Creative Project (essentials blue)

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

Preface:   My final creative project for essentials blue is a teaching and worship experience that I will be delivering to our student ministries in March.  It will be for both Middle School (grade 6-8) and High School (grade 9-12) students.  I will be teaching on topics of worship theology and practice and incorporating worship experiences in to the teaching time.  I have posted my notes that I have written for the talk.  Hope it makes sense and you can follow along ok.   It looks like my formatting didn’t survive the copy/paste and my footnotes were not included either.  I’ll try and remedy this shortly.

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Welcome & Intro
Explain process for night.  Teaching/worship interconnected. We will be talking about some ideas and then (hopefully) putting them in to practice.
Want to look at and challenge how we think about worship and God who we worship.  REF: Embedded vs. Deliberative 1 lets really think about what worship is and is not limited to.

What is worship?
- Ask for responses (assuming most will relate to church worship)

Worship from the origin of the word – to give WORTH – SHIP, to assign value and/or worth to someone/something by our actions, words etc.
Dictionary – the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration of a deity

I like to look at a combination of the two definitions as well as other sources when  forming what worship means.

(participation) ~ What are some ways we express worth to those we love (family, friends etc)  Many if not all translate to how we can express worship to God.

Worship is not limited to singing, not limited by being at church, worship is a practice in lifestyle more than a singular act on a Sunday.

Who is it that we worship?
(Particip) – Ask the question.  Who do we worship?

Obviously the simple answer is God, but in the simplicity there is a lot more there.
We worship a God unique among people of faith.  Our God is not a distant hands-off God, nor is He a God that seeks to manipulate and control us.
The God we worship is self-revealing, He seeks to make Himself know to us, through the scriptures, His actions in the world, and through Himself incarnate in the person of Jesus. 2
Discuss the Trinity  ref. “Essentials p. 17”3
How can we know God through the world we live in.
touch on God being creative, ordered, lover of beauty, seeker of justice

RESPONSE – What do we do in light of who God is?  We express worship towards God, because of who He is.  Daily living – “Rejoice” – being aware of the gift that God has given.  (observe creation, people etc) Now we will express that with scripture, worship.  During, listen to language of who God is.

Read Ps. 103
WORSHIP 1 – “How Great is Our God”

Who we are?  Why are we here?  What do we do? Why do we worship?

(Particip) How many would agree with the phrase “Worship is all about God”

Intent behind that phrase is good but not real accurate.
God has ordained a sacred role for us within worship, as well as the rest of creation.

(Particip) How many think mankind (you and me) are essentially good at the core,  bad?
Bible says Gen. 1:26-27, 1:31  “saw all that he had created and it was very good”
26-27 – Man is created in the “image” of God.  Does that mean that I look like God?  “tselem” – familial lineage, character/essence of parent to child 4

If we are created in the image of God what does that mean for us?
God is creative, we are sub creators
God’s Image, we bear His image to creation
God is Trinity, we area called to build relationships
God is Savior, we tell the story of salvation.

NT Wright, Angled Mirrors. 5
Reflecting the person of God to creation, gathering up the worship of creation and using our reason to give praise to God.
Revelation 4/5 – example of worship.

RESPONSE
Daily living, using the gifts that God has given to create in His name.  Bear the image of God to the world around us.  Live in loving relationships with family, friends, and community.  Tell the story of salvation, give testimony, live the story of salvation.
SONG – “Everlasting God”  -  Listen for salvation stories, redemption.

* What does the bible say about worship?

You would think that since worship is such a central part of how we express ourself towards God that Jesus would have talked about it a lot, right?

(Particip) Can anyone tell me what Jesus taught about worship?

