stood the test of time, it may be sufficiently deep to allow me to swim more deeply in it.  Because it is repeated, I have another chance, today, to go where I could not go yesterday.”[1]  Even as congregations avoid the Christian calendar, they affirm the annual observance of cultural and denominational days of celebration whose foundations are not always biblically grounded.[2]   The irony is found in the realization that in the development of these denominational and cultural calendars we have created denominational liturgies in response to our desire to be non-liturgical.

To avoid Christian calendar days that are celebrated during the same time of the year as the cultural, denominational, and civic days is to ignore the very foundation of the Church.  Is it possible to converge holidays significant to our cultural and denominational calendar with the Christian holidays significant to the Kingdom?  Is there any reason why Mother’s Day, Graduation Sunday, and Memorial Day could not be celebrated in the same season as Ascension Day and Pentecost? For this to occur, congregations must understand the significance of Easter beyond a one-day of celebration.  “For the explosive force of the resurrection of the Lord is too vast to be contained within a celebration of one day.”[3]

A renewed interest in the Christian year by some congregations is based on a deeper understanding of this calendar as the ideal starting point for structuring seasonal worship.  The theme of the fifty days of Easter as one single celebration provides a connection with Christians of the past church and unifies Christians of the present church in a continuous ecumenical approach.  Observing this celebration could help congregations “recover the transforming news that Jesus’ past resurrection dramatically transforms present and future reality.”[4]  Additionally, it will help them delight in the knowledge that Jesus’ death and resurrection is stamped on their spiritual biographies.[5]  Although observing elements of the Christian year such as the Great Fifty Days may be a stretch for your congregation, consider making that decision based on a deeper biblical, theological, and historical understanding, not solely on traditionalism.

In Teaching A Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard wrote, “Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C. Presumably someone is minding the ship correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, watching the radar screen, noting weather reports radioed from shore. No one would dream of asking the tourists to do these things.”[1]

If we never involve our congregation (beyond an occasional song) in anything more than casual bystanding while we read, speak, pray, testify, lead, mediate, commune, baptize, confess, thank, petition, and exhort for them…how can we ever expect a shift from passive to participative worship to occur? It may never occur until we learn to…

fa·cil·i·tate/fəˈsiliˌtāt/: To assist the progress of; Help forward an action or process; Catalyze or serve as an agent of change; Precipitate, modify, bring about, or initiate fundamental transformation.

A facilitator relies not only on his/her own strength and ability but also the strength and ability of others who are willing to subordinate individual interests to the concerns of the entire congregation. A facilitator learns to collaborate. A facilitator is always an usher…never the Bride.

prom·ul·gate/ˈpräməlˌgāt/: Promote or make widely or publicly known; Publish, declare, announce, notify; Proclaim formally or put into operation.

A promulgator encourages participatory worship by tapping into the collective resources and talents of others and by publicly affirming and championing the value of those resources for worship health.

dis·sem·i·nate/diˈseməˌnāt/: To disperse widely; To spread as though sowing seed; Circulate, distribute, or pass around.

A disseminator leads, models, and teaches a congregation to worship not only when it meets but also when it disperses.

re·it·er·ate/rēˈitəˌrāt/: Repeat a number of times, typically for emphasis or clarity; To state or do over again.

A reiterator continually emphasizes for the purpose of clarity and proficiency. Reiteration is learning through repetition, which then becomes habit. Reiteration continues to remind that participatory worship is not a one-time event.

[1] Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone to Talk (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 52.

The legend is told that when Alexander the Great and his men arrived on the shores of Persia they encountered an enemy that drastically outnumbered them. Since it was clear that the odds were against them and the future was uncertain, his men pleaded with Alexander to retreat to the boats and the safety of their homeland to regroup and get more men.

Alexander was so certain that their course of action was the correct one that he ordered his men to burn their boats.

As their only means of retreat went up in flames Alexander turned to his men and said, “We go home in Persian ships, or we die.”

If your congregation has determined that initiating change is necessary for you to retain those people you already have and gain those you don’t have yet…then conversely, failing to initiate change when change is necessary will kill your congregation. The death is usually a slow one…but still terminal.

Conviction and collaboration are the unifying factors that inspire leaders and congregants to refuse to retreat, go all in, and burn their boats even when the implementation of needed change is often frightening and the end result is rarely certain.

Earnie Larson is credited with saying, “Nothing changes if nothing changes, and if I keep doing what I’ve always done, I’ll keep getting what I’ve always got, and will keep feeling what I always felt.”

When do you know your worship is multigenerational?

When…

• The worship center coffee bar serves hot chocolate; decaf, half-caf, and regular coffee; and Red Bull.

• The attire for ushers is a double knit sport coat, Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops with black socks.

• Your worship song set includes Gaither, Gungor, Bach, and Baloche.

• Instrumentation includes a Chet Atkins f-hole guitar, Taylor acoustic electric, Dobro, Wurlitzer organ, iPads with bass guitar and drum machine apps, accordion, mouth harp, and djembe.

• The liturgical dance troupe costume closet includes leotards, flowing white tunics, square dance petticoats, and gingham dresses.

• The projection scenic background slide images include Chuck E. Cheese, the Mall, and Branson.

• Congregational singing text/tune format includes projected text with or without a follow the bouncing ball option, hymnals with standard and/or shaped notation, or smart phone/iPad apps.

• Platform furniture includes wing-backed chairs surrounded by greenery; and chrome stools surrounded by props.

• Choir members can choose to wear a robe and stole, just a robe, business casual, casual, or just the stole (with business casual or casual of course).

• Your choir sings Toby Mac’s The Slam as a choral arrangement with a fourfold amen; and There Is A Balm in Gilead with a “Lincoln Brewster-esque” lead guitar bridge.

• A variety of descriptors such as amped, blessed, freakin’, joyful, stoked, wonderful, relevant, anointed, and authentic are used interchangeably to introduce songs.

• Earplugs are distributed to older generations to take the edge off the lead guitar riffs; and to younger generations to take the edge off the southern gospel quartet first tenor riffs.

What compels you to do what you do…Convenience or Calling? Convenience responds with, “This is what I was trained to do.” Calling responds with, “This is what I was made to do.”

Convenience: Fitting in well with a person’s activities and plans; Comfortable; Easily accessible; Suited or favorable to one’s own needs.

Calling: A personal invitation from God to carry out a unique task; A strong inner impulse prompted by conviction of divine influence.

In his Worship HeartCries blog this week Ed Steele wrote, “He (Jesus) calls us to Himself, first. Before the crowds and calls of ministry, before the confusion and craziness of everyday life, before our attempts of doing, He calls us to Himself.” (To see Ed’s entire post follow the link above to Worship HeartCries)

• Convenience is a vocation; Calling is a ministry.
• Convenience is a profession; Calling is a purpose.
• Convenience is in the mean time; Calling is for a lifetime.
• Convenience compares to; Calling is contented by.
• Convenience focuses on withdrawals; Calling focuses on investments.
• Convenience is egoistic; Calling is altruistic.
• Convenience is guarded; Calling is transparent.
• Convenience is independent; Calling is collaborative.
• Convenience is upwardly mobile; Calling is inwardly and outwardly mobile.
• Convenience is an occupation; Calling is a mission.

Philippians 3:13-14
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (NKJV)

awful [aw-fuh’l]–
1. solemnly impressive; inspiring awe. 2. full of awe; reverential.

Awe and wonder is the act of worship in response to the mystery of God. It causes us to respond with, “Woe is me…I am ruined” (Isaiah 6:5); It causes us to take off our sandals and hide our faces (Exodus 3:5-6); and It causes us to leap and dance before the Lord with all our might (2 Samuel 6:14-16).

Awe is evidenced in scriptural words such as “O Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth” as a spontaneous response to the wonder of how God could be mindful of us…or care for us (Psalm 8).

Our need to control, predict and therefore script, however, has transformed the awe of mystery into a scheduled event that is explainable and rational. And yet, we continue to lament the fact that our worship seems lifeless. A. W. Tozer wrote, “We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper ‘mystery.’” (1)

Mystery is not just our limited capacity to fully understand and explain the entirety of God’s story; it is also the incomprehensible awe and wonder that He included me in that story. Can that ever be scripted? If the awe and wonder of God can be completely contained in and explained through our limited understanding, then he is a god who does not deserve our worship.

Michael Yaconelli wrote, “The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment.” (2) He continues by stating, “The greatest enemy of Christianity may be people who say they believe in Jesus but who are no longer astonished and amazed. Jesus Christ came to rescue us from listlessness as well as lostness; He came to save us from flat souls as well as corrupted souls.” (3) “Take surprise out of faith and all that is left is dry and dead religion. Take away mystery from the gospel and all that is left is frozen and petrified dogma. Lose your awe of God and you are left with an impotent deity. Abandon astonishment and you are left with meaningless piety.” (4)

The proclamation of the mystery of our faith is this…Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again (I Tim 3:16; Rom 16:25-26; Eph 3:4-6). If that doesn’t continually inspire awe and wonder then no songs we select ever will.

1. A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 18.
2. Michael Yaconelli, Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1998), 23.
3. Ibid., 24.
4. Ibid., 28.

A cruise ship karaoke singer is provided with a microphone, sound system and projected text for the purpose of imitating a familiar song originally recorded by a popular artist. Karaoke singers are even judged on how well (or poorly) they impersonate the original artist and mimic his or her song.

If the only version of worship songs you ever lead or your congregation ever expects must be exactly like the original artist’s rendition (including: genre, key, tempo, instrumentation, vocal timbre, volume, attitude and even attire) doesn’t your worship music also resemble cruise ship karaoke?

Note: impersonation can appear in the form of a choir, french cuffs, sequined dresses and coiffed hair; as well as a band, jeans, shirttails and unkempt hair.

Worship impersonation is borrowing credibility from another congregation or artist without even considering the culture and context of your own congregants, leaders, players, singers and their stories.

Obviously, not all congregations are gifted with musicians who create original songs and therefore must borrow the songs of others. The difference between borrowing songs and borrowing credibility, however, is taking the time to interpret those songs while giving consideration to the uniqueness of your own congregation instead of just attempting to make those songs sound as close as possible to the original rendition.

Impersonation is about style. Interpretation is about content. Impersonation is based on observation and replication. Interpretation is based on observation and explication. Impersonation minimizes God’s limitless creativity in multiple contexts. Interpretation embraces God’s limitless creativity in your context.

Taking time to invest in the lives of those we lead models a level of worship leadership that song selection and platform presence may never achieve. And yet, we continue to lead from a set-apart zone of artistic aloofness and wonder why our efforts to convey a deeper understanding of worship relevance continue to fall flat with those we have been entrusted to lead.

The definition and use of the word aloof probably originated from the Dutch word loef, which means “the weather side of a ship.” It was originally a nautical order to keep the ship’s head to the wind, thus staying clear of the shore or some other object, hence the figurative sense of being set-apart or distant. The word has evolved to mean cool, uninvolved, disinterested, or indifferent.

Isn’t being aloof in order to minimize distractions from my presentation really just the arrogant belief that what I lead and how I lead it holds more value than whom I lead? Jorge Luis Borges wrote that arrogance is “when the image of the Lord has been replaced by a mirror.”

Understanding the value of investing in people above presentation is realizing the difference between doing liturgy and being a liturgist. Doing infers occasional and distant. But being suggests perpetual and intimate. What will your congregants remember most about your worship leadership…how you led them while you were on the platform our how you treated them on the way to and from the platform?

If the initiation of new worship practices in your congregation has caused you to adopt a critical attitude…

If you are intentionally keeping your distance from those new worship practices as an act of defiance…

If you are more concerned with the outside appearance of worship practices than you are with the inside attitude of the worship participants…

Then maybe it is time for you to experience a Wardrobe Malfunction.

When King David and his men brought the Ark of the Covenant (the symbol of God’s presence) back to Jerusalem, He was so focused on responding to God’s blessings (worship), that he danced right out of his robes. With complete disregard for what tradition called for or what others might think, David’s full participation allowed him to dance with all his might in complete humility before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:14).

David’s wife Michal was not nearly as enthusiastic about his new worship practices. In fact, Scripture indicates that Michal “looked down from the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart” (2 Samuel 6:16). Michal’s passive, critical, and distant observation caused her to miss participating in a profound response to God’s revelation.

When Michal sarcastically confronted David and criticized his worship practices, He admonished her with the conviction that it wasn’t for her he danced. Instead, he danced with reckless abandon to celebrate before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:21).

You will never realize worship with all your might as a critical outsider. Worship in spirit and truth is worshiping as an insider with full participation, with unconditional humility, and with complete abandon…even when it might mean dancing right out of your worship robes of tradition, expectation, and preference.

Demolition is the most expedient method of tearing down an existing structure in order to ensure that the ensuing structure bears no characteristics of the original structure.

Does this sound like worship change in your congregation?

In an effort to initiate worship change, leaders often use the finesse of a wrecking ball to swing wildly at existing practices. The consequence is often the complete destruction of the relational foundations of a community that may have taken decades to build.

Deconstruction is the systematic and selective process of taking a structure apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use. Deconstruction focuses on giving those materials within an existing structure a new life once it is determined that the existing structure will require change to continue functioning successfully.

Deconstruction is the realization that many of the components within an existing structure still have value. Healthier worship change is taking the time to recognize those components and harvest them in order to reclaim their value for useful building materials in the new structure.

Worship demolition causes destruction and requires invention. Worship deconstruction allows for renovation and encourages innovation. Both processes agree that worship transition is necessary as a congregation considers its culture and context. But worship deconstruction at least offers hope of a foundation on which to rebuild.

I was challenged again this week in the re-reading of A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future. If you have never had the opportunity to read this meaningful document you are encouraged to enter into the dialogue to experience it for the first time.

In 2006, collaborating with numerous theologians and scholars, Robert Webber and Philip Kenyon organized and edited A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future. The intent of the document was to restore the priority of the divinely inspired biblical story of God’s acts in history. Even though the document was written five years ago its text continues to offer the Church bound by conflict and division a place of commonality and unity grounded in the biblical narrative. (see www.aefcall.org and the Prologue of A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future)

Webber was an American theologian known for his work on worship and the early church. He wrote more than 40 books on the topic of worship and how the practices of the ancient church have value for the church of the 21st century. Before his death in 2007 of pancreatic cancer, Webber spent most of his last year communicating with more than 300 leaders representing various ethnicities and faith cultures to craft this document.

The language of The Call may not all be consistent with the doctrines and practices of your faith community. You are encouraged however, to view the document in light of your culture while also considering its value for the unity of the entire ecumenical faith community. Read A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future with a heart sensitive to what you can affirm as unifying instead of a critical spirit which filters the document for elements that cause concern.

PROLOGUE
In every age the Holy Spirit calls the Church to examine its faithfulness to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, authoritatively recorded in Scripture and handed down through the Church. Thus, while we affirm the global strength and vitality of worldwide Evangelicalism in our day, we believe the North American expression of Evangelicalism needs to be especially sensitive to the new external and internal challenges facing God’s people.

These external challenges include the current cultural milieu and the resurgence of religious and political ideologies. The internal challenges include Evangelical accommodation to civil religion, rationalism, privatism and pragmatism. In light of these challenges, we call Evangelicals to strengthen their witness through a recovery of the faith articulated by the consensus of the ancient Church and its guardians in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation and the Evangelical awakenings. Ancient Christians faced a world of paganism, Gnosticism and political domination. In the face of heresy and persecution, they understood history through Israel’s story, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming of God’s Kingdom.

Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: who gets to narrate the world? The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future challenges Evangelical Christians to restore the priority of the divinely inspired biblical story of God’s acts in history. The narrative of God’s Kingdom holds eternal implications for the mission of the Church, its theological reflection, its public ministries of worship and spirituality and its life in the world. By engaging these themes, we believe the Church will be strengthened to address the issues of our day.

1. ON THE PRIMACY OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE
We call for a return to the priority of the divinely authorized canonical story of the Triune God. This story-Creation, Incarnation, and Re-creation-was effected by Christ’s recapitulation of human history and summarized by the early Church in its Rules of Faith. The gospel-formed content of these Rules served as the key to the interpretation of Scripture and its critique of contemporary culture, and thus shaped the church’s pastoral ministry. Today, we call Evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God’s story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning. In a world of competing stories, we call Evangelicals to recover the truth of God’s word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of Evangelical life.

2. ON THE CHURCH, THE CONTINUATION OF GOD’S NARRATIVE
We call Evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the Church. We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God’s mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the Church a mere addendum to God’s redemptive plan. Individualistic Evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the Church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies and judgmental attitudes toward the Church. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.

