Essentials Green wk2

For “The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Course, with Dan Wilt“.

This week’s work in Essentials looked at the ideas of Accessibility and Cultural Relevance.  The accessibility piece was one that I thought I had a pretty good grasp on, the idea that we want to make all aspects of our worship experiences easy to become connected to regardless of who might turn up.  This means that our music is simple enough to engage with, we are conscious of our language in that we dont use jargon that may be unfamiliar, and we understand who our potential audience may be.

The culturally relevant piece is one that I often struggle with, particularly since one of my roles is doing worship with Middle and High School students.  What much of our congregation deems “contemporary worship” is generally a sound that is 5-10 years old in many cases.  Also, because much of my work is with technology I also see areas where the church is woefully behind the times in the ways that it interacts and leverages technology to spread the gospel.  In this sense I see that the church is less than culturally relevant.

Something I was struck by this week was from Erwin McManus:

“Aren’t you tired of being relevant? I’m sick and tired of being relevant; relevant means someone else got there first and now I’m trying to connect. We need to stop being relevant and start leading the way”(1)

It seems that in much of what we try and accomplish as the church we’re only play catch up to someone who got there before us.  As McManus says I’d appreciate the day where the church reclaims the historical role as the best creators of art, music, culture, and thinking.

(1) Dan Wilt, Essentials Green Book wk 2

Michigan Vacation pt. 1

Rather than reposting I’m going to redirect you to the Eric Barz Photography Blog to see pictures and a brief recap of our vacation to Michigan.

Intimacy/Integrity (essentials green)

For “The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Green Online Course, with Dan Wilt“.

Ok..  So I wasn’t the greatest with processing my Essentials Red materials particularly since much of the work fell while I was traveling to visit family..   Note to self…  schedule classes better next time.

This past week for Essentials Green we looked in to the Worship Values of Intimacy and Integrity..   I thought this was all well and good and I’m a huge proponent of both of these values when preparing to lead worship, but I wasnt struck by any of those woah! moments that have been a part of some of the other weeks in the Essentials Course.  What changed my mind was the fact that this was my week to lead our devotion time for the Sunday morning worship band at CCOJ.  We meet 30-40 minutes before we have to set up to receive some teaching and/or have prayer and time to minister to one another.

Great.  What am I going to talk to these people about?  Almost all are older than me and have many more years as worship musicians and Christians for that matter.  What can I possibly teach them/encourage them with?  Finally, I decide…  hey, this Essentials stuff has been great for me..   lets see if they might enjoy a taste.

So, we dive in to the idea of Intimacy as leaders of worship…  How do we as the leaders model, encourage and lead people in to intimacy with their God.  What blew me away is that the team intuitively understands the idea, but has never had the right word to express it.  They also immediately make the connection between intimacy and integrity, that we can not expect to call the congregation to a place where we haven’t been as a leader.

The time comes for us to depart our devotion and go to the stage and I can palpably sense that the team was striving for intimacy that morning and hopefully it will continue on in to the week.

essentials red creative project

A Call to Worship from Psalm 40 vs. 1-3

Leader: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry.

All: We wait on You, Lord, the one who hears the cry of the oppressed and the broken.

Leader: He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire, He set my feet upon a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

All: Rescue us God, from the mire of our own lives and our own failings.  Set us upon You, the one true rock, that we may stand on a solid foundation.

Leader: He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

All: Let the joy of our salvation be a new song on our lips, that we may worship you with our lives and that many will come to know You.

All: We worship you now with all that we have to offer, our very best to you Lord Jesus. Amen

For my project with e*r I wanted to take something that I felt would resonate with our congregation and make it a format that would be different and maybe even challenging for them.  Since we use a very contemporary worship style, responsive readings and the idea of a “formal” call to worship are not common practices.  What is fairly common is the use of scripture to prepare and encourage the people in to the spirit of worship.

For this particular call I wanted to use a selection from the Psalms that reflected a sense of longing for the good things of God and the responsiveness of our Heavenly father to the cry of His children.  The use of Psalm 40 in particular is one that we often use in worship gatherings so the language of the scripture would be something that the congregation would be familiar with while the response would be new.

As a call to worship I think that this responsive reading engages the mind to move past simply hearing the word but not having to engage it which in the simple act of response sets the heart and mind in a place where participation is happening rather than simply anticipating that worship is a consumer product.  With our worshipping community I think that moving away from the consumer mindset is of real significance as that has been a historical mindset that we are trying to move away from.