John 4 – Jesus and the Samaritan Woman.  Discuss cultural context of Jews/Samaritans.  Why it was such a big deal.
The woman engages Jesus in the “this mtn, that mtn” debate.
Jesus bypasses the question, rather worship in “Spirit” and “Truth”
Look at words for Spirit – Pneuma “essence of person, alt: breath”
Truth – Aletheia – “candor of mind, free from pretense, falsehood or simulation.
We should be worshiping God with the whole of our being, in all of the “parts” of our life; school, family, work, relationships, service, finances, EVERYTHING.  And we should be worshiping without faking it, worrying about appearances and wanting to impress.

- Rom 12:1 – offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, this is your spiritual act of worship.

RESPONSE – Offering and Song – “Never Let Go”
During the song, focus on the creator God, whose image you bear.  Your worth-ship of Him.  Respond in whatever way feels appropriate, sit, stand, kneel, lay prostrate, raise your hands, sing, dance, laugh, cry.  Use the space of the room.

The lost discipline, silence & contemplation

To close our time together I want to highlight something that we often see Jesus do in the scripture but do very little of ourself.
I find in just a cursory search of the Gospels that at least 15 times we see Jesus retreat to solitary places to be alone, quiet and pray.
We run our lives at such a ragged pace that it makes it difficult to quiet ourselves to hear the voice of the Spirit in our lives.
Avg. Western person takes 22 breaths a min, most undeveloped people take 6-9/min.  We should take in 70% of our energy from breathing, but we dont.

RESPONSE – Were going to take the next 7 min. and be still and silent before the Lord, let Him speak to us through the Spirit.  At the end of that time, I’d like to open the floor for any one who wants to share what they heard in the quiet time.

End with benediction.

Quick Link

Really messed up stuff happening in the world of late, thoughts and prayers go out to the folks at VA Tech.

Lately I have been keeping tags on a blog called Internet Monk. Some of the stuff I have a hard time swallowing but some things posted just hit it out of the park. His post today on Christ’s Righteousness just floored me. Great stuff.

The Evolution of Hell

So for no apparent reason as I was eating lunch today I started thinking about the concept of Hell. Particularly as I have learned about it since the time I was a child. My view of Hell that I remember and I am sure resonates with many others evolved in the following way.

Young child stage: If you are a bad person (i.e. don’t listen to parents) you go to hell.
Hell at this stage was a place for naughty children. It was obvious that you didn’t want to end up there because you would be on fire forever..
Late childhood/Early Adolescence: If you do more good than bad you can avoid Hell.
This understanding of hell was more of a cost/benefit analysis than anything else. I weighed the good I felt I was doing and the guilt I felt about negative actions to decide about behavior.
Early Christian Mindset: During my early days as a Christian (and sometimes still) I thought about hell as a place for “those people” and I thought about it A LOT, it seemed like much of what I heard in church was about knowing Jesus for the sake of avoiding Hell. I felt like because I had accepted Jesus I was OK, even if I screwed up on occasion. Those going to hell were the people who didn’t think like I did and I needed to spend a bunch of time telling them about Hell so they would accept Jesus.

Currently, I worry less about hell in terms of eternity and who will or wont be there based on my presumptions, because the problem with presumptions is that we presume to know much more than we really do. One of the things that I find a lot of (Christian) people struggle with(including myself at times) is the “Who is in, who is out” mindset towards eternity. Many want Hell to be a justification for their perceived sacrifice and piety, basically saying, since I believed the right things and was “good” and you weren’t I need to know that someday there will be payment for you and your bad actions. In reality, this whole mindset reeks of bitterness and personal revenge, both of which Jesus cautions against.

As opposed to the previous views on Hell I think about this, one of the most common definitions of Hell is being separated from God. That says a lot if you really think about it. There are many ways that people are separated from God here and now, not only in the context of eternity. Broken relationships, families, lives all exist here and now and that causes many people to be separated from God. War torn countries, poverty, discrimination all currently existing conditions that seem pretty Hell-like to me. If we are really so concerned about Hell, let us work to bring little bits of heaven in as many places here and now as possible and let our Heavenly Father sort out eternity.