3. ON THE CHURCH’S THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON GOD’S NARRATIVE
We call for the Church’s reflection to remain anchored in the Scriptures in continuity with the theological interpretation learned from the early Fathers. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from methods that separate theological reflection from the common traditions of the Church. These modern methods compartmentalize God’s story by analyzing its separate parts, while ignoring God’s entire redemptive work as recapitulated in Christ. Anti-historical attitudes also disregard the common biblical and theological legacy of the ancient Church. Such disregard ignores the hermeneutical value of the Church’s ecumenical creeds. This reduces God’s story of the world to one of many competing theologies and impairs the unified witness of the Church to God’s plan for the history of the world. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to unity in “the tradition that has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” as well as to humility and charity in their various Protestant traditions.

4. ON THE CHURCH’S WORSHIP AS TELLING AND ENACTING GOD’S NARRATIVE
We call for public worship that sings, preaches and enacts God’s story. We call for a renewed consideration of how God ministers to us in baptism, Eucharist, confession, the laying on of hands, marriage, healing and through the charisma of the Spirit, for these actions shape our lives and signify the meaning of the world. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from forms of worship that focus on God as a mere object of the intellect or that assert the self as the source of worship. Such worship has resulted in lecture-oriented, music-driven, performance-centered and program-controlled models that do not adequately proclaim God’s cosmic redemption. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover the historic substance of worship of Word and Table and to attend to the Christian year, which marks time according to God’s saving acts.

5. ON SPIRITUAL FORMATION IN THE CHURCH AS EMBODIMENT OF GOD’S NARRATIVE
We call for a catechetical spiritual formation of the people of God that is based firmly on a Trinitarian biblical narrative. We are concerned when spirituality is separated from the story of God and baptism into the life of Christ and his Body. Spirituality, made independent from God’s story, is often characterized by legalism, mere intellectual knowledge, an overly therapeutic culture, New Age Gnosticism, a dualistic rejection of this world and a narcissistic preoccupation with one’s own experience. These false spiritualities are inadequate for the challenges we face in today’s world. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to return to a historic spirituality like that taught and practiced in the ancient catechumenate.

6. ON THE CHURCH’S EMBODIED LIFE IN THE WORLD
We call for a cruciform holiness and commitment to God’s mission in the world. This embodied holiness affirms life, biblical morality and appropriate self-denial. It calls us to be faithful stewards of the created order and bold prophets to our contemporary culture. Thus, we call Evangelicals to intensify their prophetic voice against forms of indifference to God’s gift of life, economic and political injustice, ecological insensitivity and the failure to champion the poor and marginalized. Too often we have failed to stand prophetically against the culture’s captivity to racism, consumerism, political correctness, civil religion, sexism, ethical relativism, violence and the culture of death. These failures have muted the voice of Christ to the world through his Church and detract from God’s story of the world, which the Church is collectively to embody. Therefore, we call the Church to recover its counter-cultural mission to the world.

EPILOGUE
In sum, we call Evangelicals to recover the conviction that God’s story shapes the mission of the Church to bear witness to God’s Kingdom and to inform the spiritual foundations of civilization. We set forth this Call as an ongoing, open-ended conversation. We are aware that we have our blind spots and weaknesses. Therefore, we encourage Evangelicals to engage this Call within educational centers, denominations and local churches through publications and conferences.
We pray that we can move with intention to proclaim a loving, transcendent, triune God who has become involved in our history. In line with Scripture, creed and tradition, it is our deepest desire to embody God’s purposes in the mission of the Church through our theological reflection, our worship, our spirituality and our life in the world, all the while proclaiming that Jesus is Lord over all creation.

© Northern Seminary 2006 Robert Webber and Phil Kenyon

Conveners: Robert E. Webber, Myers professor of ministry, Northern Seminary; Philip C. Kenyon, director, Grow Center for Biblical Leadership, Northern Seminary.
Theological Editors: Hans Boersma, Packer professor of theology, Regent College; Howard Snyder, professor of world mission, Asbury Theological Seminary, and university professor of world Christianity, Spring Arbor University; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; D. H. Williams, professor of patristics and historical theology, Baylor University.

Major League Baseball refers to the grooming of younger, less advanced players in the minor league system as “player development.” Those minor league affiliates are informally called farm teams.

Farm teams provide mentoring, training, coaching, and practical experience for younger players with the expectation that as a player matures he will advance to a higher level of play and responsibility. The foundation of the minor league system is to invest in younger players for the future of the team. A major league team with a weak farm system may have success for a time but will rarely carry that success into the future.

Those who prepare and lead worship tend to think, plan, and implement in the moment since Sunday comes every week. Investing in future players, singers, and even primary worship leaders is rarely a consideration…until a vacancy occurs. The value of player development is realized when congregations attempt to fill those vacancies. What most find is that the pool of potential replacements out there is often very shallow and those who are available are an unknown quantity.

Implementing a farm team model of developing younger, less advanced players from in here can offer a better-known resource for future leaders. Investing in those who already understand the culture, personality, worship language, and mission of a congregation has a greater potential for success.

Imagine a congregation so successfully implementing this model that they groom more worship leaders than they have places for them to serve. Then…imagine the Kingdom value of getting to farm-out those trained leaders to other congregations who were not as prepared to fill vacancies.

Jaywalking is an informal term commonly used in reference to a pedestrian who crosses a roadway outside the designated crosswalk or without considering signal lights or contextual restrictions. Impatience, intolerance, irritability, or even a restless desire for change can cause a pedestrian to consider jaywalking. Although the goal of jaywalking may be logical, practical, and even noble…to reach a destination by the quickest and most-direct route…the method might not always be prudent, permissible, virtuous, or wise.

Effective leaders embrace and constantly share the goal of fulfilling and helping others fulfill the mission of their organization. A leader who takes short-cuts in order to accelerate the processes to reach that goal without first considering if those they lead are following or even willing to follow is guilty of Leadership Jaywalking. What might appear to a leader to be the quickest and most direct route may seem reckless to those members of the organization who have the same goals but are more comfortable taking safer routes. Ignoring signals of caution can create conflict, sabotage trust, leave those we lead in our wake, and cause us to re-trace our steps. What was intended to expedite the route may in fact lengthen it.

Leadership impatience at the expense of relational buy-in is not any more virtuous when the goal is noble. Effective leaders look ahead with laser vision while still looking beside and behind to confirm buy-in from those with them and those still standing on the curb. Effective leaders should also seek counsel from members of the organization who are habitual crosswalkers just as often as they do the radical jaywalkers.

Note: Effective leaders must also learn to move on in spite of those few detractors not willing to cross at any location at any time. Hindering those on the curb ready to cross who are unified in their calling to cross can be just as reckless and unhealthy as leadership jaywalking.

God never promised that in worship ministry we would always be happy, revered, loved, encouraged, appreciated, followed, and successful. He did, however, promise that He would never leave us or forsake us. So we can say with confidence…
The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? (Heb. 13:5-6; Deut. 31:6)

18th and 19th century sailors superstitiously believed that certain tattoos brought good luck and somehow averted disaster. The H-O-L-D F-A-S-T tattoo with one letter tattooed on each finger was originally derived from the Dutch phrase “Houd” (hold) “Vast” (fast). The tattoo was believed to protect a sailor whose life depended on holding fast to a rope on the ships deck or while working aloft in the ships rigging.

The writer of the book of Hebrews wrote the same words not as superstitious chance but with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith when he wrote, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. (Heb. 10:22-23)

Hold Fast…the God who calls us will also sustain us. Hold Fast…He remembers where we are and where He called us. Hold Fast…in full assurance that He knows what we are going through. Hold Fast…since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God. (Heb. 10:19-21) Hold Fast…our ministry life depends on it.

Hold Fast – Mercy Me

VERSE 1
To everyone who’s hurting
To those who’ve had enough
To all the undeserving
That should cover all of us
Please do not let go
I promise there is hope

CHORUS
Hold fast help is on the way
Hold fast He’s come to save the day
What I’ve learned in my life
One thing greater than my strife
Is His grasp so hold fast

VERSE 2
Will this season ever pass
Can we stop this ride
Will we see the sun at last
Or could this be our lot in life
Please do not let go
I promise you there’s hope

©2006 Simpleville Music, Wet As A Fish Music, Barry Graul, Bart Millard, Jim Bryson, Mike Scheuchzer, Nathan Cochran, Robby Shaffer

The church will never reach its surrounding culture by offering a mediocre prototype of what that culture already has. And yet, in our attempts to reach culture we continue to mimic its language, organization, dress, practices, and music…usually a few notches below in quality or a few steps after that culture has moved on to something new. Seth Godin wrote, “Mediocre services or products do what they’re supposed to, but have set the bar so low that it’s hardly worth the energy to cross the street to buy them.”

Is offering a weak imitation of the practices of a culture that doesn’t know what it needs or where to find it the best we have to offer? The church has had The Next Big Idea for a couple of thousand years…Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And even when the Creator of the universe has offered us unlimited creativity…our comfort, insecurity, or maybe even laziness causes us to look outside the church for ways to promote that idea.

Impacting culture will require the church to take risks. It will require entrepreneurial innovation instead of routinized imitation. It requires leaders and members to become artisans instead of assembly line workers. Terry York and David Bolin wrote, Congregations must speak to and among the surrounding culture in a voice so unique, authentic, and unified that it turns heads: “What was that? It sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I’ve never heard anything like that around here.” Even though those responses from the culture will often come as ridicule, they might just as often come as inquiry. Either way…the church will be influencing culture instead of just reflecting it.

Do we really take seriously Jesus’ final commission to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matt. 28:18-20)? If we do, how can we possibly limit worship to what occurs in that one hour on Sunday?

Mark Labberton in The Dangerous Act of Worship wrote, “Worship can name a Sunday gathering of God’s people, but it also includes how we treat those around us, how we spend our money, and how we care for the lost and the oppressed. Worship can encompass every dimension of our lives.”

We spend the majority of our worship preparation and implementation orchestrating worship for those already connected to what we are doing here. Missional worship is an intentional shift from what we do here to who we are there. If we spend most of our time preparing for that one hour on Sunday at the expense of the other 167 hours of the week we will continue to lose ground in fulfulling that commission.

Missional worship is intentionally connecting those who are already in with those who are not in yet…and probably never will be until those who are in realize that worship is not just what we do at church but who we are in the world.

Eugene Peterson wrote in Christ Plays in Ten-Thousand Places, “Worship is the primary means for forming us as participants in God’s work, but if the blinds are drawn while we wait for Sunday, we aren’t in touch with the work that God is actually doing.” Liturgy literally means the work of the people. If we want to make progress we must not only do liturgy at church but also be liturgy in the world.

Panache is dashing confidence, style, flamboyance, flair, and refined ability presented with gracefulness.

Envy is irrational and covetous discontent as a result of another’s perceived superior qualities, advantages, achievements, and successes. Harold Coffin wrote, “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.”

The potential for Panache Envy is high since worship leaders do not need to look far to find another who is younger, plays guitar better, gets more recognition, has an edgier band, has a larger choir, gets called to a bigger church, sings with more passion, has a healthier relationship with his/her pastor, or has a better platform presence.

It is tempting to look to the left or right to see how we measure up. Instead, we must run this race by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). Focusing on Jesus instead of the accomplishments of others allows us to lead with an attitude of contentment, not comparison. Contentment is faithfully leading the ministry God has given you. Envy is coveting the ministry you wish He had given you.

Arthur Chapman wrote, “Envy is like a fly that passes all the body’s sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores.”

The idiom Jump the Shark originated from a 1977 episode of the sitcom Happy Days when a water skiing, leather jacket wearing Fonzie actually jumped over a shark.

Jumping the Shark is the moment an established organization implements processes, procedures, programs, or even the use of gimmickry just to stay fresh or boost ratings. Ironically, instead of achieving relevance, the efforts sometimes move the organization past the peak of the previous performance that initially defined its success and impact.

Congregations should seek worship renewal as a continuous process realized through a deeper understanding of worship grounded biblically, theologically, and historically. The reality is often crisis motivated change to encourage church growth, reach multiple generations, minimize conflict, and remain relevant to the surrounding culture…sometimes causing a congregation to Jump the Shark.

Your worship may have Jumped the Shark if…

• You have terminated a worship leader on the basis of age or platform appearance.
• You are depending on a change in musical style alone to save or grow your church.
• The loudest voice heard usually dictates musical choices and that voice is not the voice of the Father.
• Your song selection is based solely on the CCLI top twenty-five, What’s Hot section of PraiseCharts, or the hymnal.
• Songs are intentionally ignored if they are more than a decade old or newer than 1970.
• The only version of a song you lead must be exactly like the original artist’s version…including the key.
• Scripture and prayer have been minimized to make room for more music, visual aids, props, or other creative expressions.
• The preached Word always takes priority over the read, prayed, sung, played, danced, dramatized, symbolized, and testified Word.
• As a leader you do worship for them instead of helping them do it.
• Your leadership conveys that worship starts when you start it, ends when you end it, and won’t start again until you start it the next week.
• Your services are modeled after the observed success of another congregation without even considering the culture of your own congregation.
• You select or don’t select songs and other worship elements according to how you might appear to your ministry colleagues in other congregations.
• You are conveying that dressing up or dressing down will ensure worship occurs.
• As the worship leader you justify your preferences as more spiritual while criticizing congregants who do the same.

Jesus engaged the Samaritan woman at the well in a conversation that moved from the physical…thirst, to the spiritual…living water. When the woman attempted to change the subject back to the physical of the where and how of worship, Jesus turned the conversation again to her spiritual condition and the who of worship. “God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

Her focus began to move toward the spiritual when the woman said, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he” (v. 26). Shift happened when the woman encountered and acknowledged Jesus, joined his conversation instead of expecting him to join hers, and then sacrificed the agenda that originally brought her to that place…she left her water pot and went into the city (v. 28).

Shift is a change in place, position, direction, or tendency resulting in a transformation of emphasis or focus.

Evidence that shift produced transformation occurred when she went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things I have done” (v. 29). She was not only willing to sacrifice her agenda; she was also willing to sacrifice comfort and preference. She obviously knew where to find the men…she had been in a relationship with half of them. And “all the things I have done” probably included many of their names. Yet, she was willing to set all fear of embarrassment and maybe even livelihood aside because shift happened.

Ultimately, as a result of shift and transformation “many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (v. 39).

That style of worship may not have been the woman’s preference but when shift happened her preference no longer became that important. What a great example of offering your body as a living sacrifice as your spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1).

Most congregations can answer affirmatively when asked if their worship welcomes those not like them…all are welcome if or when they come.

Where the conflict arises is when a congregation changes its culture in order to be intentionally welcoming to those not like them.

Welcoming worship never compromises biblically, theologically, or doctrinally but often accommodates culturally, contextually, and systematically.  Welcoming worship loves my neighbor as I love myself even if my neighbor is not always lovely.

Welcoming worship is not just what we do at church on Sunday, it is who we are and how we treat people out in the world every day.  Welcoming worship purposefully considers those who are often neglected and easily ignored. Welcoming worship affirms that, “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God” (Prov. 14:31).

• Welcome is passive. Welcoming is active.
• Welcome is safe. Welcoming is usually risky.
• Welcome is occasional. Welcoming is frequent.
• Welcome may be accidental. Welcoming is always deliberate.
• Welcome is comfortable. Welcoming can stretch.
• Welcome satisfies givers. Welcoming won’t pay the bills.
• Welcome waits. Welcoming initiates.
• Welcome controls. Welcoming unleashes.
• Welcome tolerates. Welcoming embraces.
• Welcome hoards. Welcoming gives away.
• Welcome is preferential. Welcoming is sacrificial.
• Welcome focuses just on those who are present. Welcoming includes those who are not and may never be present.

Welcoming worship loves, honors, and praises the Father by loving those He loves. Could worship be any more profound?

In an often-replayed press conference, basketball superstar Allen Iverson responded to questions from reporters about the losing season his team experienced. When asked if the focus of a closed-door discussion with his coach occurred in response to his habit of missing practice, Iverson responded with: “Hey I hear you, it’s funny to me too, hey it’s strange to me too but we’re talking about practice man, we’re not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we’re talking about practice.” A reporter followed up with the question, “Is it possible that if you practiced you could help make your teammates better?” Iverson responded with, “How in the (expletive) could I make my teammates better by practicing?”

In the seventeenth century at the age of 24, Lawrence of the Resurrection, born Nicolas Herman, joined the Discalced Carmelite order of the Catholic Church in Paris. As an uneducated monk who served as a cook in a French monastery, Brother Lawrence found himself practicing the presence of God while pealing potatoes as well as when he was kneeling in prayer. His recorded words reflect that dedication when he wrote, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”

Practice is repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency. It is learning through repetition, which then becomes habit. Brother Lawrence wrote, “There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”

If worshipers habitually practiced the presence of God throughout the week…what could occur when they got to practice God’s presence together on Sunday? Although our verbal response to practice during the week may not be as overtly profane as that of Allen Iverson, our actions often convey the same disdain. A singular focus on Sunday worship communicates that worship begins and ends with our opening and closing songs. To loosely quote one of the reporters, “Is it possible that if we practiced during the week we could get better and also help make our teammates better?”

