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.

Essentials Red Week 2

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

This week in Essentials Red we looked at the historical use of the public reading of scripture and public prayer in gatherings of worship.  The ideas that stuck with me the most was this idea that the process of reading scripture collectively engages us in the process of remembering who we are and where we come from.

This idea particularly resonated as I had read an article about the Slate.com writer David Plotz who blogged about his process of exploring the Bible.  He made a comment about the things that he learned through the reading of the Old Testament, one of them was that the difference between the people of Israel and the other tribes that lived in the biblical holy land was that the Jewish believers communicated their stories from generation to generation and on throughout history.  Today if you reflect on those people, only the Israelites and their descendants are in existence today as a tribe.  The root is that they kept record of their history and passed along their traditions.

In the context of today’s worship how can we use scripture read publicly to connect us to that great sense of history of Jesus and his disciples, the power of the resurrection and holy spirit.  When we use scripture publicly, we continue to pass down that message of the saving works that can change lives and destinies.

Essentials Red (Take 2)

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.

Kicking off Essentials Red

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

This is the beginning of course #2 in the Essentials Series, RED.  Red looks at the history of worship and the way worship has been practiced and formed from the time of Jesus onward.  Week one looked the language or time and space.

This is an interesting topic for me.  Starting out my engagement with worship in the context of worship production as opposed to worship leadership formed my understanding of space in particular and to some extent time.  The question I’m pondering is, how much does space influence the way in which we worship?

Much like the idea from Essentials Blue that worship is “all about God” this poses some tricky points for many people.  I know personally, I would love to say that I could worship anywere (and at the drop of a hat too) and be intimately connected with the Father.  If that is true for you, let me know, I must know your secrets.

The reality of it often is that where and when we worship plays a role in the way that we perceive “how good” our time of worship was.  If you think about what you would consider your greatest, most intimate times of worship I would venture to guess that the space and time had a significant part to play in that experience.

For me, those times that come to mind are ones where a small group of intimate friends gathered on a retreat or by a river and worship with abandon, or a time of congregational worship that captured the essence of a community.  The times when the use of music, light, color, visual media, personal space, community engagement were all done with purpose have resulted in some of my greatest times of worship.

What we need to understand is that we as people live in a physical, visual, media rich world and these elements can be useful in our understanding of how we worship.