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...

Renewal

What a day! My intention to start the day by delving furth into Walters was delayed by the unexpected appearance of a young skunk in our yard this morning. Needless to say, it took my studies to a whole new level. During my morning time of reading and exploration I found answers to questions I never thought to ask (i.e. does Arapahoe County Animal Control help w/ skunk removal? No; How much does a private vendor charge for skunk removals? Roughly $170; Where do you find materials to dissuade skunks from calling your yard home & what can you use to get skunk smells out of dogs? Petco). As I said yesterday, you never know where your studies will lead if you remain open :) I finally did get around to four of Walters' chapters from "Can't Wait for Sunday" this evening. The chapters covered the topics of leadership, liturgy, tradition, and renewal. Let me touch on three things I found most helpful in Walters work. First, I loved his exploration of Don Saliers' identification of the 3 biggest inhibitors of worship: (1) when worship is done for the congregation, (2) when worship is done to the congregation, and (3) when the congregation doesn't understand what is happening liturgically (85). I have to say that as a worship facilitator, I'm most susceptible to succumbing to inhibitor #2 as I often have such a vision and passion for what I want to see unfold that I can impose a worship experience on the congregation. Saliers' words were a nice reminder to create more room for the Spirit and less room for MY vision. The second item of value for me was Walters' quote of Daniel Frankforter who wrote of the early church: "The Apostle Paul did not manate forms or liturgies to guide the Spirit's flow in the worship of his congregations, he simply urged Christians to exercise self-control out of consideration for others and the reputation of the faith" (92). The statement reminded me of the greatest challenge I've faced on the worship front: providing leadership for lay worship leaders. In working with volunteers, it's easy for a pastor to be so greatful to the volunteer that you end up enabling the volunteer to do whatever he/she wants. In the years ahead, I need to work on inviting lay worship leaders to "exercise self-control out of consideration for others" so that they grow in their ability to balance their visions and passions with the visions and passions of the congregation. Hard stuff! Third, I appreciated the acronym that Walters passed on for the worshipping community led by Leonard Sweet: EPIC, which stands for Experiential, Pariticipatory, Image-Based, and Connecting (112). Those adjectives perfectly describe the spirit of the emerging culture. I found it interesting that the two words I consistently used to describe this Fall's new worship gathering at Mountain View were experiential and participatory. I think I'll close with a sentence that came at the end of Walters' seventh chapter. In speaking of a worshipping community's chances for sucess in terms of worship renewal, Walters wrote: "Ultimately, a church's embrace or denial of worship renewal will hing on the pastor's and congregation's willingness to open their lives to God's Spirit" (117). I smiled when I read this because it reminded me of the last sermon I preach at Mountain View before I started my sabbatical. In my sermon, I used Brad Berglund's analogy of a shark. Berglund notes that a shark's nature is to grow to fit the size of container in which it is held. If it's held in a small tank, its growth is minimal; if it is released into a sea or ocean, it will grow to it's God-given size. I closed my sermon that day by inviting the congregation to spend the summer considering what size of tank they wanted to create for God's Spirit - both individually and collectively. I said we'd compare notes about the size of the tank when I returned in September. I'm getting a pretty good idea of what size I want the tank to be; I'm hoping they are too. Tomorrow, I'll finish Walters' book and offer my last thoughts on his words. Til next time...

Unexpected Surprise

Before I get into my unexpected surprise this evening, let me share a couple of thoughts regarding my continued exploration of Michael Walters' book "Can't Wait for Sunday". I spent my time in Walters' book today exploring his chapter titled "Currents: Why Worship Isn't Easy". I'd hope to get further in my explorations of Walters today but that has to do with my unexpected surprise which I'll talk about in a moment. Anyway, once again Walters' words touched a chord with my soul. I loved his discussion of the five cultural factors that affect our ability to lead authentic worship (relativism, ritualism, rationalism, romanticism, and realism). Of these five, I most resonated with ritualism (which he defines on page 53 as "the divorcing of worship from real life"). The effect: "this neatly segmented approach to life produces a ritualistic approach to worship. Worship is [seen as] an event that occupies an hour of time each week. It is a 'nod to God,' not to be confused with 'real life', which takes places outside of church" (53). This attempt to compartmentalize the sacred and secular is exactly what the emerging culture is trying to elimination. Needless to say, I couldn't agree more in Walters' assessment. My favorite sentence in Walters writing today was a challenge to those of us who like to create highly structured, organized worship experience. For those anxiety riddled worship leaders like me - stressing about each and every detail - Walters wrote, "It is impossible for us to lose control of authentic worship becase we never had control to begin with" (54). I definitely should copy that statement on a piece of paper and post it beside my desk when I get back from sabbatical! For those of you wondering what Walters means by authentic worship, he did an amazing job of defining the phrase for us in his third chapter. Authentic worship has three components he suggests: (1) it is worship that will shift our focus away from ourselves and toward God; (2) it is worship that will transport us - both mind & spirit - into [God's] transforming presence; and (3) it is worship that will change us (62). Can't think of a better goal for all of our worshipping communities to pursue. Now, onto my unexpected surprise. As my stack of books was dwindling, I thought I would spend some time at the Tattered Covered Bookstore (an independent bookseller here in Denver). I felt called to look for a resource on praying the hours/daily offices. I felt like this practice was something worth exploring as I considered various direction for spiritual formation opportunities for Mountain View next year. Instead of doing what I expected (purchasing Phyllis Tickle's book The Divine Hours), I found a book that caught my eye: "Prayer & Worship: A Spiritual Formation Guide". When I took the book home, I noticed it was identified as "A Renovare Resource". I jumped on line at http://www.renovare.org/ and found out that Renovare (from the Latin for "to renew") was "an intrachurch movement committed to the renewal of the Church of Jesus Christ in all her multifaceted expressions" and is an entity that "provides individuals and churches with balanced, practical, effective strategies for spiritual growth". There were aspects of the group's identity that I didn't connect with (its theological orientation is more historically orthodox than generously orthodox). Nevertheless, it seems that their resources are very accessible to folks from a variety of spiritual understandings. I was so excited about the possibilities before me that I immediately hopped in the car and found their store (8 Inverness Drive East, Suite 102). There I discovered a wonderful treasure of spiritual formation resources. The folks working there showed a truly unrivaled sense of hospitality. They pointed me toward a treasure trove of materials that I'll spend the better part of the next 7 weeks exploring. I look back now to Jim Kitchen's plea in "The Postmodern Parish" to pursue spiritual formation and realized the book planted a seed in me that time and the Spirit watered and brought to fruition. It looks like a significant emphasis for me in the year ahead will be issues invovling spiritual formation as I move from a ministerial approach that at times stressed INformation (about spirituality) and toward an approach that will stress FORmation. I'm excited to see where this all leads. Tomorrow I'll return to Walters book. Thanks for letting me share a bit of the Spirit's leading. Til next time...