Worship leaders…we must lead them, exhort them, model for them, and teach them to worship not only when they meet but also when they disperse. What occurs on Sunday should be an overflow of what has already occurred during the week…with an added benefit of getting to share it with others.

Additional Quotes from the Writings of Brother Lawrence
In continuing the practice of conversing with God throughout each day, and quickly seeking His forgiveness when I fell or strayed, His presence has become as easy and natural to me now as it once was difficult to attain.

We should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence by continually conversing with Him. It is a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries.

I am doing what I shall do through all eternity – blessing God, praising God, adoring God, giving Him the love of my whole heart. It is our one business, my brethren, to worship Him and love Him, without thought of anything else.

Believe me; count as lost each day you have not used in loving God.

People seek methods of learning to know God. Is it not much shorter and more direct to simply do everything for the love of Him? There is no finesse about it. One only has to do it generously and simply.

We are made for God alone, who can only be pleased when we turn away from ourselves to devote ourselves to Him.

The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.

We ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.

How can we pray to Him without being with Him? How can we be with Him without thinking of Him often? And how can we think of Him but by a holy habit we should form of it?

The more one knows God, the greater one desires to know Him. Knowledge is commonly the measure of love. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love.

We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.

God does not ask much of us. But remembering Him, praising Him, asking for His grace, offering Him your troubles, or thanking Him for what He has given you will console you all the time … lift up your heart … little remembrances please Him.

We should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence by continually conversing with Him. It is a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries.

It is a great delusion to think our times of prayer ought to differ from other times. We are as strictly obliged to cleave to God by action in the time of action as by prayer in the season of prayer.

In an effort to appease multi-generations and minimize conflict, leaders either attempt to seek stylistic and musical common ground or they divide themselves along age and preference lines.  Except in rare instances, it appears from both efforts that the worshiping community suffers and all generations lose.  The impasse is a result of trying to accommodate the musical tastes of a congregation made up of both 20^th and 21^st century leaders, learners, and worshipers.

Gary Parrett and Steven Kang wrote, “Churches must realize that it takes the whole community of faith to raise the children of that community in the faith.  But, many American churches have moved with fierce determination to separate the generations from one another to provide more generation specific ministry.  Tragically, such an approach to ministry can easily have the effect of encouraging the segregated ‘generations’ to be unduly absorbed with their own needs and to have little concern for others.  This runs both ways – from older to younger and younger to older.  But it is the younger who suffer most in such an arrangement.  And it is the older who will have to give account for shirking their God-appointed duties toward the young.”[1]

Differences between 20^th and 21^st century worshipers:

• 20^th century worshipers are linear, written text, and physical; 21^st century worshipers are multi-sensory, hypertext, and virtual.
• 20^th century worshipers are independent…independent is owned; 21^st century worshipers are collaborative…collaborative is shared.
• 20^th century worshipers are stationary…for a lifetime; 21^st century worshipers are mobile…for a season.
• 20^th century worshipers are deductive…deductive is top-down; 21^st century worshipers are inductive…inductive is bottom-up.  Note:  The weakness of inductive is its limitations in building doctrine.  The weakness of deductive is its susceptibility to being infected with dogma.
• 20^th century worshipers are local; 21^st century worshipers are global.
• 20^th century worship is routinized…it has worked for generations…why change? 21^st century worship is creative…it has been around for generations…why not try something new?  Routinized is predictable; Creative is often unpredictable.

Obviously, the previous list is a generalization.  If however, even a few of the differences are evident in the cultures of our congregations how can we ever hope to find common ground?  The answer is…we probably can’t…at least not in those differences.

Multi-generational worship is only possible if our common ground is deference instead of preference.  Deference is a learned and practiced submission based on conviction…preference is based on feeling and tradition.  Deference encourages worshipers to respond in spite of the circumstances of the tradition and embedded theology that previously influenced their thinking and actions.  Deference offers a common ground that style and musical preferences never will.

Deference is the agreement that although we may not always love the music of our children and grandchildren…we love our children and grandchildren.  Deference is the willingness to set aside our preferences for the good of and future of those children and grandchildren.  Multi-generational worship will occur when the only battle is over who can offer/give the most instead of who deserves/demands the most.

A conditional statement is one that is put in the form of if A, then B where A is called the premise, hypothesis, or antecedent and B is called the conclusion or consequent.  If…then statements are used extensively in the form of logic referred to as deductive reasoning.

Is worship conditional?  The short answer is yes but our premises and conclusions to achieve that answer are often flawed.  The universal hypothesis and the place where worship conflict originates is in our reasoning that if we sing it and play it in a certain way…then worship will occur.  The conflict arises in the realization that the certain way varies from person to person and congregation to congregation.  Deductive reasoning would then cause us to conclude that if it is not sung or played in a certain way…then worship will not occur.

If how we sing and play our music is necessary for worship to occur…then music has devolved into worship foreplay.  Instead of offering us a way to express our worship it serves as preparation for our worship.  Based on this reasoning, at what point does our music evolve from worship preparation to actual worship?

Worship is indeed conditional but the conditions are not of our own making.  In reality, the conditions have already been met…Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. If we affirm this mystery of our faith…then how can we keep from worshiping?  If worship is our response to how these truths have been and continue to be manifested in our lives…then worship will occur in spite of what we sing and play, not as a result of what we sing and play.

King David danced in his boxers at least twice.

The first account is recorded in 2 Samuel 6 when David and his men brought the Ark of the Covenant (the symbol of God’s presence) back to Jerusalem.  David was so overcome that he danced before the Lord with all his might in reckless worship.  His complete abandon caused David to dance right out of his clothes, completely disregarding how he was dressed or what others might think.

The second account is found in 2 Samuel 11 when David observed a beautiful woman, Bathsheba bathing on her roof and summoned her to his house.  David was so overcome that he danced before Bathsheba with all his might in reckless worship.  His complete abandon caused David to dance right out of his clothes, completely disregarding how he was dressed or what others might think.

Both dances were profound acts of worship.  In both instances David was so focused on the object of his affection that his clothes inadvertently fell to the ground.  The only difference in the two dances was who or what was being worshiped.

Worship conflict occurs when the object (for whom or what we are willing to dance) is anyone or anything other than God the Father through His Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The subject (how we dance) can be varied as long as the subject never becomes the object of our affection.  Dancing to the tune of what I want, what I deserve, what I prefer, what I like, and what my tradition calls for is one of the dances David danced…and one we continue to dance thousands of years later.

Dance, dance, wherever you may be

I am the lord of the dance, said he

And I lead you all, wherever you may be

And I lead you all in the dance, said he

“Lord of the Dance” Sydney Carter

When…

• A special business meeting is called to recommend relaxing worship attire in an effort to encourage additional participation in congregational singing…recommendations include skinny jeans and spandex body suits.

• The Vienna Boys Choir visits your service as a final warm-up before embarking on their American concert tour.

• The worship pastor petitions CCLI to add the songs Kiss by the formerly and presently known artist Prince…to be used in the contemporary service and The Righteous Brother’s Unchained Melody…to be used in the traditional service for the “building a healthy marriage” sermon series.

• The worship arts office receives a gift basket each Christmas from the local urologist for annual per capita hernia referrals.

• Neighborhood dogs dread Sundays.

• Middle school boys actually sing in the worship services.

• The worship leader realizes that contorted facial expressions and raised hands once attributed to Holy Spirit conviction are in reality an involuntary response to throat pain and oxygen deprivation.

• Leaders wonder why the bomber wing of the local air force base planned training exercises on Sunday morning only to realize the droning sound was actually the men of the congregation singing an octave lower.

• An original key introduction to a Chris Tomlin song causes the congregation to break into a cold sweat just as an outside stimulus elicited an involuntary response in Pavlov’s dog.

• Multi-generations love your worship…adolescent girls because it reminds them of a Justin Bieber concert and senior adult ladies because it reminds them of a Neil Sedaka concert.

• The personnel team recommends a pastor of otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat) and small groups as the next staff hire.

• Conversational references to the Ethiopian Eunuch seem to surface just a little too often.

Worship service prayer has been relegated to the role of a worship service utility infielder.  It is plugged into worship service holes as a jack-of-all-trades transitional service element. Instead of a profound conversation with the Father as an act of worship, prayer is used to allow a final breath of fresh air before a long service section, to break up a song set when keys or styles are not relative, to assure senior adult deacons that they still have value in the new worship format, or to discreetly move the worship band to the platform.

Our desire for prayer spontaneity has evolved into a routine of predictable leaders leading predictable prayers at predictable times.  When trite prayer clichés cause the minds of the pray-ers as well as the pray-ees to wander…it is no wonder that spontaneous prayer seems superficial.

Hughes Oliphant Old wrote, “For many generations American Protestants have prized spontaneity in public prayer.  One has to admit, however, that the spontaneous prayer one often hears in public worship is an embarrassment to the tradition.  It all too often lacks content.  It may be sincere, but sometimes it is not very profound.  One notices sometimes that the approach to prayer that these prayers reveal is immature, if not simply misleading.  Spontaneity needs to be balanced by careful preparation and forethought.  It needs to be supported by an intense prayer life.  One must be well experienced in prayer to lead in prayer.  One can hardly lead if one does not know the way oneself.  Spontaneity has to arise from a profound experience of prayer.”[1]

Eugene Peterson wrote the forward for the new book, Dumbfounded Praying, written by Harold Best.  Peterson wrote, “Prayer is a natural and authentic substratum of language.  But there is an irony here: prayer, language at its most honest, is also the easiest language to fake:  We discover early on that we can pretend to pray, use the words of prayer, practice forms of prayer, assume postures of prayer, acquire a reputation for prayer, and never pray.”[2]

Harold Best writes, “I believe more than ever that the age-old craft of writing prayers should be re-visited by all of us, for it accomplishes three things. First, the writer is literally forced into levels of thought, scriptural usage, and architectural cogency that are not possible in the kind of spontaneous praying that one usually does in private, and sad to say, is often found in the typical pastoral prayers in corporate worship.  Second, even though writing prayers takes time, time is the very thing we need and must take to bring prayer into a greater sweep and cogency.  But third, what goes around comes around:  the more we tackle and work through the really tough issues and the more we force these into thought-out and written form, the more skilled we can become in extemporaneous prayer.”[3]

If we spent as much time understanding and teaching the profundity of prayer as we presently spend trying to teach new songs or protect the old ones could worship conflict be abated?  If experience and preparation expectations were just as stringent for leading in public prayer as our requirements for a worship service soloist or choir anthem, could our worship be radically impacted?  This new book by Harold Best can serve as a great companion tool to help leaders figure that out.

[2] Eugene H. Peterson, as quoted in Harold M. Best, Dumbfounded Praying (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), xii.

[3] Harold M. Best, Dumbfounded Praying, xix.

On January 18, 1915, one day short of her destination, the sailing vessel Endurance encountered thick pack ice.  The leader of the expedition, Sir Ernest Shackelton, and captain of the ship Frank Worsley decided that rather than tax the engine trying to break through the ice, they would wait for an opening.  During the night the ice closed around the ship, holding the Endurance and trapping her for good.  It was only after a few days that the leaders and crew realized they were trapped in the ice until the austral spring…nine months away.

For more than six months the Endurance was carried along at the mercy of the ice.  The floes first took the Endurance west for a few hundred miles, then roughly north for another thousand miles.  The leaders and crew time and again tried to free the Endurance but the ice was too thick.  The pressure on the hull continued to build each day causing the ship to heel over and rise at her bow.  After being stuck in the floes for more than half a year the pressure finally crushed the ship and stranded the crew.

Ice is just as prevalent and dangerous to shipping vessels now as it was nearly 100 years ago.  The difference is the accessibility of advanced navigation resources that were not available to the captain and crew of the Endurance.  And yet, experts indicate numerous ships are beset in ice each year as a result of not being entirely fit for the purpose, crews who are not sufficiently trained, and a desire for commercial gain without considering the cost.  Does that sound like the way your congregation approaches and leads change in your worship ministry?

The following principles for safely navigating icy waters can also offer great wisdom as your congregation considers and leads change within the parameters of your ministry context:

• When facing icy waters, three basic ship handling rules apply:  (1) keep moving, even if very slowly, (2) try to work with the ice movement, not against it, and (3) do not forget that excessive speed leads to damage from contact with unpredictable ice.
• Any seafarer knows that navigating a ship through icy waters requires great patience.  Alterations of the course are made as gradually as possible.  As a result of sharp turns, a ship is in danger of structural damage when it collides with the floes at the side of the channel.
• Poor visibility is often prevalent in icy waters.  Forward vision and advanced sighting must be given careful consideration, for false horizons are frequently observed in ice.  Implementing an advanced sighting system is used to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects.
• Ships operating in ice should be ballasted and trimmed so that the propeller is completely submerged and as deep as possible to encourage optimum stability and maneuverability.
• The propeller and the rudder are the most vulnerable parts of the ship.  Even when a ship starts to become beset she should keep her engines moving slowly forward to keep ice from the propellers.  Violent rudder movements should only be used in extreme emergencies.
• Every opportunity should be taken to use experienced leads or icebreaking vessels to scout a safe path through ice.  Masters of icebreakers are highly skilled and experienced in the field of ice navigation, icebreaking, and ice escorting.  Icebreakers use reconnaissance to locate leads, open water, and also highlight potential dangers.  Escorted vessels must follow at a safe distance in the wake of the properly fitted and experienced icebreaker and not venture into the ice on their own.
• The escorted vessel must keep officers on the bridge who are thoroughly acquainted with the icebreaker signals to promptly acknowledge and execute those signals for optimum safety.
• Anchoring should be avoided in a heavy concentration of ice.  Since the ice is unpredictable and in constant motion it can damage a stationary ship and break her anchor cable.

Worship change is sometimes necessary as congregations consider their prevailing culture and context.  Craig Satterlee wrote, “Any change can be approached as either a threat or an opportunity, either a cause for celebration or a reason to despair.”[1]

Initiating change can be painful and at times even devastating, especially when congregations press forward without first considering the cost or ignore available resources and experienced personnel who could potentially facilitate healthier change.  It can be just as devastating, however, when a congregation is hesitant to change even when it is obvious that change is necessary.  Failing to initiate change when change is inevitable can cause a congregation to get stuck, force them to drift out of control for an undetermined season, potentially crush the structure of the organization, and ultimately leave the leaders and congregants stranded.

“Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it”…Harry Emerson Fosdick

What is the focus of our worship when in a worship service we sing, “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing?”  Shortly after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the Dallas Morning News wrote, “The American flag has replaced the cross as the most visible symbol in many churches across the country.”[1]

Congregations who choose not to sing and play patriotic songs in the context of their services of worship are often viewed as unpatriotic.  And yet, those congregations who choose to set God’s story completely aside to devote their entire worship service to patriotic songs and actions are rarely viewed as idolatrous.

In his book Unceasing Worship, Harold Best writes, “There is one fundamental fact about worship:  at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone – an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ.”[2] Best continues by writing, “All worship outside the worship of God through Christ Jesus is idolatrous.”[3]

Is there a way for American congregations to pay homage to our country and honor those who have died so that we can live freely without dishonoring Christ who died so that we might live eternally?  Certainly…as long as we never forget that Christian worship is stepping into God’s story…not asking God to step into our story…even when our story has such deep history and affections.  It is no longer Christian worship when God is the addendum.  How is your congregation doing?

[2] Harold M. Best, Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 17.

[3] Ibid., 163.

My childhood home was a frame house located next door to a small strip mall.  The attic of our home had been converted into a great bedroom for a boy.  The strip mall located next door consisted of a radio and television shop, various business offices, and a pharmacy at the far end of the mall. From my bedroom window I could see across the roofline of the 5 or 6 small stores and shops.

One night, my parents were awakened by the pharmacy burglar alarm.  My dad contacted the police and then awakened me to let me know what was happening.  We watched in the darkness of my bedroom as a thief attempted to access the pharmacy through its roof with a pickaxe.

When the police arrived the burglar attempted to elude them by running across the rooftops toward our house.  It was obvious that he intended to jump between the stores and our house to escape capture.  My always-prepared dad temporarily blinded the intruder by pointing a huge flashlight in his eyes the moment he jumped.

From the street it appeared that our house and the strip mall were only one-story structures.  In reality, because of the slope of our side yard, where the thief intended to jump was actually three-stories high.  The hapless criminal landed in a heap on our metal garbage cans and was easily apprehended and arrested by the police.  He had jumped blindly without considering all of the circumstances or the consequences.

