Essentials Red (Take 2)
June 12, 2009
For “The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Course, with Dan Wilt“.
This is the second take at my Essentials Red course on the integration of worship history, historical practices, time, space, worship and prayer in to modern expressions of worship. I had to take a break from the first cycle I started last fall with Essentials Blue but was interrupted by the arrival of little Asher.
Interesting enough, this time around it might even be more appropriate that this course would fall where it does in relationship to life’s happenings. This week’s discussions surrounded the ideas of the relationship of worship to the ideas of time and space. As I write this, our church staff and leadership are wrestling with the ideas of making some updates to the sanctuary, most of these dealing with the look and feel of the space in which we worship.
Much of the discussion has revolved around the idea from the field of marketing and advertising that “The Medium is the Message” coined by Marshall McLuhan, this statement reflects the idea in culture that everything sends a message about who you are and what you are trying to say. In our context, much of the amenities that we are looking to update convey the message that we are unconcerned; about progress, technology, worship, arts, etc. Many people are resistant to this idea that we have to conform and that such thinking is “shallow”. In ways that’s true, but if we are trying to reach a modern culture we need to make church relevant to those who are coming in from outside the walls of the church.
