Sacred Space or Just Space?

As the worship guy at Community Church I spend a lot of time in our main worship space “the auditorium” and because of my role, a lot of that time is with an empty room.  Usually I arrive at church around 7am to get setup, finalize last minute details and prepare for the arrival of the rest of our team.  Most weekends I’m doing something until the 8am arrival of our band and volunteers on the tech team.  This past weekend I was blessed by our awesome team and had less to do than my usual hour of prep time needed, so I had a few minutes to spare.

As I sat in the middle of an empty room, a room that serves most often as a place of worship, I thought about space.  Specifically, in our space, without the people who make up the church, is it still “sacred space?”

In our particular venue, there isn’t much remarkable about the building we call our church..  Its mostly a big box with minimal decor, lots of technology and a good number of chairs..  What struck me as I sat in the quiet of the morning, just me and 500 chairs, was that our space is just that..  a space.

When I think about what makes the church come alive at Community Church, it isn’t the room we inhabit, it is the people that inhabit the room who make us a church.. While some may say, “no kidding” I think that there are places, maybe unique to a person that serve as sacred space in our lives..

I know personally, there are spots in parks, places in mountains, tables at coffee shops where significant moments in faith have happened and may continue to be vibrant places of encounter with God.  In my mind, those places have some contention in my list of sacred spaces.

It never ceases to amaze me that often where we find our profound moments with God aren’t places you would consider particularly religious or spiritual, but they exist as markers along the way of our journey to remind us that places are sacred only in the measure by which God encounters us there.

Week 3 The Nature of Human Beings (essentials blue)

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

Week 3 of Essentials*Blue brought forth another doozie of a topic, the nature of human beings.  As if it wasn’t rigourous enough to have explored the very nature of God, now this.  Dan Wilt opens this section with the admission of his common misstatement that I own 100% as well, “worship is all about God” (1)  This is enough of a thought to spark discussion for days.  Is the worship that we conduct in the halls of the church “all about God”?

The more that I engage in critical thought about that statement the more that I have to concede that worship is not only about God.  It very much has something to do with us as people at least in the sense that we are the participants in worship, but also further than that in the sense that we bear the image  of God.  The bible uses the Hebrew “tselem” to connote our image bearing, and reflection of God.  Dan Wilt explains that most often “tselem” is used to describe family relationship parent to child, the child is not exactly the same as the parent but has some of their character. (2)

N.T Wright also includes in this idea that humans as “the flower of creation” have a vocation in worship.  Our role is two-fold, first to reflect the personality of God to the earth, second, to gather up the praise and glory of creation and express it back to the Creator.  (3)

In this sense, we have to acknowledge this vocation that is given to us by the one we worship, and as worship leaders, help those we lead understand the largeness of our calling.  Settling for less only acts to bring less than complete worship, honor and praise to our Father in Heaven.

(1) Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Theology (iTunes U, pdf) p. 26

(2) ibid. p. 28

(3) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (New York: Harper One, 2006) p. 145-147

Week 2 The Nature of God (essentials blue)

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

Week 2 of the new bit of blogging and a bit tardy thanks to the arrival of our little boy Asher on Jan 19.  Week 3 I’ll be back on track.

This week we explored The Nature of God.  Quite an expansive topic, right?  No kidding.

The exciting themes for me this week are the idea of God expressing His personality by self-revelation.  The idea that we can understand what God is like based on what we see revealed in creation, the scriptures and through the Spirit.  Dan Wilt writes about how not only can we know what God does but also the why behind His actions. (1)  For someone like myself, who has a relatively short amount of experience in the church, to think that God would choose to reveal His motives is a shocker.

The second idea that I have explored but now have renewed excitement about is understanding the historical context of the story of Jesus.  N.T. Wright spends an entire chapter (2)exploring the history, politics and context of life in Israel during the time of Jesus, giving new light to the stories of the bible.  One particular point from Wright illuminates one of the central points to the story of Israel and their God, the idea of going away and coming back again.  Wright draws the thread through the history of Israel culminating with Jesus, the sacrifice that would once and for all bring the people back to God from their wanderings. (3)

Understanding the history of the Jewish people in relationship to their God instills in me a sense of connectedness with a story that shows no matter the wanderings or failings that this God is one that will never leave us or forsake us.

(1) Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Theology (iTunes U, PDF) pg. 8-9

(2)N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (New York: Harper One) pgs. 71-89

(3) ibid.

Diving in to Theology (essentials blue)

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

As you can see, this is a bit different from my normal blogging.  I am starting on a 5 week course in Worship Theology through the folks listed above.  Part of the course includes blogging about some of the ideas that we are discussing.  I hope this proves illuminating for anybody reading as much as it has been for me.

The thrust of this first week has been the importance of understanding theology as a worship leader.  Thankfully, this has not been a new concept for me to grasp, much to the credit of the former worship pastor at our church Gareth Robinson.  He was a stickler for understanding the theology of what we sing and made sure that the songs that we introduce in to worship reflect good theology.  One of the things that was reiterated in its importance a few different times in the course was the idea that in most instances people in the church will remember the theology of the songs over the theology delivered through the message. 1

Another idea that sparked some new light for me was the concept of embedded theology vs. deliberative theology.  Dan Wilt explains the difference as; embedded theology is the ideas about God that you grew up with, including your church (or non-church) , family, culture etc.  Deliberative theology is the concept that we have taken the time to examine our embedded theology and if necessary move beyond those beliefs. 2

One of the great things about this course is the primary text that we are studying, Simply Christian by N.T. Wright.  It has already been a phenomenal source of insight.  One of the themes that Wright uses is that there are things in the world that are “echoes of a voice” that point us towards a greater reality. 3

One of these is a longing or quest for spirituality, the chapter kicks off with an amazing story/metaphor about a kingdom where springs of water are covered over, sanitized and piped to the people by a dictator and his regime.  After a time people accepted this system of receiving water, even though it didn’t resolve some of the problems that were thought to have been caused by the unregulated water.  After a generation, the water could no longer be contained by the pipes and concrete that had been put in place and the water broke through.  Some were delighted, they could access water at any time now, but the officials for the dictator were at a loss for what to do. 4

Down the road, I’ll give Wright’s explanation of his metaphor, for now who do you think are the characters?

Grace and Peace

(1)  Brenton Brown, Theology and the Worship Leader (iTunes U) Video

(2) Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Theology (PDF) p. 4-5

(3) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (New York: Harper Collins, 2006) p. x

(4) ibid, p. 17-18

Videos from Worship Jan. 4

Here’s some video from YouTube of worship this past weekend.. We introduced a new song (part 2)that seemed to be a hit, “I Will Boast” from Paul Baloche’s album A Greater Song.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3