Change is inevitable as leaders and the organizations they lead consider their prevailing culture and context.  Since change is often necessary for those organizations to progress, the automatic assumption is that change will always require incorporating something completely new.  It is possible that the only new necessary is for the organization to do what they are already doing…better.  Chip and Dan Heath remind us that, “We rarely ask the question:  What’s working and how can we do more of it? What we ask instead is more problem-focused:  What’s broken and how do we fix it?”[1] Leaders must also consider that the only new really essential to organizational success may reside in the revitalization of the attitude and resolve of the leader… not with the structure or practices of the organization.

Leaders often plunge into the stream of change without reflecting on the past and present circumstances that frame the structure and practices of their organization.  In their rush to do something fresh they rarely consider the consequences that could occur as a result of ignoring those circumstances.  Andy Stanley challenges leaders with the understanding that, “Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality.  If you don’t know where you really are, it is impossible to get to where you need to be.  What you don’t know can kill you.”[2] The old idiom look before you leap continues to offer wisdom for leaders who have the tendency to jump blindly into mindless change.

[2] Stanley, Andy, The Next Generation Leader (Sisters: Multnomah, 2003), 75.

In my previous post I shared the compiled and consolidated responses to the question, “Worship Leader…what do you wish your senior pastor knew about you and your ministry that you’ve never had the freedom to discuss and doubt he will ever ask?”  Numerous worship leaders from multiple states responded to the initial question posed through email and other social media networks.  Additional responses were also received after the initial post and were added as responses to the original post.

It was evident from most of the responses that limited communication is the most pressing relationship issue for senior pastors and worship leaders.  The posted responses were intentionally one-sided to highlight the stalemate that is evident in many congregations.

Not all ministry teams, however, are experiencing leadership and relationship failure.  Numerous respondents offered reasons why they appreciate their pastor, his ministry, and his leadership.  Their responses are offered below to remind us that relationships such as these do not just happen.  Their candid responses can offer hope for those who do not or do not yet have a similar relationship; and provide affirmation to the leadership, relationship, and spiritual characteristics modeled by those who do.

If you serve in a healthy ministry relationship you have undoubtedly observed from the previous post and in conversations with your counterparts that you may be in the minority.  You are truly blessed to be serving with those who intentionally desire and work toward relationship health! One final question for you…have you told them?

• My pastor is very easy to talk to and is readily available to discuss worship issues.  He affirms and models the power of the Holy Spirit as we plan and implement worship together.
• He is willing to move the sermon to various places in the service or even break the sermon up into sections with other worship elements between those sections.  He reminds our staff and congregation that the sermon may not always be the most important worship element of the service.
• We have weekly meetings with just the two of us…in addition to our regular staff meeting with all staff.  We pray together, review the previous service, talk about personal and ministry goals, share concerns, and dream about upcoming services and future worship ideas.  He models the understanding that communication, authenticity, grace, common vision, and goal setting are essential to a healthy and successful team.
• It is obvious from his words and actions that he trusts me.  First, he has trust that God has called me to ministry.  And second, that God has called me to ministry here.  This trust is foundational even when we don’t agree.  If our trust in God is foundational and our trust in each other is built on that foundation, disagreements do not strain the relationship.
• My pastor models personal and spiritual disciplines.  He demonstrates spiritual maturity, love and care for his family, respect and support for ministry colleagues, friendly and concerned sensitivity to those he minsters to, work related competence and flexibility, healthy interaction with all cultures and generations, and problem solving with profound wisdom.  This is a ministry model that I respect and aspire to.
• I have absolute freedom to express my thoughts, ideas, and concerns openly and honestly.  I never take this blessing for granted because I have many friends in ministry who are not so fortunate.
• My pastor genuinely affirms me privately and publicly even when I am not around.  He is investing in me personally not just for the good of the church and our ministry but to encourage growth in me.  With this foundation it is much easier to take correction from him because it is never condescending.  Correction from him never feels like a reprimand it seems like mentoring.
• I am tremendously blessed by having a good relationship with my pastor.  We have an open line of communication and no subject is off limits.  I serve as a volunteer worship leader and wouldn’t trade my position for a paying position unless it was with my pastor.
• We are very different in personality and leadership style.  My pastor is an introvert who flies by the seat of his pants.  I am an ambivert who loves to have a plan.  Instead of being frustrated with our differences…he champions them privately and publicly.  He allows me to push occasionally to alleviate frustration and slows me down occasionally to alleviate stress.
• The grace of God we have both experienced in our personal lives has humbled us and formed a bond that can endure all kinds of obstacles.  This foundation is built on something much deeper than what we do and plan each week.  It has enabled us to extend grace to each other even when we might not deserve it.  Our healthy relationship is evident to our congregation and has contributed to our worship leadership and ministry relationships.
• My pastor reminds the congregation that his responsibility is to bring the spoken Word and my responsibility is to share the Word through music and other worship elements.  He has helped them (and me) understand that all of these are profound acts of worship with equal calling and responsibility.  His approach reminds them that his contribution is much bigger than himself and that the contributions of others (including me) are just as important as his.  How could I not appreciate a pastor who leads like this?
• The first pastor I worked with spoiled me.  We often went to lunch together, socialized as families, had staff retreats, prayed together, and planned together.  This pastor took time to get to know my family and me.
• A previous pastor I served with always had an open door policy.  Even though he was very busy, he was never too busy to visit with me.  I tried never to abuse this luxury.
• He has given our staff permission to disagree (sometimes heatedly) behind closed doors as long as we are unified in public.  This requires a great deal of humble confidence and trust.
• Our pastor encourages a team approach to ministry.  We are mutually accountable to each other.
• My pastor constantly stresses the importance of a highly functioning staff by valuing the gifts that each person brings to this ministry.  This frees us to be as creative as the Holy Spirit leads us to be.  He is never threatened by those gifts and how we express them.  I am making far less money in this position than I was in a previous position that was very dysfunctional…but I am excited every day to be doing what I am doing in this place.
• From the very beginning of our relationship my pastor stressed the importance of communicating expectations to each other.  This laid the foundation for continuing this practice of an open line of communication in all areas of our ministry.  Even when we disagree we can discuss those disagreements openly without fear of retribution.  The freedom to openly discuss issues has caused us both to occasionally change directions in our thinking.  We trust each other and know decisions are based on the prompting of the Holy Spirit…not just on ideology.
• My pastor models trust based on a common vision of seeking and doing God’s will.  He has openly communicated to the staff and the congregation that God has gifted each staff member with unique gifts to enhance Kingdom work in our church.  When one of us realizes success in our area of ministry, our pastor is the first one to affirm that success privately and publicly.  He believes he is successful when we are successful.  I can’t imagine a more healthy place to minister.

The relationship rift between senior pastors and worship leaders has escalated to epidemic proportions.  Ironically, it seems that this impasse rarely occurs in response to song selections and worship change.  Most of the conflict is a result of leadership deficiencies and a lack of communication.  Many worship leaders do not have the freedom to start the conversation as it relates to this communication gridlock.

I recently asked the following question through email and other social media outlets:  “Worship Leader…what do you wish your senior pastor knew about you and your ministry that you’ve never had the freedom to discuss and doubt he will ever ask?”  This question was posed in an effort to begin a dialogue that is not happening in most churches.  The intent is not as an anonymous forum just to criticize senior pastors.  In fact, a similar question could also have been asked of senior pastors in response to their relationship with their worship pastor.

Numerous worship leaders responded from multiple states.  The responses below have been compiled, consolidated, and edited to protect the confidentiality of the respondents.  Additional confidential responses or comments are encouraged and can be added to this post by emailing me:  dmanner@kncsb.org.  I will edit additional comments to protect privacy before adding them as responses to this post.

• Worship and preaching are partners, not competitors.  I wish my pastor would see me as a partner in ministry who respects his leadership and honors his role of authority and responsibility.  When I am doing my job well it should not be viewed as a threat to his leadership…it should affirm his leadership.

• The number one problem in our ministry relationship is the lack of communication.  His response has not been favorable when I have requested better communication.  It appears to me that my pastor doesn’t want to communicate or doesn’t see the need for it.  I do…and don’t feel the freedom to initiate that without jeopardizing my position.

• My pastor never challenges my worship leadership or the direction of our worship but also is never a promoter of it.  Ignoring worship issues conveys a lack of interest or fear of conflict and minimizes its value for our congregation.  More people will join the choir, sing in the worship team, and play instruments when the senior pastor publicly and privately affirms these areas of ministry and sees their value for our congregation.

• I view my pastor as the primary worship leader in our congregation.  If he has an unhealthy view of worship the church will emulate his unhealthy view despite my encouragement to consider healthier worship practices.

• Just singing catchy, rhythmic tunes should not be our response to all worship issues and is not always a healthy biblical view of worship.  Musical changes in our worship will not heal the internal ministry and relationship deficiencies that exist in our relationship and in the relationships of our congregation.

• Preparing musical and technical worship elements often requires weeks and even months of rehearsals and meetings.  Last minute sermon adjustments will usually impact the pastor only.  However, when those last minute sermon adjustments or creative ideas also require service changes it impacts dozens of people in our music and tech ministries.  Spirit led creativity can occur before Friday or Saturday.  A constant culture of last minute changes can destroy relationships with leaders and volunteers.

• The Word of God is also proclaimed through singing, Scripture, testimonies, drama, dance, and video…not just during the sermon.  If more time is needed for the sermon it is too easy to assume we can just cut some other elements of the service…usually the music.  People have prayed and prepared for those elements.  It conveys that what they are doing and have prepared for is insignificant and therefore expendable.

• Most worship leaders have a good grasp of worship service dynamics.  We understand keys, tempos, vocal ranges, song themes, technical aspects, and the logistics of moving people on and off the platform.  Trust us when we say something won’t work musically or logistically.  If we can figure out a way…we will attempt to make it work.  However, there are times when great ideas are impossible to implement.

• I believe God has called me to this worship ministry position, yet I never get the sense that my pastor actually respects that calling.  He has indicated to me that he wants me to lead with confidence and yet doesn’t instill confidence in me through his words, actions, and micromanagement.

• I often don’t find out that my expectations and the expectations of my pastor are misaligned until it is too late.  My approach to ministry becomes a process of guessing about ministry direction and expectations.  I don’t always know what questions to ask or even feel the freedom to ask questions to clarify direction until after the fact.  By that time I am in hot water.  I occasionally need affirmation that I am moving in the right direction not just criticism when I am not.  The first question I now catch myself asking of our worship is, “Will my pastor be pleased?” instead of “Will God be pleased?”

• Sometimes I am discouraged and overwhelmed.  I do not want to come across as a grumbler or complainer.  I don’t feel the freedom to bring this up with my pastor unless he initiates it…and he rarely if ever does.  I wish my pastor would ask me questions such as, “How do you feel about…what are your thoughts on…and are you feeling overwhelmed with?”

• Our personalities and gifts are very different.  Since we don’t ever communicate, those differences contribute to conflict.  If we could communicate and champion our differences we could leverage them for better ministry success.

• It would be helpful for my pastor to visit with me regularly about how God is leading him in his preaching and how my worship planning could enhance what he is learning and sharing from God’s word.  I wish we could pray together, read and study together, dream together, and collaborate together.  It is impossible to have a relationship like this when we rarely even talk.  The key to a healthy relationship is agreeing that there will be nothing he doesn’t know about me and nothing I will not know about him.  A relationship like this requires a tremendous amount of trust, respect, common purpose, and shared vision for where we minister together.

• I defend my pastor privately and publicly and wish he would do the same for me.  If someone has a concern with my leadership I would appreciate it if he would defend me and then discuss the issue in private with me instead of always siding with those who have concerns.  How effective could we be if we had permission to question and even disagree behind closed doors for the purpose of being unified and affirming in public?

• I constantly sense through his words and actions that I am really not the person my pastor wishes he had in this ministry position.  It is obvious he has a model or template for what a worship pastor should look like, how old he should be, how he should lead, and how he should act.  I don’t fit that model or measure up to his expectations.  His discontent is manifested in a passive resistance to things I initiate.

• Why won’t my pastor take the time to get to know my family and me on a more personal basis?  We have a very limited relationship inside our ministry and no relationship outside of our ministry.  It is difficult for my family to follow his leadership on Sunday when they know how he treats me during the week.

• I understand that a healthy relationship requires work from both parties and that some of my deficiencies have contributed to our communication failures.  I am willing to work on those deficiencies and would welcome healthy communication, mentoring, and guidance.

Free solo climbing or free soloing is climbing without safety ropes, harnesses, protective gear, or the assistance of other climbers.  The free soloist relies only on his or her own strength, ability, and mental determination.  Physical and mental stamina alone can’t protect the free soloist from the inherent risks of loose rocks or sudden changes in weather.  The dangers associated with this form of extreme climbing cannot be controlled completely by the abilities of the climber.  When a mistake is made or outside forces intervene…free solo climbers rarely get a second chance.

Before he died in a climbing accident, British free solo rock climber Derek Hershey told the New York Times: “Observers think [I've] got a death wish.  But there’s nothing else that makes me feel so alive. . . When you’re free soloing, you can’t afford to be distracted.  You concentrate on the flow from move to move to move.  You exist only in the present.”[1]

Most of us can’t imagine taking the personal risk required to participate in such an extreme sport as free solo climbing. And yet, we continually lead our ministries and organizations depending only on our own strength, ability, and talent.  As a result, the personal risk and the risk to our organization could be just as catastrophic.

Experts have indicated that the deaths attributed to free solo climbing could have been avoided by the use of safety ropes.  The term belaying refers to a variety of techniques used in climbing to exert friction on a climbing rope so that a falling climber does not fall very far.  A belayer is a climbing partner who secures the lead climber at the end of the rope and belays out rope as needed.  When a lead climber loses his or her footing the belayer secures the rope, allowing the climber to regain a secure foothold to continue the climb.

The reality is that many of us are so talented that we can succeed alone…for a time. The reality is also that our talent will only take us so far and the time will come when the inherent risks of free soloing in our area of ministry will cause us to fall…also alone. The author of the book of Ecclesiastes wrote, “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.”[2] Leaders, when you fail to secure those trusted belayers before you begin to climb; you too exist only in the present. Without someone to hold the rope you may not get a second chance when you lose your footing.

[2] Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.

In Worship and Mission After Christendom (Scottdale: Herald, 2011), Alan and Eleanor Kreider offer a deeper understanding into how worship and mission are interweaved within the culture of a people who take seriously God’s call to be the church in a world where institutional religion is no longer taken for granted.  This book is a valuable resource for worship leaders and missiologists alike who value the relationship of these two disciplines.

Worship and Mission After Christendom is part of the After Christendom series written to explore the implications of the demise of Christendom and the challenges facing a church now living on the margins of western society.  The authors in this series see the current challenges facing the church not as the loss of a golden age but as opportunities to recover a more biblical and more Christian way of being God’s people in God’s world.

The first book in the After Christendom series offered a definition of post-Christendom:  The culture that emerges as the Christian faith loses coherence within a society that has been definitively shaped by the Christian story and as the institutions that have been developed to express Christian convictions decline in influence.[1]

The author continues by identifying seven transitions that mark the shift from Christendom to post-Christendom, each of which has implications for how Christians understand their role within society:

• From the center to margins: in Christendom the Christian story and the churches were central, but in post-Christendom these are marginal.
• From majority to minority: in Christendom Christians comprised the (often overwhelming) majority, but in post-Christendom we are a minority.
• From settlers to sojourners: in Christendom Christians felt at home in a culture shaped by their story, but in post-Christendom we are aliens, exiles and pilgrims in a culture where we no longer feel at home.
• From privilege to plurality: in Christendom Christians enjoyed many privileges, but in post-Christendom we are one community among many in a plural society.
• From control to witness: in Christendom churches could exert control over society, but in post-Christendom we exercise influence only through witnessing to our story and its implications.
• From maintenance to mission: in Christendom the emphasis was on maintaining a supposedly Christian status quo, but in post-Christendom it is on mission within a contested environment.
• From institution to movement: in Christendom churches operated mainly in institutional mode, but in post-Christendom we must become again a Christian movement.[2]

The term post-Christendom, “Contrary to the claims of some critics, does not imply the withdrawal of Christians or the church from the public realm.”[3] Rather, it suggests that the nature of our involvement in politics, culture and society needs to be renegotiated in light of changing circumstances and changing theological convictions. The ‘post’ aspect of the term invites us to leave behind the compromises of the past; the ‘Christendom’ aspect is a reminder of the legacy with which we must grapple and from which we must learn as we explore uncharted territory.[4]

In worship, Christians “tell and celebrate the story of God and give thanks and praise to the One who is continuing that story.”[5] The Kreider’s continue by writing, “Our worship services have integrity when they attune us to God’s project and when they align us with God’s mission, so that our lives as individual Christians and as Christian communities are invested in who God is and what God is doing.  Further, our acts of worship ascribe worth to God when we allow the God we worship to transform our allegiances, behavior, and priorities in light of God’s character and mission.”[6] The writing of Alan and Eleanor Kreider in Worship and Mission After Christendom will serve as a great resource to help your congregation weather the storms resulting from our changing and changed culture and as a reminder that the foundation of mission and worship has not changed even though culture has.

