I started reading the Directory for Worship out of the Book of Order (PCUSA) and writing down my thoughts. I couldn't get past the first two little outline sections without writing an entire page. Here's what the directory said and what I wrote in response:
Christian worship joyfully ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to the triune God. In worship the people of God acknowledge God present in the world and in their lives. As they respond to God's claim and redemptive action in Jesus Christ, believers are transformed and renewed. In worship the faithful offer themselves to God and are equipped for God's service in the world.
a. The Spirit of God quickens people to an awareness of God's grace and claim upon their lives. The Spirit moves them to respond by naming and calling upon God, by remembering and proclaiming God's acts of self-revelation in word and deed, and by committing their lives to God's reign in the world.
Whew! That's some dense stuff!
The Book of Order says that worship is first of all focused on the Trinity, and acknowledgement of and response to God's work in the world, particularly Jesus' sacrifice and his presence in our lives today. It seems very focused on the present with a healthy dose of remembering as well. It is also a time of offering and equipping.
It seems a very simple formula: 1, proclaim all the good things God has done. I see this happening through scripture readings and also through personal stories of what God is doing right now in the world. I see the sacraments of baptism and communion coming in here as well; after all, Paul said that when we take communion we "proclaim the Lord's death until He comes again." 2, Thank God for what he has done and is doing--and will do, too. Most of what we usually label as "worship" (ie music and occasionally other arts) comes in here. 3, Offer ourselves to join with God in what he is doing in the world. I love the commitment statement we've begun reading together at the end of the service because it does this. 4, Equip ourselves to go out and join with God. Some of this would fall upon the sermon, I suppose, but in general I think the Holy Spirit does this through our act of worshiping in addition to any concerted effort we make on our own behalf.
That's it for now. We'll see if I get inspired by the rest of it.
22 June 2009
19 June 2009
Alright, back in the action here.
I've been tossing around the idea (in my head) of teaching a Sunday School class about Christian themes in literature--and I mean real literature, not stuff written for the "Christian market" or whatever. Here are some books I'm thinking about:
Till We Have Faces by C S Lewis
Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potock
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
various poetry by Donne, Milton, Herbert, and Hopkins
It's pretty heavy stuff, and I don't know that I exactly feel qualified to teach it, but it's better than another cheesy book on women of the old testament or whatever.
I'm going to be reading some of what the Book of Order has to say on worship in the next few days, so we'll see what thougts I might have on that. If I have any good ones they may turn up here.
I've been tossing around the idea (in my head) of teaching a Sunday School class about Christian themes in literature--and I mean real literature, not stuff written for the "Christian market" or whatever. Here are some books I'm thinking about:
Till We Have Faces by C S Lewis
Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potock
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
various poetry by Donne, Milton, Herbert, and Hopkins
It's pretty heavy stuff, and I don't know that I exactly feel qualified to teach it, but it's better than another cheesy book on women of the old testament or whatever.
I'm going to be reading some of what the Book of Order has to say on worship in the next few days, so we'll see what thougts I might have on that. If I have any good ones they may turn up here.
04 March 2009
The Emerging Church is a term that has been tossed about quite a bit lately, and sadly without much definition, at least that I have heard. I have heard both detractions and promotions of the movement without really understanding what it was they were talking about. Well, today I was looking through the sermon archives for Saint Antony's Episcopal Church (here in Silverdale) and came across a sermon that explained what the Emerging Church actuallly is! Thank you Rev Fulton! I must say I like what he describes. Here, go read it yourself if you need a little explanation for this new church movement. It's at http://www.saintantonys.org/uploads/7-6-08_Emergent_Church.pdf
02 March 2009
I'm a happy lightbulb
I feel like God just made me a little more whole today. It's a long involved story...
I joined the choir at my church when I was in 6th grade, which would make me, let's see...twelve? That first year in choir contained what I consider to be one of my most defining moments. I'm sure I'll tell that story in another post some time; this is not the place to go into it; let me just say that it was a defining moment. It was good. But now I am 25, so I may say that I have been a part of the choir for the majority of my life, and being in the choir has come to define for me who I am in our congregation. That is not so good. Why? I feel uncomfortable when I'm not in the choir loft. Everyone knows me because I sing. I consider skipping when I'm not singing. And I have started to feel trapped by it, though I don't think I realized it. Singing in the choir has become a sort of moral obligation for me; to quote Gilbert and Sullivan's alternate title for Pirates of Penzance, I became a "Slave of Duty." And this is where this slavery brought me:
We just this last Sunday made the switch from having two main services, one "contemporary" and one "traditional," down to one quasi-blended service. (I say quasi only because we're still working on what that looks like.) To do this involves bringing together multiple already established musical groups. Then end result? Choir is only singing once a month--at least for right now.
