Can't Wait for Sunday

Today, I started wading in Michael Walters’ book “Can’t Wait for Sunday: Leading Your Congregation in Authentic Worship”. Can’t help but love that title, can you?! Let me touch on a couple of things that were raised for me in the reading of his first two chapters dealing with conflict in worship and the foundation for worship. The first thing that occurred to me is that Walters’ book is based upon a slightly different approach toward worship than the other materials I’ve read. Most of the emerging movement assumes that worship is only one part of the larger life of the community; therefore, they approach worship more as a way of life than a service or event. Walters takes a more traditional approach toward worship. He assumes that the worship service/gathering is the central/primary occurrence in the life of the church that in turns shapes and defines all else. Walters wrote, “Worship is the engine that drives a healthy church, and tending it well should be a front-burner concern for every pastor” (31). The last words of this sentence point to a second difference between Walters and much of the emerging movement. Walters assumes the primary responsibility for worship falls on the pastor; emerging communities share responsibility for worship among lay and clergy. Walters embodiment of the modernist/traditionalist approach toward worship was helpful at this stage in my studies since it caused me to re-examine (and re-commit myself to) postmodern/emergent values. Let me turn to a couple of things that were especially helpful about Walters work thus far. Most of the emergent literature I’ve read to date assume one is starting a new worshipping community so they tend to overlook/downplay issues of conflict when it comes to worship planning. Walters doesn’t; he takes these issues head on. Two of his statements really captured for me an honest assessment of where conflicts over worship stem. The first statement read as follows: “Church members who participate only in the worship of the church are very likely to feel that their ‘needs’ are not being met, because worship is not about our needs but about God” (25). Very true. The second statement about conflict over worship addresses larger, systemic issues in a worshipping community: “Churches that argue over worship do so bcause they have too much time on their hands, often because they are not occupied with fulfilling the church’s mission. Can you imagine the persecuted church in various parts of the world wasting its time on criticizing the pastor’s communication techniques or the style of music selected?” He concludes, “If the singing of my music has become more important to me than the love of my brothers and sisters, I have something much more serious than a worship problem” (25-26). Preach it, Michael! The second aspect of Walters book that was helpful for me was the ways he suggested for evaluating worship. There were two tools he proposed for evaluation that were particularly helpful. The first was a statement he drew from Eugene Peterson. In balancing the needs of the individual and community, Walters quotes Peterson as stating: “So the real question in evaluating the effectiveness of worship is not ‘Did I enjoy that?’ but ‘Did that build up the [body of Christ]?’” (40). Secondly, Walters draws on James White’s work in suggesting there are four categories to use in our evaluation of a worship experience: (1) theological (“what did the service say about our understand of God”), (2) historical (“how did it connect with the larger Christian tradition”), (3) pastoral (“did the service tend to the needs/acknowledge the social location of the worshippers), and (4) missiological (“did it motivate/equip folks to go out and respond to God’s call to tend to God’s creation”) (44-46). Please note that the words in quotations following each criterion were my own summary of the author’s point and not Walters’ words. These words gave me helpful insights into how to think about our worship efforts at Mountain View United (both at our traditional 10:00 AM service and our new non-traditional 8:00 AM service). I look forward to continuing my “conversation” with Walters (and you) tomorrow. Til next time…