[2] Ibid., 20.

[3] Craig Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006).

[4] See http://www.postchristendom.com/files/Does%20the%20label%20matter.pdf

[5] Alan Kreider and Eleanor Kreider, Worship and Mission After Christendom (Scottdale: Herald, 2011), 58.

[6] Ibid., 59.

Worship does not invite God’s presence…it acknowledges it.  He has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light that we may declare His praises (1 Peter 2:9).  The Father is seeking the kind of worshipers who worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23).  God initiates…we respond.  God’s revelation occurs when He offers us a glimpse of His activity, His will, His attributes, His judgment, His discipline, His comfort, His hope, and His promises.  Our response is the sometimes spontaneous and sometimes premeditated reply to that revelation…worship.

Theologian Richard Foster wrote, “Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.  Its central reality is found ‘in spirit and truth.’  It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.  Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals.  We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”[1]

Occasionally we actually bump into God in our worship efforts.[2] When this occurs we arrogantly assume the encounter was based on what we sang, said, or did and how we sang, said, or did it.  When what we do or observe others doing seems to have worked, our usual response is to institutionalize and market it as a template in order to achieve the same result each time we gather.  Have we considered that God might be grieved by our arrogance or angered at our insolence when we implore Him each week to show up and show off?  We take credit for instigating God’s presence when in reality He started the conversation, was present long before we arrived, and has been waiting patiently for us to acknowledge Him.

When I was a child my family traveled each summer from Oklahoma to Tennessee for a couple of weeks of vacation with grandparents.  The 1200-mile round-trip in the 1960 station wagon seemed to take forever.  The length of the trip was minimized with the anticipation and excitement that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were expecting us.  As my grandparent’s house came into sight we could always count on seeing my grandmother sitting in the porch swing expectantly waiting for us to arrive.  She had been there for hours.  The Swiss theologian Karl Barth stated that when people assemble in the house of God they are met with expectancy greater than their own.

[1] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1978).

[2] See Fr. Dominic Grassi, Bumping Into God: Finding Grace in Unexpected Places (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999).

When we are at a loss for words we must be reminded that a text has been prepared for us in the Psalms.  When disaster threatens to consume us, the psalmist gives words to express our most profound despair.  When our hymns and songs fall short with clichéd platitudes, the psalms provide hope beyond unexpressed emotions.  John Witvliet reminds us that, “when faced with an utter loss of words and an oversupply of volatile emotions, we best rely not on our own stuttering speech, but on the reliable and profoundly relevant laments of the Hebrew Scriptures.”[1] Walter Brueggemann writes that, “By not using these psalms, we have communicated two messages to people:  either you must not feel that way (angry with God, for example) or, if you feel that way, you must do something about it somewhere else – but not here.”[2]

We have been conditioned to believe that it is more spiritual to avoid expressing grief or despair in worship.  Our public questioning of God is often considered irreverent or maybe even blasphemous.  Our song selections and sermon topics have conveyed that church must always be a happy place and that a positive appearance is less threatening.  If authenticity is a goal of our worship we must honestly and publicly admit that circumstances of life can contribute to hopelessness, cause us to cry out to God in despair, and even demand answers.  We must persistently remind one another that God expects our language of lament and is not threatened by it.

In An Open Letter to Worship Songwriters, Brian McLaren offers the following commentary, “Pain should find its way into song, and these songs should find their way into our churches.  The bitter will make the sweet all the sweeter; without the bitter, the sweet can become cloying, and too many of our churches feel, I think, like Candyland.  Is it too much to ask that we be more honest?  Since doubt is part of our lives, since pain and waiting and as-yet unresolved disappointments are part of our lives, can’t these things be reflected in the songs of our communities?  Doesn’t endless singing about celebration lose its vitality (and even its credibility) if we don’t also sing about the struggle?”

Authenticity grants us permission to admit that events can shake our faith.  Catharsis begins when we understand that asking and even singing our difficult questions is acceptable and that God can handle our anger and despair.  Freedom to cry out to God in worship will only be realized when a community becomes more comfortable with the belief that a transparent life is not narcissistic or self-absorbing.  In fact, this honest transparency is a life of humility enabling worshipers to realize they are not struggling on their own in the resolution of this despair.  Martha Freeman reminds us that, “Tears can enhance our vision, giving us new eyes that discern traces of the God who suffers with us.  There is comfort in those tears.  They bring fresh understanding that God is nearby, sharing our humanity in all its bitterness and all its blessedness.”[3]

[2] Walter Brueggemann, “The Friday Voice of Faith,” Calvin Theological Journal 36 (April 2001): 15.

[3] Martha Freeman, “Has God Forsaken Us?” The Covenant Companion (November 2001): 8.

Core Convictions are foundational standards, principles, values, and tenets.

The following post is taken from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship website.  Check out their website for additional worship resources and links at:  http://worship.calvin.edu/ten

The language, comments, and questions may not all be consistent with the doctrines and practices of your faith community.  You are encouraged however, to view the foundational principles in light of your culture, giving consideration to their value for your congregation and the entire ecumenical faith community.

On their tenth anniversary in 2007, the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship identified ten core principles and practices to present as their central convictions about vital Christian worship.  They indicated that their desire in presenting these core convictions was that their many ecumenical partners and contacts would find them clear, compelling, and most of all enriching for their own worship and ministry.

Ten Core Convictions

These ten core convictions are not innovations. They are timeless truths from Scripture and the rich history of Christian worship. Today, each conviction remains theologically crucial, pastorally significant, and culturally threatened. The importance of one or all of these convictions risks being obscured by cultural trends outside the church, and disputes about the mechanics and style of worship within the church. This attempt to reiterate and reinforce the importance of these ten core convictions will lead, we pray, to more fruitful (if not necessarily easier) conversations about the meaning and practice of Christian worship. Christian worship is immeasurably enriched by:

1. A vivid awareness of the beauty, majesty, mystery, and holiness of the triune God

Worship cultivates our knowledge and imagination about who God is and what God has done. Worship gives us a profound awareness of the glory, beauty, and holiness of God. Each element of worship can be understood through a Trinitarian framework. Worship renewal is best sustained by attention to the triune God we worship.

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. (Ps. 63:2)

Related Questions

• What is the picture of God we are, consciously and unconsciously, cultivating in our worship?
• In what moments of our worship do we most perceive the glory and beauty of God?
• In what way does our worship space convey God’s glory?
• In what way might renewed attention to God’s glory make our worship more contemplative? more exuberant? more vibrant?
• What barriers does our culture present to worshiping with a sense of God’s transcendence?
• How does our picture of God help us resist idolatries?

2. The full, conscious, active participation of all worshipers, as a fully intergenerational community

Worship is not just what ministers, musicians, and other leaders do; it is what all worshipers “do”—through the work of the Spirit in worship. In vital worship, all worshipers are involved in the actions, words, and meaning of worship.

God’s covenant promises endure “from generation to generation.” Worship that arises out of an intentionally intergenerational community, in which people of all ages are welcomed as full participants, and whose participation enriches each other, reflects that worship breaks down barriers of age.

And Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. . .  And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God; and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands; and they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. . . the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. And they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. . . And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. (Neh. 8:1, 6, 7, 8, 12)

Young men and women alike, old and young together! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. (Ps. 148:12-13)

Related Questions

• How do worshipers in our community understand the nature of their participation in worship?
• How do worshipers in our community understand the purpose of their participation in worship?
• What does participation mean in addition to lay leadership of worship?
• What could we do as worshipers to prepare to be as involved in the actions and in tune with the meaning of worship as we assume our leaders are?
• How are we enabling the full, conscious, active participation of all worshipers in our worship?
• How are we failing to enable the full, conscious, active participation of all worshipers?
• How can our worship be more intergenerational in its lay leadership?
• How can our worship be more intergenerational in its participation?
• How can we better foster intergenerational community?
• What generational barriers does our culture set or lead us to expect?
• What generational barriers does our own tradition or history set or lead us to expect?

3. Deep engagement with scripture

The Bible is the source of our knowledge of God and of the world’s redemption in Christ. Worship should include prominent readings of Scripture, and engage worshipers through intentional reading practices, art, and music. It should present and depict God’s being, character, and actions in ways that are consistent with scriptural teaching. It should follow biblical commands about worship practices, and it should heed scriptural warnings about false and improper worship. In particular, Christian worship should be deeply connected to its ancient roots in psalmody.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16)

Related Questions

• How prominent is the reading and teaching of scripture in our worship?
• How engaging is the reading and teaching of scripture in our worship?
• What use of art and music could help us better engage worshipers with scripture?
• How deeply and broadly do we select biblical passages to read, sing, reflect, and preach from?

4. Joyful and solemn celebrations of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

The sacraments are physical signs of God’s nourishing action in creation through the Holy Spirit. In baptism God puts his covenant mark on his children, adopts them into the church, and calls them to a lifetime of dying and rising with Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, God physically and spiritually feeds his people. These celebrations are not just ceremonies, but gifts of grace and signs of God’s ongoing work.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:3-5)

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Cor. 10:16-17)

Related Questions

• How regularly do we celebrate the sacraments?
• When we do celebrate the sacraments, how prominent are they in our worship services?
• How could we do more to nourish a sacramental awareness even (or especially) in services in which they are not held—in preaching, prayers, singing, creeds, professions of faith, and other aspects of worship?
• Do we treat the font and table with any significance during services in which we’re not using them?
• How much water do we use in our baptismal font or pool? Could we use more?
• How would worshipers summarize the theological significance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper?
• How could we make worshipers more aware of their own baptism and its personal significance for them?
• How could we make our celebration of the Lord’s Supper more communal?
• What are some of the most meaningful celebrations of the sacraments you have experienced?

5. An open and discerning approach to culture

Worship should strike a healthy balance among four approaches or dimensions to its cultural context: worship is transcultural (some elements of worship are beyond culture), contextual (worship reflects the culture in which it is offered), cross-cultural (worship breaks barriers of culture through worship), and counter-cultural (worship resists the idolatries of its cultural context.

Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12)

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” (Matt. 5:13)

They sing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; (Rev. 5:9)

Related Questions

• What aspects of our worship are transcultural?
• What aspects of our worship are inculturated?
• What aspects of our worship are cross-cultural?
• What aspects of our worship are countercultural?
• Which of these four approaches comes most naturally to our worshiping community?
• Which comes least naturally?

6. Disciplined creativity in the arts

Worship is enriched by artistic creativity in many genres and media, not as ends to themselves or as open-ended individual inspirations, but all disciplined by the nature of worship as a prophetic and priestly activity.

Then Moses said to the Israelites: See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; he has filled him with divine spirit, with skill, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every kind of work done by an artisan or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of artisan or skilled designer. (Exod. 25:30-35)

Related Questions

• How are we incorporating the arts into our worship?
• How are we mediating the danger of not neglecting visual aspects of worship but not idolizing them, either?
• How can we better incorporate artists into our community, and cultivate the artistic gifts within our worshiping community?

7. Collaboration with all other congregational ministries

Congregational worship is mutually enriching to the full range of congregational ministries, including pastoral care, education, spiritual formation, and witness.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (1 Cor. 12:12)

Related Questions

• What are some of the ways we are integrating our worship with the full scope of our congregational ministry and life together?
• How can we better integrate worship into our ministries of evangelism, fellowship, education, pastoral care, and others?

8. Warm, Christ-centered hospitality for all people

A central feature of worship is that it breaks down barriers to welcome all worshipers, including persons with disabilities, those from other cultures, both seekers, lifelong Christians, and others.

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. (Rom. 12:13)

Related Questions

• How does our worship currently express hospitality to all worshipers?
• How does our worship currently express hospitality to those with special needs?
• How does our worship currently express hospitality to visitors?
• How can we better express hospitality in our worship?

9. Intentional integration between worship and all of life

Worship fosters natural and dynamic connections between worship and life, so that the worship life of Christian congregations both reflects and shapes lives of grateful obedience, deeply engages with the needs of the world, including such specific areas as restorative justice, care for the earth, and many other areas.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom. 12:1)

Related Questions

• How does our worship currently express connections between worship and other areas of life?
• Does our worship foster a sense that our common faith is primarily relevant only in worship, or foster a sense that worship is one aspect—though a very important one—of our service to God?

10. Collaborative planning and evaluation

Worship involves a collaborative process for planning and evaluating services in the context of an adaptive approach to overall congregational leadership.

Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. (Acts 20:28)

Related Questions

• How collaborative is our current process of worship planning?
• How collaborative is our current process of worship evaluation?
• How could our worship planning be more collaborative?
• How could our worship evaluation be more collaborative?

Charles Dickens told the story of an orphaned nine-year-old boy Oliver Twist.  Oliver and scores of other orphans toiled in the miserable existence of a workhouse.  The boys worked long hours subsisting on three paltry meals of gruel, a watery food substance of unknown character offering little nutritional value.  On one occasion, the boys drew lots to determine who would represent them to ask for more food.  Oliver was selected and timidly moved forward with his bowl in his hands to make the famous request, “Please sir, I want some more.”  One of his caretakers shrieked, “What?…More?”  And Oliver was chased around the dining hall tables by a band of well-fed caretakers.

Our understanding of symbolism and how it relates to the ordinances has degenerated into a substance of unknown character offering little nutritional value.  We know we have a spiritual mandate to participate in these ordinances, yet we often wonder, “Is this all there is?”  Can we ask for more within the parameters of our doctrine, denomination, embedded theological understanding, and history without fear of being chased around the table and font by a band of well-fed doctrinal caretakers?

Kenneth Chafin wrote, “For many, observing the ordinances has become so routine that they no longer call forth the reality they symbolize.”[1] Chafin continued by reminding congregations that, “There is a need to discover them again with such freshness that it would be like experiencing them for the first time.”[2] Symbolism is the use of text, images, procedures, or actual physical objects to represent an idea or belief.  We observe the ordinances as an act of obedience and symbolic remembrance.  Observance is both an act performed for religious or ceremonial reasons; and the act of regarding attentively or watching.  Both definitions and our actions in response to those definitions can often leave us feeling like outsiders looking in.

To illustrate on a personal level, as a result of my daughter leaving for her freshman year of college I am in the midst of a new season of remembrance.  I miss the opportunities to spend time with her while she is away from home.  In an effort to remember, I often observe her photograph on my desk or in my wallet.  I also occasionally step into her bedroom just for a few moments to remember.  Her photograph symbolizes her likeness…her room symbolizes her life. Spending a few moments in the midst of the nineteen years of mementos scattered around her room allows me to enter in and live again in the remembrance and symbolism of her life.  Sometimes living in the symbolism causes me to remember, grieve, and weep…at other times I remember and laugh out loud.  When I live in that symbolism I discover that the remembrance is rarely manifested in the same way twice.  That is why I return for more.

Wanting more will require worshipers to transform from the casual practice of just observing the ordinances to actually entering in and living in the symbolism and remembrance of those ordinances.  Living in the symbolism does not change the physical characteristics of the elements…it changes us.  Living in the symbolism allows us not only to remember Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, but also remember how those events impacted and continually impact our lives.  When we live in the symbolism of the ordinances we remember that the story is not just Jesus’ story but also our story as we are invited to step into Jesus’ story.  Living in the symbolism reminds us that the final chapter is yet to come and we get to be a part of the unfolding of that story as insiders, not just casual observers.

Once we grasp the magnitude of living in the symbolism and remembrance we will never again have to ask “Is this all there is?” In fact, we may actually receive immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).  That is why we must return and ask for more.

[2] Ibid.

Talent and platform presence may help you secure a job and maintain it for a time… developing leadership and relationship skills will help you keep it.  Effective worship leadership requires more than just ability…it also requires hard work, preparation, shared responsibility, and dependence.  It might be less painful to move every few years when your musical portfolio is exhausted but is that more for comfort than calling?

The author of the book of Hebrews offers guidelines for long-term success in life and ministry using running as a metaphor.  “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2).  The physical act of running serves as a great parallel to spiritual leadership principles necessary for not dropping out and being able to finish the race well.

You have to do the roadwork – “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  Endurance is the ability to continue despite stress, fatigue, pain, and hardship.  Distance runners have to push themselves beyond a level of comfort to log the miles necessary to compete.  If you don’t do the roadwork, the minute the pace quickens, the incline increases, or the terrain gets treacherous you will be tempted to quit.  Thomas Edison said, “People don’t work hard because in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort.  Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves successful.  Actually, he said, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.”  Most worship ministry struggles have more to do with leadership and relationship deficiencies than they do with technical and musical skills.

