Can't Wait for Sunday

I finished Michael Walters' book of the title of this morning's post earlier today. What a great resource. It helped me move from the abstact to the concrete in my thinking about worship. Let me give you two examples of why I say that: Walters' exploration of music and prayer. As Walters observes, music is one of the most controversial aspects of worship. This is because people have such a strong connection to "good music" (music they personally like) and such a strong abhorrence to "bad music" (music they personally don't like). Walter's book gave a few practical suggestions for moving beyond such artificial categories. For example, he quoted Marva Dawn to help define what makes effective worship music: it should (1) have God as its subject and object, (2) form the worshippers character, and (3) form the Christian community (p 125). He follows this up by expounding upon the elements he personally uses to discern whether or not a musical offering is effective: the music should (1) be offered in authentic devotion to God (i.e. not to call attention to self); (2) it should be offered by those who give their all to make an offering pleasing to God (i.e. giving their very best, not necessarily giving a professional performance), and (3) it should be edifying to the congregation (p 130). These guidelines are helpful because they aren't tied to a specific type of music (i.e. traditional vs contemporary) and invited the musicians and worship facilitators into a deeper place of spiritual introspection before they lift up their offerings to the congregation. Walters' words on prayer were equally as powerful. He wrote, "In many churches, prayer is practiced just because - because we've always done it, because this is what you do at this point in the service, because it's a tradition. Prayer of this type," he adds, "trivializes the exercise and does a disservice to worshippers who ... need to be taught the value of prayer and need to have it modeled so they clearly see it's significance to the Christian life." He adds that a community should guard against the habit of directing their prayers primarily to one another instead of toward God (186). Good stuff! I found Walters' work consistently powerful because he had such a clear sense of worship's purpose (one that I happened to strongly agree). He writes, "When worship becomes a weeklong activity and not a Sunday ritual, it will transform the community" (193). This is right in step with voices from the emerging culture. While I may have started my sabbatical studies focused on what happens on Sunday mornings, my studies have spilled over into six other areas - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I feel like the Spirit's leading of me to the issue of Spiritual Formation as the next focus in my studies is right in line with this awareness. I'll close my exploration of Walters' with yet another great quote about what it means to have a healthy sense of perspective about worship: "Often, Christians say things such as 'Sunday worship helps me get through the week' or 'Sundays are where I get my batteries recharged '. While worship does benefit the believer, those who make such statements have missed half the point of worship. It is intended to trasform both the Christian and the world" (199). Til next time...