September 9

My thoughts today won’t be on the daily lectionary passages. I covered those in today’s services. Instead, I think I’ll reflect on my experience of starting the new emergent inspired worship gathering. The first thing that jumped out at me was how nervous I was about the first worship gathering. All summer long I had been remarkably calm as I anticipated the start of the new service. Yesterday, however, my anxiety kicked into high gear as the reality of balancing the needs of two services became very real. As a result, I had a hard time sleeping last night and was up by 5:00 AM. Nevertheless, let me make a few observations about the experience. Let me begin by saying I was thrilled for the most part with the way the service came together. The 14 folks who attended came with an amazingly open spirit and really entered the experience fully. The theme of the gathering was “Discipleship” and the focus scripture was Luke 14:25-33. Let me list a few things that I think went well in particular. First, I thought the music piece of the service went well. Unlike some communities that organize their service entirely around new music, I sought to create music that was familiar and would invite folks into the experience. This worked well. The longer the worshipping community is together, perhaps the more adventurous the group might become. We’ll see. My goal with the music, however, isn’t to be innovative just for the sake of innovating: rather, my goal is to offer music that best enhances the worship experience for participants. Second, I was pleased with the participatory nature of the experience. Folks really got involved in the activity that served as the “sermon” and digested the Scripture in exciting new ways. Third, I liked the physical arrangement of the sanctuary. We are truly blessed to have such flexibility in our worship space (i.e. chairs rather then pews). The space was particularly helpful in facilitating the use of stations for communion, a prayer table, and an area for the offering. So what fell short of my hopes? My primary concern was that I did the bulk of the work for the service. I had hoped to involve more people in the process. The lack of participation by others was due to two factors: (1) my recent return from sabbatical 8 days ago, and (2) the fact that my first week back fell around the Labor Day holiday so others weren’t available to help out. My greatest fear is that the worship facilitators who follow me will copy my process and do the bulk of the service themselves. I should note at this point that we have a leadership team of five working on the early/non-traditional/emergent service, and for the next month, the other team members will be rotating as primary worship facilitators. I am excited to see how this goes as we move beyond the traditional assumption that it is the pastor’s job to do 95% of the work in organizing a worship experience. Now that I’ve begun to integrate Pagitt’s “progressional dialogue” model for preaching, and now that we have had our first emergent-themed gathering, I can say it feels GREAT to have finally begun living into our emergent experience. There is much hope and possibility that lies ahead. We’ll see if this hope and possibility is realized. Tomorrow I’ll get back to my daily lectionary reflection. Thanks for humoring me today and allowing me to reflect on my recent emergent experiences. Til next time…