Be prepared for hurdles – “Lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us.” Runners regularly sprain ankles and knees, dodge cars and dogs, and even get completely lost on training runs.  Obstacles such as these and others can often sideline a runner.  Preparation and training for the inevitable helps avoid injury.  We all know the big three ministry failures…moral, ethical, and legal.  These failures will not only sideline ministry but can completely derail it.  The ones often overlooked that can be just as devastating are pride, selfishness, and sloth.  If you are being chased by the same dog every time you run…select a different route.

Do not run alone – “Since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us.”  Running with a partner offers encouragement, motivation, pace, and challenge.  It is much easier to go farther when you have a partner encouraging you along the way.  Additionally, one of the most meaningful motivators for runners competing in a race is the crowd that lines the street to cheer them on.  Let the “great cloud of witnesses”…your immediate family, church family, friends, and peers surround you.  They will encourage and cheer you on if you will allow them in.  Many of these partners have gone before us paving the way and modeling what endurance looks like.

Blind runners often compete in events while tethered to a sighted runner.  The rope connecting the two runners hangs loosely until the sighted runner observes obstacles or danger.  The sighted runner then shortens and tightens the rope to prepare the blind runner for what cannot be seen ahead.  Your “great cloud of witnesses” can serve as a belayer who shortens or tightens the rope as needed to help keep your steps secure.

You can’t see the finish line from the beginning of the race – “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”  Considering the length of a distance run at the beginning of the race is essential for determining pace.  But dwelling on the distance throughout the entire race can be daunting and could lead to burnout or dropout before the race is completed.  In an effort to pace themselves incrementally, runners often focus on an object that can be seen ahead…a telephone pole, mailbox, house, or even another runner.  These runners run to that object and then focus on another object ahead and repeat that pattern over and over until the race is completed.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus helps us not to dwell so much on the end result that we miss the in-betweens.  Fixing our eyes on Jesus helps us minister with contentment, not the comparison of looking to the left our right to see how we are doing.  Fixing our eyes on Jesus helps us to depend on “the author and perfecter of our faith,” not our talent alone.

Later in the same chapter of Hebrews the author continues with these thoughts, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.  Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.  Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed” (Hebrews 12:11-13).

Experiencing the Lord’s Supper beyond its traditional expression as a memorial will not minimize the understanding of this ordinance as an act of remembrance, it will enhance it.  Expanding beyond the memorial understanding allows us not only to remember what Christ did for us on the cross and in the resurrection, but also to remember the promise of His return.  The purpose of remembering is not just to live in the past through our sorrow, but also to remember in order to influence our present and future.

The word Eucharist originated from the Greek word for thanksgiving or blessing.  The early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper not just as a memorial of the crucifixion, but also as a celebration of the resurrection.  It is recorded in the book of Acts, “And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God, and having favor with all people.  And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46-47).  A profound blessing has been missed by ignoring the thanksgiving celebration found at the Table.  According to Robert Webber, “The idea is very simple:  when we remember the death (Lord’s Supper), celebrate the resurrection (break bread), and eat a meal expressing covenantal relationship with God (communion), we need to give thanks (Eucharist).”[1]

Understanding the Lord’s Supper as a meal of thanksgiving encourages congregants to experience this ordinance beyond a memorial.  It allows worshipers to move from symbolically wallowing in the sorrow that our sin caused Christ to die…to the realization that thanksgiving is found in the resurrection and His ultimate return.  Experiencing joy at the Table does not diminish the sorrow of the cross and sinful nature of the world.  In fact, just the opposite occurs when it actually reminds that even in the midst of misery, a profound hope is available.  How can we keep from offering our thanks?

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Jesus gave us the Eucharist to enable us to choose gratitude.  It is a choice we, ourselves have to make.  Nobody can make it for us.  But the Eucharist prompts us to cry out to God for mercy, to listen to the words of Jesus, to invite him into our home, to enter into communion with him and proclaim good news to the world; it opens the possibility of gradually letting go of our many resentments and choosing to be grateful.”[2]

A recent shift has occurred as congregations have become disenchanted with various attempts to create formulas for worship renewal.  The desire for a deeper understanding of what worship renewal truly is has bridged the previous ecumenical gap.  A renewed connection with the larger Christian community has allowed congregations to consider worship elements not traditionally associated with their denominational tribe.

Here is the challenge:  Do not disregard the Eucharistic understanding of the Lord’s Supper because of traditionalism or of fear that an expanded understanding will take your congregation to a place it has never been before.  Instead, prayerfully consider the attention that must be given to this ordinance each time it is observed so that worship renewal found at the Table is never a one-time event.

[2] Henri J.M. Nouwen, With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 124-125.

Conversation is interactive communication involving two or more participants.  Even though conversation is not often scripted it may revolve around a central theme or subject.  A healthy conversation includes a balance of discussion and response, listening as well as speaking.  Meaningful conversations usually occur as a result of relationships built on familiarity achieved through repetition.

God’s revelation and our response to that revelation is a great model of meaningful conversation…we call it worship.  Robert Webber’s assessment is that, “Worship proclaims, enacts, and sings God’s story.”[1]  If you agree with Webber’s understanding then you will also realize that the conversation does not begin with us.  What we do and how we do it is a response to, not the initiation of the conversation.  God started the dialogue and graciously allows and encourages us to join Him in it.

Conversational Narcissism is what sociologist Charles Derber calls the constant shifting of the conversation away from others and back to us and our personal interests.  Derber writes, “One conversationalist transforms another’s topic into one pertaining to himself through the persistent use of the shift-response.”[2]  Shift-response is taking the topic of conversation initiated by another and shifting the topic to focus on our selfish interests. 

Conversational Narcissism is manifested in worship when we take the topic (God’s story) and shift its focus to a topic of our own choosing (our story).  When the worship conversation continues to point to self instead of the story of God, we become narcissistic.  Instead of focusing on God and God’s story, our worship conversation focuses on me and my story.[3]  Shifting the topic of our worship also shifts the object of our worship.  The conversation is no longer initiated by or focused on the worshiped but on the worshiper.

Worship conflict begins when I constantly point the conversation back to me…what I need, what I prefer, what I like, what I want, what I deserve.  This worship conflict which occurs as a result of my narcissism is a great example of a one-sided, selfish, and unhealthy conversation.  I call it worship preferences…God calls it sin. 

[1] Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 39.

[2] Charles Derber, The Pursuit of Attention: Power and Ego in Everyday Life (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979), 26-27.

[3] Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 231.

On the night of His betrayal and arrest Jesus prayed that all of us would be one just as He and the Father are one (John 17:1-2).  And yet, relational conflict and the absence of congregational community continues to move our focus away from Jesus’ desire for all men to be reconciled in “one body to God through the cross” (Eph 2:16).

Congregations attempt to create community by developing relationships, planning activities, and encouraging affinities.  What these congregations are missing is the realization that the foundation of healthy community is already available and waiting for them at the Communion Table.  Yet, this ordinance often holds little significance.  Infrequent and even passive observance has caused worshipers to view Communion as “an optional extra often treated casually, as a pleasant and cozy ceremony.”[1]

Paul spoke of Communion as the fellowship of sharing in the body and blood of Christ…and it is never a solitary act.  Henri Nouwen wrote, “Precisely because the table is the place of intimacy for all the members of the household, it is also the place where the absence of that intimacy is most painfully revealed.”[2]  Eleanor Kreider challenged congregations to consider Communion as foundational to worship renewal by stating that, “Churches will be renewed when the Lord’s Supper, graced by God’s presence and Word, oriented to the living Lord and empowered by the Spirit, is fully restored to the place it had in the early centuries-as the central communal Christian act of worship.”[3]

Two relationships are evident in the celebration at the Table:  a vertical Communion with Christ through partaking of the elements; and the horizontal Communion of believers unified in identity and relationship at the table.  Communion must not only be a time of personal assessment, but also a time of corporate appraisal.  Since the Table is the place of intimacy, it is around the Table that we rediscover our relationship with each other.  It’s the place where we pray and ask:  “How was your day?”  It’s the place where we eat and drink together and say: “Come on, take some more!” It is the place of old and new stories.  It is the place of smiles and tears.[4]  In this communal act, as with the disciples, Jesus accepts the invitation to sit at the table.  Transformation occurs when Jesus, who was the guest, becomes the host and invites the congregation into Communion with Him.[5]  When we accept His invitation to join Him at the Table we are reminded that, “The Lord’s Supper not only gathers a community, it creates a community.”[6]  Individual and congregational Communion available at the table encourages unity and as a result of that unity an intimacy that cannot be manufactured.

“God created in our heart a yearning for communion that no one but God can, and wants to fulfill.  God knows this.  We seldom do.  We keep looking somewhere else for that experience of belonging.  We look at the splendor of nature, the excitement of history, and the attractiveness of people, but that simple breaking of the bread, so ordinary and unspectacular, seems such an unlikely place to find the communion for which we yearn.”[7]

Following the resurrection, two of Jesus’ disciples walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus without recognizing who He was.  It wasn’t until Jesus stayed with them, took the bread, gave thanks, and broke the bread that their eyes were opened and they recognized the risen Christ.  Nouwen wrote that, Christ living in them brought them together in a new way.  The breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup not only allowed them to recognize Christ, but also each other as members of the new community of faith.[8]  “Communion makes us look at each other and speak to each other, not about the latest news, but about him who walked with us.”[9]  Creating community through activities or even musical selections is a shallow attempt to manufacture what is already available at the Communion Table.  When we gather at the table on level ground with a common purpose, our eyes will be opened, we will see Christ again, and we will see each other with new eyes through the breaking of the bread.  Community begins here!

[1] Robert Letham, The Lord’s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread  (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2001), 1.

[2] Henri J. M. Nouwen, With Burning Hearts (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 74-75.

[3] Eleanor Kreider, Communion Shapes Character (Scottdale: Herald, 1997), 15.

[4] Nouwen, With Burning Hearts, 74-75.

[5] Ibid., 77.

[6] Leonard J. Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 157.

[7] Nouwen, With Burning Hearts, 89.

[8] Ibid., 95-96.

[9] Ibid., 96.

No, don’t quit your ministry position…just quit doing or not doing those things that might be contributing to your discontent or the discontent of those to whom you are accountable to.  If you aren’t giving your best stuff to the place where God has you serving now and are saving it for where you are hoping He will call you next…why would He want to?  When or if God chooses to call you to a new place of ministry what legacy will you have instilled in the lives of those you leave behind?  If dysfunction has not been resolved where you are…what changes are you willing to make to ensure it will not follow you where you go?  The forced termination epidemic surfaces the reality that the choice is not always yours to make.  Christianity Today indicates that nearly one-fourth of all active ministers have been forced out at some point in their ministry.  Ironically, it doesn’t really matter if the choice is yours or theirs, the response should be the same…just quit!   

Quitting is starting a new ministry position without leaving your old one.  Quitting is intentionally rededicating and recommitting your energy and focus where you are now.  Quitting is coming in early and staying late.  Quitting is leaning into the finish line instead of coasting.  Quitting is owning your deficiencies and surrounding yourself with those who can help you manage those deficiencies.  Quitting is initiating and implementing long-term ministry goals.  Quitting is spending the same amount of time developing new relationships and healing old ones that was previously spent on ministry job-placement sites.  Quitting is going to conferences, reading books and articles, and learning new concepts to try now…not to save for the future.  Quitting is trusting that God knows where you are and what you are going through.  Quitting is praying and agreeing with Jesus’ prayer, “yet not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

There are two possible outcomes of quitting:  You will again fall in love with them and they with you and stay for the next season of ministry; or you will leave well when God calls you to that new place of ministry.  Either way, His response will be the same, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.  Come and share your master’s happiness” (Matthew 25:21).

The celebration of Easter 2011 is less than two months away.  Churches are formulating plans for a meaningful day of worship and ministry knowing they will potentially reach more attendees than on any other Sunday of the year.  If those congregations and yours affirm Easter as the most important celebration of the church year and the basis for our hope, why limit its observance to one Sunday a year?  Has our concern with appearing too liturgical caused us to miss an entire season of remembrance, celebration, and worship?

The observance of Easter in the early church was more than just a one-day historical remembrance.  The celebration of the Paschal mystery was set aside not only to remember that Christ was crucified and rose again, but to celebrate His appearance following His resurrection, His ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and His ultimate return.  Because of their great joy, early Christians began this celebration with Easter and continued for fifty days until Pentecost.  Revisiting the mystery of the resurrection through an expanded celebration could assist in worship renewal through the theological realization that this celebration of redemption, sanctification, salvation, renewal, and victory must not be limited to one day.

Some congregations and even entire denominations have not traditionally embraced the Great Fifty Days and other elements of the Christian calendar primarily out of a concern of rigidity, conformity, loss of autonomy, or fear of appearing too “Catholic.”  Additional desire for worship creativity has caused congregations to look elsewhere out of concern that annual celebrations promote monotony.  Timothy Carson states that, “Exactly the opposite may be true.  Because it has stood the test of time, it may be sufficiently deep to allow me to swim more deeply in it.  Because it is repeated, I have another chance, today, to go where I could not go yesterday.”[1]  Even as congregations avoid the Christian calendar, they affirm the annual observance of cultural and denominational days of celebration whose foundations are not always biblically grounded.[2]   The irony is found in the realization that in the development of these denominational and cultural calendars we have created denominational liturgies as a response to our desire to be non-liturgical.

To avoid Christian calendar days that are celebrated during the same time of the year as the cultural, denominational, and civic days is to ignore the very foundation of the Church.  Is it possible to converge holidays significant to our cultural and denominational calendar with the Christian holidays significant to the Kingdom?  Is there any reason why Mother’s Day, Graduation Sunday, and Memorial Day cannot be celebrated in the same season as Ascension Day and Pentecost?   For this shift to occur, congregations must understand the significance of Easter beyond a one-day celebration.  “For the explosive force of the resurrection of the Lord is too vast to be contained within a celebration of one day.”[3]

A renewed interest in the Christian year by some congregations is based on a deeper understanding of this calendar as the ideal starting point for structuring seasonal worship.  The theme of the fifty days of Easter as one single celebration provides a connection with Christians of the past church and unifies Christians of the present church in a continuous ecumenical approach.  Observing this celebration could help congregations “recover the transforming news that Jesus’ past resurrection dramatically transforms present and future reality.”[4]  Additionally, it will help them delight in the knowledge that Jesus’ death and resurrection is stamped on their spiritual biographies.[5]  Although observing elements of the Christian year such as the Great Fifty Days may be a stretch for your congregation, consider making that decision based on a deeper biblical, theological, and historical understanding…not a decision based solely on traditionalism.    

[1] Timothy L. Carson, Transforming Worship, (St. Louis: Chalice, 2003), 57.

[2] Idid., 56.

[3] Laurence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church,  (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 53.

[4] John D. Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 290.

[5] Ibid.

In our culture of leadership and ministry we live under a tremendous pressure to perform.  We equate busyness with significance and arrogantly assume our efforts are indispensable to God.  We act as though if we don’t do it, God can’t get it done.  It makes no difference if the pressure is self-imposed or as a result of outside influencers.  If we don’t lighten up we will end up dropping out of the race before we complete it.

Fartlek is a running term of Swedish origin that literally means “speed play.”  Running fartleks involves varying your pace throughout your run, alternating between sprints and slow jogs. Unlike traditional interval training that involves specific timed or measured segments, fartleks are intentionally unstructured.  Running fartleks becomes a game of experimenting with various paces ultimately strengthening both endurance and speed.  It is a fun way to give new life to monotonous training runs as well as rigorous speed intervals.  An example of fartlek training is to pick an object ahead and sprint to that object before the car in the distance reaches that object from the opposite direction.  Once you reach the object you again slow your pace for a period of recovery.

When was the last time you enjoyed doing what you have been called to do?  Maybe the more telling question is when those you have been called to lead enjoyed your leadership.  Are you constantly frustrated when they will not do what you need them to do?  As the leader you are often responsible for the pace…so maybe the problem is not with those you lead.  You need to lighten up.  Has the race you are running become monotonous and joyless?  Are you constantly sprinting without ever allowing yourself a chance to catch your breath?  You need to lighten up.  Ministry and leadership often requires intense seasons of going all-out, but must also require margins of recovery if you intend to finish the race.

In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases Matthew 11:28-30 like this, “Are you tired?  Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Fartleks are biblical… “Let us run with endurance the race set before us…by fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:1-2).   

In the conclusion of her book The Worship Architect: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services, Dr. Constance M. Cherry quotes author James Magaw and Annie Dillard on the difference between Why We Go to Church and Why We Worship.