I was elated that we were combining services, overjoyed to be doing blended worship, delighted that our congregation would be less separated and stratified now.
And I was devastated that the choir was only singing once a month.
Why? I agree that it doesn't really matter what we do to worship as long as we really are worshiping. But my identity was enslaved to the choir, and because of that it felt like my self was being ripped away. I was being denied my definition! This tiny thing had become a calamity for me.
And there I sat on my little ash-heap. And there I was tonight when the worship committee got together. But then, half way through the meeting I suddenly realized something: If I only have to go to choir warm ups once a month I can go to sunday school and not miss much!
It was then that my little happy light bulb came on in my mind (I think he might also go by the name of Holy Spirit or Divine Inspiration sometimes.) I realized that all this time I had been placing my identity on what I did. That's why I was so threatened by this change. I could feel the little shackles come off my psyche. I was no longer tied to the choir, though I would continue to sing with them. But now I was simply a worshiper of God. I was just a member of the congregation. I could be a member of any congregation. My identity was in my God, the one whom I worship.
And so, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the breakfast service when I'm not singing--maybe! And I may start going to a sunday school class. And I also might go to the later service at the Episcopal church now and then. But what I'm really going to do is worship my wonderful, amazing God who frees my of my bondage and renews my mind and today made me a little bit more whole.
I joined the choir at my church when I was in 6th grade, which would make me, let's see...twelve? That first year in choir contained what I consider to be one of my most defining moments. I'm sure I'll tell that story in another post some time; this is not the place to go into it; let me just say that it was a defining moment. It was good. But now I am 25, so I may say that I have been a part of the choir for the majority of my life, and being in the choir has come to define for me who I am in our congregation. That is not so good. Why? I feel uncomfortable when I'm not in the choir loft. Everyone knows me because I sing. I consider skipping when I'm not singing. And I have started to feel trapped by it, though I don't think I realized it. Singing in the choir has become a sort of moral obligation for me; to quote Gilbert and Sullivan's alternate title for Pirates of Penzance, I became a "Slave of Duty." And this is where this slavery brought me:
We just this last Sunday made the switch from having two main services, one "contemporary" and one "traditional," down to one quasi-blended service. (I say quasi only because we're still working on what that looks like.) To do this involves bringing together multiple already established musical groups. Then end result? Choir is only singing once a month--at least for right now.
I was elated that we were combining services, overjoyed to be doing blended worship, delighted that our congregation would be less separated and stratified now.
And I was devastated that the choir was only singing once a month.
Why? I agree that it doesn't really matter what we do to worship as long as we really are worshiping. But my identity was enslaved to the choir, and because of that it felt like my self was being ripped away. I was being denied my definition! This tiny thing had become a calamity for me.
And there I sat on my little ash-heap. And there I was tonight when the worship committee got together. But then, half way through the meeting I suddenly realized something: If I only have to go to choir warm ups once a month I can go to sunday school and not miss much!
It was then that my little happy light bulb came on in my mind (I think he might also go by the name of Holy Spirit or Divine Inspiration sometimes.) I realized that all this time I had been placing my identity on what I did. That's why I was so threatened by this change. I could feel the little shackles come off my psyche. I was no longer tied to the choir, though I would continue to sing with them. But now I was simply a worshiper of God. I was just a member of the congregation. I could be a member of any congregation. My identity was in my God, the one whom I worship.
And so, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the breakfast service when I'm not singing--maybe! And I may start going to a sunday school class. And I also might go to the later service at the Episcopal church now and then. But what I'm really going to do is worship my wonderful, amazing God who frees my of my bondage and renews my mind and today made me a little bit more whole.
30 January 2009
This Eternal Moment
Just a quote today, from an excelent multi-denominational discussion on salvation over at internetmonk.com. This comes fromWilliam Cwirla, a Lutheran pastor:
"As a sacramental aside, worship is a kairotic moment in chronos, an eternal moment in historical time and place. “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Every act of God, whether the preaching of the good news of salvation or the application of salvation in Baptism or the Holy Supper is a kairotic moment of salvation in chronological time and place. The eternal breaks in to the temporal, the infinite resides in the finite, and all that God has done for us and for our salvation is brought to bear on us in our own here and now."