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…

Theory Meets Practice

I finished Brad Berglund’s book “Reinventing Worship” this afternoon. The book was helpful for the most part. In today’s reading, I covered everything form Baptisms through Benedictions. I found the material very accessible to folks from a variety of theological traditions and backgrounds. What really jumped out at me was Brad’s strong commitment to blending spiritual formation (formerly Christian Education) and worship. This was particularly true in his sections on the liturgical calendar and lectionary. As someone whose first career (and on-going passion) remains education, I must say I loved this approach. As someone who was raised in the mainline church, I just assumed all churches observed the liturgical calendar year and used some form of the lectionary. It wasn’t until my seminary parish experiences that I realized this wasn’t the case. While I have been able to do some work bringing spiritual formation and worship together in my first five years, books like Brad inspire me to do much more. Before I leave Berglund’s book and move into a new realm of exploration, I want to say that there were two things about Brad’s book that I especially appreciated. First, I greatly appreciated its user friendly approach. Each section began with a sort of broad theological framing of the issue at hand. Instead of leaving each topic at the theoretic level, however, Brad included a section marked “Suggestions for (fill in the chapter topic here)" that provided very practical, hands on suggestions for each area. Many of these were very helpful. Second, I appreciated Brad’s sensitivity dealing with issues that often aren’t discussed under the topic of worship (i.e. how to handle announcements). In these sensitive areas you can see evidences of Brad’s years of pastoral service in the local church. He understands how each and every thing that happens from the time an individual enters the sanctuary until the moment an individual departs from the sanctuary after receiving the benediction matters. He treats each of these elements as an attempt to connect with the Holy. I wish all pastors and worship committees/teams did this! Needless to say, I’m looking forward to worship with Brad’s “Threshold” community this Sunday evening. Til next time…

Reinventing Sunday

Today, I started exploring Brad Berglund’s book “Reinventing Sunday”. The book is written firmly from a mainline perspective, though many of its components are VERY emergent friendly. Let me lift up a couple of helping issues raised by Berglund. Brad helped me extend some of my thinking about the nature of worship. About 18 months ago, for instance, I began to speak with our Worship Team about establishing a church where “worship is created not consumed”. Brad goes one step further than I. He writes, “In many ways, worship is not created; it is discovered and recreated” (xvii). The danger of my approach is that it implies that worship originates in us rather than with God (more specifically, as a natural response to God’s nature). Thanks Brad for taking me outside of my conceptual loop and broadening my horizons! When it comes to conceptually framing the worship experience, I really resonated with Berglund’s mining of a lesser known prayer of St. Francis. The grounding prayer to guide worship and our spiritual formation is simply: “Lord, who are you and who am I?” (8). A prayer offered in such humility and openness would clearly create worship space where we are truly open to the leading of the spirit. I also greatly appreciated Brad’s practical suggestions about dealing with the first two movements of a worship experience (the “Gathering” and “Encountering” elements of the worship). For instance, in terms of dealing with the ever-present challenge to get folks to sit quietly and reverent in the sanctuary before the beginning of worship he suggests we invite individuals to pray for (rather than talk with) the persons sitting beside you in the sanctuary. Not only is this suggestion practically helpful but it is theologically wonderful as well!!! Brad’s comments on prayer were very helpful as well. He notes, “Each worship prayer has a unique function, but whatever the function, always direct your prayers to God. Praying is not a veiled excuse to preach, make announcements, or offer theological dogma” (38). I also appreciated Brad’s sensitivity to embodied elements of worship. This only makes sense in a community that proclaims an incarnational experience of God. He gives helpful ways to effectively incorporate movement in preaching, prayer, and the worship music. My only critique thus far from my emergent perspective is that Brad seems to put a high priority on excellence and competence for worship leaders. While I ABSOLUTELY think worship should be intentional, I worry that too much of an emphasis on excellence and competence can cause a worship gathering to become performance rather than worship. I am really looking forward to attending the worship gathering that Brad co-leads – a gathering called Threshold here in Denver – next Sunday. This will give me a better sense for how Brad wrestles with this issue (performance vs. worship). Check back tomorrow for my comments on the last half of Brad’s wonderfully helpful and engaging book. Til next time…