“If you ask me why I go to church, I could start with these reasons:

• To feel better;
• To be with people whose company I enjoy;
• To learn about Jesus;
• To show which side I’m on;
• To keep people from asking why I missed;
• To sing my favorite old hymns;
• To be inspired, taught, and challenged by the sermon.

But if you ask me why I worship, you raise the discussion to another plane…It calls to memory the words of Annie Dillard, as she writes about worship, ‘Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?…The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offence, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.’”[1]

“When I worship I expose myself to the power of God without any personal control over the outcome.  Sometimes it brings healing, peace, forgiveness, confrontation, or hope.  Always it calls me to move beyond the farthest point I have yet reached, and pushes me into uncharted territories.  Going to church is easy most days.  Worship is another matter.  It is an awesome thing to know oneself fallen into the hands of the living God.”[2]

[2] Cherry, The Worship Architect, 271, as quoted in Magaw, “The Power We Invoke,” 60-61.

In retail, a loss leader is goods or services discounted at or below cost in order to draw consumers in.  The strategy is that drawing them in will hopefully lead them to buy additional items at a higher price.  Congregations employ this same practice by discounting worship as a hook to get consumers in the door.  When those consumers become true worshipers and realize that worship requires them to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, what methods will congregations need to employ to keep them (Rom 12:1)?  How will those congregations help worshipers express deep calling unto deep worship…when discounted loss leader worship is all the congregation knows or has to offer (Ps 42:7)?  In this context, you get what you pay for actually means…whatever you reach people with is what you will reach people to.

King David responded to God’s command to build an altar to the Lord so that the plague on the people of Israel might be stopped (2 Sam 24:21).  At no cost to David, Araunah offered his threshing floor, his oxen, and even the wood from the oxen yokes for the burnt offering.  The king replied, “No, I insist on paying for it.  I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Sam 24:24). 

Terry York and David Bolin wrote, “We have forgotten that what worship costs is more important than how worship comforts us or how it serves our agendas.  We should not lift up to God worship or any other offering that costs us nothing.  If worship costs us nothing but is fashioned to comfort our needs and preferences, it may not be worship at all.”[1]   

[1] Terry W. York and C. David Bolin, The Voice of Our Congregation: Seeking and Celebrating God’s Song for Us (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 112.

Although worship cannot be contained in one expression such as music, it is evident from scripture that singing is a significant response to God’s revelation (Ps 63:5; Eph 5:19; Col 3:15-17).  One seminary professor joked, “Congregants who don’t sing…should be sent to Sing-Sing until they do sing.”  When writing about the future of Jerusalem, the minor prophet Zephaniah wrote, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zeph 3:17).  If the Father is singing over us…How can we keep from singing?

Reggie Kidd wrote, “Think of singing as a language that allows us to embody our love for our Creator.  Song is a means he has given us to communicate our deepest affections, to have our thoughts exquisitely shaped, and to have our spirits braced for the boldest of obediences.  Through music, our God draws us deeper into a love affair with himself.”[1]

Singing as an act of worship is not just an expression of our words and melodies to or about the Father.  When the circumstances of life discourage us from verbalizing those songs, the Father sings over us (Ps 32:7).  When we can’t find adequate words to express our love to the Father, Jesus as our worship leader sings with us (Heb 8:1-2; 2:12).  Such songs have the power to quiet the restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction that follows after prayer (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).  If the Father is singing over us and Jesus is singing with us…How can we keep from singing?

My life flows on in endless song; Amid earth’s lamentation,

I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn That hails a new creation;

Thro’ all the tumult and the strife I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul, How can I keep from singing?

What tho’ my joys and comforts die, The Lord my Helper liveth!

What tho’ the darkness gather round; songs in the night he giveth!

No storm can shake my inmost calm While to that refuge clinging;

Since God is Lord of heav’n and earth, How can I keep from singing?

I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin; I see the blue above it;

And day by day this pathway smooths Since first I learned to love it,

The peace of God makes fresh my heart, A fountain ever springing;

All things are mine, since I am His – How can I keep from Singing?[2]

[1] Reggie M. Kidd, With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 14.

[2] Some manuscripts attribute the authorship of this text to Anne Warner, others list the author as anonymous.

Worship Leaders and planners are constantly looking for new resources, supplements, conferences, and short-cuts to help in the preparation and implementation of worship.  The online worship resources list below is obviously not an exhaustive representation of helpful sites.  Adding your favorites to this list will benefit us all.  Click the comments tab under the post title to offer additional suggestions.

Worship/Music Resources and Conferences

www.allthelyrics.com

www.baylor.edu/alleluia

www.benjaminharlan.com

www.calvin.edu/worship

www.ccli.com/conferences/conferences.aspx

www.christmas-carol-music.org

www.congregationalresources.org

www.copyrightsolver.com

www.dennisnan.com

www.egglesong.citymax.com

www.encouragingmusic.com

www.g3worship.com

www.gettymusic.com

www.grahamkendrick.co.uk

www.greatworshipsongs.com

www.hymncharts.com

www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/hymns.html

www.integritydirect.com

www.integritymusic.com

www.kimgentes.com

www.kncsb.org/blogs/dmanner

www.leadworship.com

www.lifewayworship.com

www.lifeway.com/sonpower

www.lifeway.com/worshipweek

www.musicmoz.org

www.musicnotes.com

www.nationalworshipleaderconference.com

www.paulclarkjr.wordpress.com

www.planningcenteronline.com

www.praisecharts.com

www.pwarchive.com

www.roadmapsforworship.com

www.samepagemusic.com

www.sbcmc.org

www.sbts.edu/church-ministries/institute-for-christian-worship

www.sheetmusicdirect.us

www.songselect.com

www.sovereigngraceministries.org/resources/music

www.towardwonder.com

www.wordmusic.com

www.worshipband.com

www.worship.calvin.edu/symposium

www.worshipmusic.com

www.worshipteamtraining.com/events.html

www.worshiptogether.com

Video Resources

www.cvli.com

www.essentials.tv

www.faithvisuals.com

www.godtube.com

www.highwayvideo.com

www.lifeway.com/transitions

www.meatloafmedia.com

www.nooma.com

www.powerpointsermons.com

www.sermonspice.com

www.shoutable.com

www.theworkofthepeople.com

www.vimeo.com

www.worshiphousemedia.com

www.youtube.com

www.youtubedownload.altervista.org

Projection and Presentation Resources

www.easyworship.com

www.mediashout.com

www.presentationmanager.com

www.renewedvision.com

www.songshowplus.com

www.sundayplus.com

www.worship-him.com

Video Conferencing Resources

www.oovoo.com

www.skype.com

www.surveymonkey.com

www.tokbox.com

The proclamation of the mystery of our faith is this…Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again (I Tim 3:16; Rom 16:25-26; Eph 3:4-6).  Our culture demands the reduction of mystery to the explainable.  And yet, a faith such as ours founded on the infinite cannot be contained in the finite understanding of our relationship with God and our response to that relationship in worship.  In his exposition of the gospel of John in the New American Commentary, Gerald Borchert wrote, “The teacups of our thinking and language have not yet approached the capacity of holding the ocean of divine truth.”[1]

Worship mystery is not just our limited capacity to fully understand and explain the entirety of God’s story; it is also the incomprehensible awe and wonder that He included me in that story.  Rational worship can deteriorate into controlled worship.  Mystery causes us to respond with, “Woe is me…I am ruined” (Isaiah 6:5).  Rational worship is our actions in order to remember the stories of Jesus; mystery is living in the remembrance of the incarnational Jesus.  Mystery is the experience of the union of God dwelling in us and we in him.  “The way to experience this mystery is to live in it, to embody it through the spiritual life of contemplation and the way of participation.”[2]

In the Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life, Robert Webber wrote, “In the end an intellectual spirituality is situated, not in God’s story, but in my knowledge about God’s story, which is inherently limited.”[3]  He continued by writing, “The contemplation of God, of his person, creation, incarnation, and re-creation of the world, is a different kind of knowledge.  It is a contemplation on the mysteries, namely, the mystery of God creating, the mystery of God incarnate, the mystery of the cross and empty tomb, the mystery of God’s presence in the church, and the mystery of Christ’s return to claim his lordship over creation.  The contemplation of these mysteries moves us to live into these mysteries, participating in God’s life for the world.”[4]  

If the awe and wonder of God can be completely contained in and explained through our limited understanding, then he is a god who does not deserve our worship.  Fortunately, Paul clarifies our understanding by sharing the following doxology:

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counselor?  Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?  For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Rom 11:33-36).

[1] Gerald L. Borchert, John 12-21 in The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002), 104.

[2] Robert E. Webber, the Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 20.

[3] Ibid., 87.

[4] Ibid.

If anyone says, “I love God, (an act worship) yet hates his brother, (also an act of worship) he is a liar” (1 John 4:20).  The difference is who or what is being worshiped.  Justice as an act of worship is the realization that loving God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind is loving my neighbor as I love myself (Luke 10:27).  No stipulation is offered in this passage as to whether the neighbor really deserves or has earned the right to be loved.  Justice politicized as redistribution is really just the fear of losing control of something that Scripture says is not ours to begin with…including our money and music (Psalm 24:1).  Mark Labberton wrote, “Worship can name a Sunday gathering of God’s people, but it also includes how we treat those around us, how we spend our money, and how we care for the lost and the oppressed.  Worship can encompass every dimension of our lives.”[1]

The prophet Micah condemned Israel’s dishonest, corrupt, and meaningless worship actions by pointing out what God considers as good worship and what he really requires of our worship, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).  Labberton also wrote, “The heart of the battle over worship is this: our worship practices are separated from our call to justice and, worse, foster the self-indulgent tendencies of our culture rather than nurturing the self-sacrificing life of the kingdom of God.”[2]

“In the documentary movie Mother Teresa, a priest who had known Teresa from her early days as a nun says, ‘People say Mother Teresa went to Calcutta and was moved by the plight of all those in need and felt called to respond.  That was not it! She knew the love of Jesus, and it was specifically because of that love that she responded as she did.’  Worship changed her, and the consequences changed the world.”[3]

GOD OF JUSTICE

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMoqb6fwX1E

[2] Ibid., 22-23.

[3] Ibid., 77.

Wikipedia is a collaborative online resource of quickly editable encyclopedic information.  The name originated from the Hawaiian word wikiwiki, which means quick, hurry, or fast.  The founder of this informational resource, Jimmy Wales stated that Wikipedia exists to bring knowledge to everyone who seeks it.  And yet, in most high school and university academic circles its entries are not accepted as reputable references.  The reason…Wikipedia consists of user-generated content that is not always verified as accurate, not always appropriate, and is often accused of being systemically biased.     

What does this have to do with worship? 

Worship is not our attempt to be with Jesus, it is our response to having been with Jesus.  Depending on worship actions to connect with Jesus is user-generated, not always accurate, and not always appropriate Wikiworship. 

Wikiworship is…

• The belief that what we do or how we do it will determine if God shows up.
• When we reduce worship to music…and not just any music, but the music I like.
• The belief that if we sing or play it in a certain style…worship will automatically occur.
• When each one of us believes that true worship began with the music of my generation and will probably end with the music of my generation.
• The belief that my favorite is also God’s favorite.
• Asking God to enter our user-generated story.

Worship which begins with Jesus is entering and doing God’s story.[1]  It is speaking, praying, singing, dancing, playing, telling, preaching, teaching, listening, reading, and living God’s story.  Worship in Spirit and Truth is the realization that worship begins with a relationship with Jesus and the response to that relationship is manifested in our worship actions.  Worship which begins with Jesus is the understanding that God has already shown up and is initiating a relationship with us.  Our response to that relationship which cannot be contained in a single expression is…Worship. 

Robert Webber wrote, “Reflection on the incarnation and its connection to every aspect of God’s story is the missing link in today’s theological reflection and worship.  The link is found in these words:  God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”[2]   

[2] Ibid., 35.

If you have flown on a commercial airline you have undoubtedly heard the flight attendant recite the following pre-flight safety instructions:  “In the unlikely event the oxygen level in the main cabin becomes unstable, oxygen masks will drop in front of each passenger.”  Passengers are then instructed to secure their own masks before assisting other passengers.

Sunday is the day designated by most congregations as the Sabbath or day of rest.  As a worship leader, this day has evolved into a day full of service, leadership responsibilities, rehearsals, and meetings.  Congregants, teams, staff, and even family members vie for your time and full attention.  At the end of the day your spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical resources are depleted.  Since this designated day is obviously not a Sabbath for you…when is your Sabbath?  Are you even taking one?  If not, how can you regularly lead people to a place where you no longer have the stamina to go yourself?

Observing a Sabbath “says to the frantic, exhausted, distracted, fatigued people of God:  please, rest.  The hectic lives of Christians in our culture and the busyness of many churches show little sign of living out of God’s rest.  Our tendencies to imitate our culture are directly related to our unwillingness to stop, cease producing, consuming, moving, accomplishing, buying, planning.  We can be as much 24-7 (even in the name of Jesus) as our secular neighbors.  Yet we cannot live as light and salt, doing righteousness and showing justice, if we fail to practice living out God’s rest.  It’s a boundary that sets us free.”[1] 

Christian life and ministry can sanctify busyness rather than free us from it.  Our church culture often values motion as a sign of significance, believing our efforts are essential to God’s success in His mission to the world.  When we attempt to elevate our relevance through our activity it becomes more about us than about God.  Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30). 

Several years ago, David Henderson wrote an article titled Take A Load Off: Are You Doing More than God Intended?  Based on the previous Matthew passage, Henderson suggested stripping off your self-made yokes, laying aside the things God has not called you to do, and asking God to lead you into each day could lighten the load.  Observing a Sabbath is saying yes to God and his rhythms and no to the life-draining rhythms of the culture and people around us – it is essential to our call to worship.[2]  Worship Leader…if you aren’t modeling this understanding of a Sabbath for your congregation, who will?

[1] Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007), 96.

[2] Ibid.

Internal worship evaluation is an intentional process of enlisting individuals and groups from within your congregation to regularly evaluate present worship practices, structures, and services.  Internal evaluation is already occurring in the halls and parking lots of every congregation.  The key is to intentionally implement a pre-emptive process to encourage worship renewal and not just as a response to worship conflict. 

Advantages to enlisting internal evaluators include:  responses from individuals and groups who already understand the doctrines, philosophies, personnel, and policies of your congregation; evaluations from those who have a vested interest in the process and results; and a greater degree of accountability that evaluation results will be implemented in a timely and benevolent fashion.  One potential disadvantage is that since the evaluators do have a more personal interest, there is a danger of organizational politics entering into the evaluation process.

Implementing an ongoing process of internal evaluation will require a level of humility and shared responsibility from worship leaders.  Leaders must be willing to selflessly share their leadership responsibilities and as a result also share the credit for successes.  Selfless leadership is sacrificing ones own interests for the greater good of the organization.

Consider the following internal evaluation suggestions as a starting point:   

 INTERNAL EVALUATION SUGGESTIONS

• Develop a creative team for the purpose of big-picture worship planning and follow-up evaluation.  Include musicians, theologians, technicians, artists, etc.
• Record multiple videos of platform personnel for the creative team and other groups or individuals to evaluate.
• Record multiple videos of the congregation before, during, and after worship services to observe how they connect as a community and how they participate in worship.
• Enlist multi-generational and/or multi-ethnic congregants to respond to specific questions regarding the appropriateness of worship to their generation or culture.
• Have creative team members and/or selected choir/worship team members sit in various places during worship services for the purpose of responding to questions related to volume, balance, pace, flow, content, etc.
• Ask trusted congregants to evaluate leaders.  Question prompts could include:   genuineness, preparedness, idiosyncrasies, platform presence, vocal clarity, language clarity, etc.
• Enlist non-musicians to respond to musical questions.
• Ask an English teacher or professor to evaluate language and grammar usage of platform leaders.
• Encourage non-technical congregants to respond to projection, sound, and other technical/logistical questions.
• Initiate self-evaluations to be shared in staff meetings.
• Implement regular staff peer to peer evaluations.
• Methods of evaluation could include:  surveys, questionnaires, telephone interviews, face to face interviews, and on-line responses.
• Keep it simple.  Do not attempt to evaluate too much at a time.
• Design questions to minimize the focus on style and personal preferences.  Avoid “I like” or “I don’t like” questions.
• Ensure questions are not posed for the purpose of manipulation or to provide justification for biases.
• Ask evaluators to look for strengths as well as deficiencies.

Our worship actions often mute the distinct voice of God heard in the silence, hoping our deficiencies and weaknesses will not surface.  In doing so, we also miss His profound words of hope such as “I am with you; well done; you are forgiven; and I am weeping with you.”  Andrew Hill wrote, “Silence takes the worshiper out of time and into God’s eternity – “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10).  Silence is valuable in Christian worship because it is disturbing, arresting.  We feel uncomfortable, helpless; we are no longer in control.”[1]

Richard Foster wrote, “Silence frees us from the need to control others.  One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless.  We are accustomed to relying on words to manage and control others.  A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out.  We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way.  We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people.  We devour people with our words.  Silence is one of the deepest Spiritual Disciplines simply because it puts the stopper on that.”[2]

Worship renewal may not occur until congregations realize that worship is a conversation that requires listening as well as speaking.  The noise of our worship actions (in the form of an organ introit as well as a guitar riff) has created a one-sided conversation.  Gaius Glenn Atkins wrote, “Silence is the true sacrifice, more acceptable to the Most High than any patterned form worn smooth by repetition.”[3]  The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds the reader to “let your words be few” (Eccl 5:2b) and “draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools” (Eccl 5:1).

[1] Andrew E. Hill, Enter His Courts with Praise: Old Testament Worship for the New Testament Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 106.

[2] Richard J. Foster, Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 68.

[3] Gaius Glenn Atkins, Ecclesiastes in The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1957), 56.

Gatekeeper – A person in charge of a gate to identify, count, supervise the traffic flow through it.  A guardian or monitor who controls ingress to or egress from.

Liberator – Someone who sets people free from the restrictions of a system, situation, or set of ideas.

Worship leader…are you an artistic gatekeeper who continues to hold your congregation captive to style, tradition, form, and structure.  Or, are you a liberator who sets them free by helping them understand that worship is cumulative in that it cannot be contained in one artistic expression, vehicle of communication, style, culture, or context?  Since liturgy literally means the work of the people.  Set them free to do their work.  If you don’t…they will go where they can…usually outside the church.

Check out this Craig Detweiler video… 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0DvOxSgfKI

I was two years old and my sister was four in 1960 when our brother Chuck was born.  As a result of a viral infection, Chuck developed encephalitis resulting in permanent brain damage at the age of three months.  He regularly endured Grand mal seizures and remained at the developmental level of a one-week old.  Professionals encouraged my parents to institutionalize Chuck and indicated no treatment was available until and unless he lived beyond the age of five.  Not much hope was given that treatment would be necessary.

When Chuck did survive to the age of five a process of securing treatment began.  The most promising procedure was available at The Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in San Antonio, Texas.  However, there was a ten-year waiting list for acceptance to the program.  Chuck was accepted after three months.  Part of the treatment required a 750 mile trip every two months for a year.  Since my parents’ automobile was not very reliable a local dealership loaned them a new vehicle to use for each trip.  A service station in our community provided free gas. 

The suggested treatment for this type of brain damage was a patterning therapy.  The therapy included a series of exercises performed several times each day by several people who manipulated Chuck’s head and limbs in patterns purporting to simulate the movements of non-impaired children.  The patterning therapy required building a long slide, a patterning table, and a crawling box.  As soon as my parents arrived home from the initial medical visit a friend from church secured the specifications for building the patterning equipment and completed those items at no cost to my parents. 

The therapy required five people for each session.  Each session began with thirty minutes of patterning followed by a five-minute break and concluded with thirty more minutes of patterning.  This process was completed three times a day, seven days a week for an entire year.  Church and community friends and even complete strangers responded to an advertisement for volunteers placed in the local newspaper.  The volunteer list grew to 125 committed people.  My sister and I were even able to participate by standing on a chair to help move Chuck’s legs.  A fifteen year old boy volunteered and since he was not old enough to drive he encouraged his dad to help with him.  One of the ladies who volunteered was an alcoholic but never missed her volunteer slot and always arrived completely sober.  Since she was unable to drive she would walk from the other side of town.  During this process a man and his family moved into the vacant home next door.  This man worked for the drug company which manufactured the expensive medication Chuck required to minimize seizures.  His company provided free cases of the medication. 

The coordination of the volunteer schedule was a tremendous task.  A woman my parents did not know volunteered to be the telephone coordinator.  Since she served as the contact person for substitutes my parents never had to worry if enough volunteers would be present to help.  Seven years earlier this woman had contracted polio and because of that disability her husband left her.  Although almost completely paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, she was able to use a telephone since she still had full use of her left arm and her head from the neck up.

The daily patterning therapy continued for a period of a year.  Although Chuck’s developmental level had increased from a one-week old to a six-month old the physicians determined that no further development would be realized, so the patterning was discontinued.  The next step was an appointment with a specialist in Philadelphia.  Since the cost to fly my parents and Chuck to Philadelphia was very expensive our community began Operation Chuck to help raise funds to send them.  Ladies clubs organized fund-raising teas, girl scouts held bake sales, and a community garage sale was organized.  Strangers dropped money by our home to contribute to the fund.  In just a few weeks all of the needed funds to make the trip were raised.  The result of the trip was that the specialists in Philadelphia determined that nothing further could be done and encouraged my parents to return home and discontinue medical treatments.  Chuck lived less than a year after they returned from Philadelphia and at the age of seven died of complications from pneumonia.

The question might be asked, “How can this be an example of successful teamwork when the ultimate goal was not achieved?”  Even though this occurred over forty years ago let me share a few leadership and teamwork lessons this experience has taught me and continues to teach me:

• Always seek the counsel of professionals but ultimately proceed in response to convictions.
• Not now does not mean not ever.  Waiting requires patience without wavering in conviction.
• The success of a team is not just measured by the end result; it is also measured by incremental successes along the way.  Celebrate the in-betweens of the process.
• Not all teams are created; they often evolve in response to a need.
• The transformation that occurs in the lives of team members can be as important as achieving the ultimate goal of the team.
• Great teams consist of those who are willing, though they often seem unlikely.
• The success of a team is rarely measured by individual accomplishments.
• When the stakes are high, teams must consider resources and influencers available from outside of the organization.
• Successful teams leave legacies.  My sister and I observed the sacrificial giving of an entire community of close friends as well as complete strangers.  With unwavering faith our parents sacrificed all they had for the sake of our brother without sacrificing the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our entire family.  That legacy has lasted more than forty years.
• Team success may not depend on a single defined leader as much as the collaboration of numerous ad hoc leaders who subordinate individual interests to the concerns of the team.
• A unified mission can transform individuals, families, churches, and communities.
• A team led by the Holy Spirit often realizes success beyond its control or comprehension.  

The website CNNmoney.com recently posted a story titled:  Stressful Jobs that Pay Badly.  The article listed fifteen of the most overworked and underpaid professions.  Number 5 on the list…Music Ministry Director.  The stress level for this position was surpassed only by positions such as social worker and probation/parole officer.

Worship pastors live under a tremendous pressure to perform.  Sunday and the preparation for Sunday comes every week.  The demands of the position cause stress which leads to conflict, burnout, and even forced termination.  Is this what God intended when he called you to do what you do?  Or, is there something you should be doing or should stop doing that would encourage a longer tenure where you serve? 

Much of the conflict that arises stems not from a lack of musical ability but from a deficiency in leadership and relational skills.  Consider the following suggestions to help you stay longer.

• Place more focus on the people than the project

Events are an important part of your ministry but not at the expense of relationships.  Don’t leave relationships in your wake as you move toward the end result.  The process is also ministry.  What will they remember more…the event or the investment you made in them leading up to the event?

• Look out for number 2

In his book 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (Like Me), John Fischer calls placing others first…Looking out for number 2.  Looking out for number 2 is becoming the person who always hopes someone else gets the honor and accolades.  Abraham Lincoln wrote, “It is surprising how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”  Effective worship leaders are strength finders and strength builders who constantly affirm publicly and privately.    

• Don’t compare your place of ministry

Minister with an attitude of contentment, not comparison.  Another place of ministry may seem more appealing…from the outside.  Don’t look to the left or right to see how you are doing.  We run this endurance race by “fixing our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2).  God did not promise us that we would always be happy, revered, loved, appreciated, or followed.  Until God releases you from where he has called you…stay.

• Be a lifelong learner

You begin coasting the moment you think you have all the understanding, knowledge, and skills needed.  Develop lateral mentoring relationships.  Read ecumenically…and not just authors or subjects you always agree with.  Visit and observe various congregations…even those outside of your faith culture.  You stop leading when you stop learning.

• Failure is an option (occasionally)

Some companies require their leaders to fail.  If they do not ever fail it means they are not taking enough creativity risks.  This suggestion is not a license for laziness or recklessness.  When you fail…don’t blame others for your deficiencies and failures…own them.  Surround yourself with those who have strengths in your areas of weakness so the failure is not repeated.

• You are not in this alone

God has called us and will sustain us in this calling.  We must also surround ourselves with others.  Bring people along with you.  Let them in.  Ken Blanchard said, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”  When you bring people along with you those failures and successes are distributed out more evenly.  Don’t forget the “great cloud of witnesses surrounding us” (Hebrews 12:1).  Ken Blanchard also said, “Leadership is not something you do to people, it is something you do with people.”

• Love much

Love God

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

Love your family

Loving your family means spending time with them.  The Church is the bride of Christ, not your bride.  Don’t sacrifice your family for your ministry…nurturing your family is your ministry.  Church responsibilities will never be completed.  Missed opportunities with your children will never be recovered.

Love the Church

Loving the Church means you trust them enough to let them in.  Trust takes time.  Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of humility.  Love the church unconditionally and you will be the beneficiary of much more than you could ever give.

• Make the mortgage payment before you remodel the kitchen

Worse first!  Since Sunday does come every week…do the things that are necessary before you do the things that can wait.  Do the roadwork at the beginning of the week so you can focus on the things that charge you up at the end of the week.  Thomas Edison said, “People don’t work hard because in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort.  Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves successful.  Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.”   

• Move tables

Are you the leader who disappears to carry out more important ministry obligations when it is time to clean up after an event?  Jesus said, “But I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22:27).  Since most of us as musicians are arrogant…we must with genuine humility be the first one to volunteer for the menial task that no one else wants and no one else sees.  Don Shula once said, “You can’t coach from the press box; you have to be on the field.”

• Lighten up

When was the last time you actually had fun in ministry?  Are those you are leading having fun with you as their leader?  If not, why not?  When we arrogantly assume that we are indispensable to God and our busyness is a sign of significance…we need to lighten up.  When we are constantly frustrated with people who will not do what we need them to do…we need to lighten up.  Don’t take yourself so seriously.  Laugh often…mostly at yourself.  A famous conductor jumped into a taxi outside the opera house and shouted to the driver “Hurry! Hurry!” “Very good sir” said the driver.  “But where to?”  “It doesn’t matter” said the conductor impatiently.  “They need me everywhere.” 

Marketing is an intentional process of identifying who the consumer is, determining the wants and needs of that consumer, and offering a product which satisfies those wants and needs in order to secure the loyalties of those consumers better than competitors do.

The American Marketing Association Board of Directors defines marketing as:  The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

If we are marketing worship…who is the consumer?  Check out the following video:  The Worship Industry.

 httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPRKCmYuCWA

The psalmist points out that God takes pleasure or enjoys the praise of his people through music…”Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp.  For the Lord takes delight in his people” (Psalm 149:3-4).  Are there certain musical styles he takes more delight in than others?  Are we arrogant to assume that he can’t stand certain styles because we can’t stand them?

As long as we see our worship music with the linear eyes of “we know what he likes and he likes what we know” our worship conflict will continue.  It is obviously more convenient when my favorite is also God’s favorite and therefore a more appropriate and spiritual expression of worship.  “Son of man, you live in the midst of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear” (Ezekiel 12:2).  God sees our worship music from a multi-dimensional God’s-eye view.  Reggie Kidd wrote, “It is amazing to me what odd sorts of people Jesus loves and how oddly many of them sing.  Yet he seems to be fond of all this strangeness.”[1]  May the apostle Paul’s prayer be our prayer as we consider viewing worship from God’s perspective:  “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18-19). 

Does God enjoy our belief that relevant worship music began with and will probably end with my generation?  Or…have we so focused on our own delight that we aren’t really even considering what God prefers.  Will the preferential divide ever allow us to realize that God doesn’t really care how our music is offered to him…just that it is offered to him?  The scripture never tells us what style of music God prefers.  However, the book of Isaiah does tell us what style he doesn’t prefer when the author writes,  “The Lord says:  These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13).  Reggie Kidd also wrote, “It has to matter to me that Jesus hears harmonies that sound cacophonous to me.  It has to matter to me that he dances to rhythms that do not move me.”[2] 

[1] Reggie Kidd, With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 120.

[2] Ibid., 129-130.

Congregations considering worship renewal (which might also include radical change) usually look first at what they do and how they are doing it.  The prevailing thought is “if we sing new songs/bring back the old hymns; incorporate visual stimulants/actually hold the hymnal; dress down/dress up; or simply mimic those congregations we view as successful then worship renewal will occur.”  All of these worship elements may be culturally appropriate for individual congregations.  However, those congregations will continue to struggle with worship renewal and worship conflict until they focus on worship not just as what they do in the church but also who they are in the world.

In his book Missional Renaissance, Reggie McNeal wrote, “The missional church is not a what but a who.  When we think of church in what mode, we focus on something that exists apart from people, some ‘out there’ that people join and attend and support.  We try, then, to build great churches, believing that this is God’s primary strategy to engage the world.  Inevitably, this pre-occupation leads to discussions of how we can ‘do church’ better.  Thinking about the church in who mode focuses on what it means to be the people of God.  The central task is developing great followers of Jesus, believing that God has created people to demonstrate his redemptive intentions to the world in and through them.  This perspective frames an agenda so that the community of faith may encourage all its members to be faithful to God and to his mission as they live out being the church in the world.”[1]

If worship is not just what we do but who we are can it ever occur outside of mission?  Check out the following video featuring Fuzz Kitto:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUN3IybCWRM

God’s revelation occurs when He offers us a glimpse of His activity, His will, or His attributes.  Our response is the sometimes spontaneous and sometimes premeditated reply to that revelation…worship.  A model for this worship conversation is found in Isaiah 6:1-8.  The holiness of God is revealed to the prophet Isaiah and his natural worship response is contrition, “Woe is me, for I am ruined.” (Isaiah 6:5).  God reveals His mercy and Isaiah’s worship response is service, “Here am I.  Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8). 

When we instigate the worship conversation by encouraging God to reveal Himself as a result of our worship actions aren’t we actually inverting the biblical model of revelation and response?  Is it possible our worship has been hindered through our efforts to generate worship instead of worship occurring as an outflow of God revealing Himself to us?  Instead of offering our worship actions while hoping that God will show up shouldn’t we offer our worship actions because God has shown up?

Richard Foster states it well, “Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.  Its central reality is found ‘in spirit and truth.’  It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.  Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals.  We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”[1]           

At the conclusion of chapter three of 1 John, the author makes the statement, “Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them” (1 John 3:24).  As congregations consider worship change, verses 1-6 of the fourth chapter of 1 John provides biblical assurance that we are offered wisdom to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1).  To test is to observe, examine, or evaluate to determine validity.  This process of testing or evaluating moves beyond considerations based on human feelings or preferences to a divine test rooted in “the spirit of truth” (1 John 4:6).

Just as culture impacts modern congregations, it also affected the communities documented in the epistles.  Marianne Meye Thompson offers valuable insight to help the contemporary reader understand the culture represented in these epistles:  “To understand the Johannine community we should envision a network of smaller congregations or house churches, sharing theological heritage and historical roots.  Within one (or perhaps several) of these smaller churches there are theological conflicts (1 Jn 4:1-6; 5:5-8; 2 Jn 7-10) and social rifts (1 Jn 2:18-26; 4:1; 2 Jn 7).”[1]  That tendency to allow the culture to shape the structure of the congregation (and not always positively) is also evident today.  Sensitivity to the prevailing culture is an appropriate response.  Allowing the prevailing culture which does not know what it needs or what it is looking for to dictate liturgy is where the line is often crossed. 

Colin G. Kruse points out that, “Believing every spirit would connote a certain gullibility.  Not everyone claiming to speak in the name of God actually does so.”[2]  Testing the spirits of worship is a process of evaluation to determine if those spirits are from God (1 John 4:1).  In an effort to create worship relevance, congregations often sample various worship practices while rarely testing them to discern the spirit of that practice and its appropriateness for their congregation.  Discerning the spirits is not an easy undertaking.  Thompson affirms the difficulty by maintaining that, “Truth and error are not always easily distinguished.  They do not exist disembodied, but come to us in the shape of real persons with whom we share a variety of relationships.”[3]  The criteria outlined in these six verses can serve as a benchmark to assist congregations as they consider worship change.  Testing the spirits moves a congregation from considering worship change based solely on its observed success in other congregations to worship change only as a result of the direction of “the Spirit He gave us” (1 John 3:24b).

[2] Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 144.

[3] Thompson, 1-3 John, 14-15.