I love the almost paradoxical relationship of chronos (our own chronological time) and kairos (God's infinate time). Makes me feel like the Red Queen (or was that the White Queen, I can't keep them strait.)
"As a sacramental aside, worship is a kairotic moment in chronos, an eternal moment in historical time and place. “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Every act of God, whether the preaching of the good news of salvation or the application of salvation in Baptism or the Holy Supper is a kairotic moment of salvation in chronological time and place. The eternal breaks in to the temporal, the infinite resides in the finite, and all that God has done for us and for our salvation is brought to bear on us in our own here and now."
I love the almost paradoxical relationship of chronos (our own chronological time) and kairos (God's infinate time). Makes me feel like the Red Queen (or was that the White Queen, I can't keep them strait.)
28 January 2009
Why do we Worship?
From Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward:
'Enjoyment,' for Lewis, was to be distinguished from 'Contemplation,' a distinction he first encountered in 1924 in the work of the philosopher, Samuel Alexander... He applied what we might call 'the Alexander technique' to many departments of life in addition to literary criticism and he thought it so useful that he eventually wrote his own essay on the subject, 'Meditation in a Tool-shed,' in which he recast 'Contemplation' and 'Enjoyment' as follows:
"I was standing today in the dark tool-shed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no tool-shed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences."
'Looking along the beam' is what Alexander had called 'Enjoyment' (participant, inhabited, personal, committed knowledge) and 'looking at the beam' is what he had called 'Contemplation' (abstract, external, impersonal, uninvolved knowledge.) For Lewis, this distinction was so fundamental that he was prepared to divide conscious knowledge accordingly: 'Instead of twofold division into Conscious and Unconscious, we need a three-fold division: the Unconscious, the Enjoyed, and the Contemplated.'
For a long time now I have been asking myself "What is worship? How do we do it? What's the whole point of it anyway?" We come together and we do all these things, and not any of them can by itself be called worship. Certainly music, by itself, is not the same thing as worship. And neither are sermons or scripture readings or anything else. It all appeared to be a matter of attitude, of motivation, and even sometimes of emotion. And it was frustrating, because I had used to understand this intuitively, but once I asked myself the question my understanding slipped from my grasp. I could still do worship, I could still assess it, boy could I still do that, but I could no longer understand it.
And then, last night, as I read the above passage, it struck me, and my understanding came rushing back, more fully formed than before.
Worship is knowing God.
Worship is knowing God by Enjoyment of Him. It is the "participant, inhabited, personal, committed knowledge." We engage with Him and so he reveals himself to us through love and interaction. It is like the life of a married couple. They know each other through their enjoyment. And our enjoyment of God through worship should be not only in this technical sense but in the common sense that we delight in Him and in being with Him. This is what worship is. Almost everything else we may do in the Church is Contemplation, certainly Bible studies are, and those things are very important and nessecary, but with out the Enjoyment, without the Worship, we can never fully and truly know our God.
'Enjoyment,' for Lewis, was to be distinguished from 'Contemplation,' a distinction he first encountered in 1924 in the work of the philosopher, Samuel Alexander... He applied what we might call 'the Alexander technique' to many departments of life in addition to literary criticism and he thought it so useful that he eventually wrote his own essay on the subject, 'Meditation in a Tool-shed,' in which he recast 'Contemplation' and 'Enjoyment' as follows:
"I was standing today in the dark tool-shed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no tool-shed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences."
'Looking along the beam' is what Alexander had called 'Enjoyment' (participant, inhabited, personal, committed knowledge) and 'looking at the beam' is what he had called 'Contemplation' (abstract, external, impersonal, uninvolved knowledge.) For Lewis, this distinction was so fundamental that he was prepared to divide conscious knowledge accordingly: 'Instead of twofold division into Conscious and Unconscious, we need a three-fold division: the Unconscious, the Enjoyed, and the Contemplated.'
For a long time now I have been asking myself "What is worship? How do we do it? What's the whole point of it anyway?" We come together and we do all these things, and not any of them can by itself be called worship. Certainly music, by itself, is not the same thing as worship. And neither are sermons or scripture readings or anything else. It all appeared to be a matter of attitude, of motivation, and even sometimes of emotion. And it was frustrating, because I had used to understand this intuitively, but once I asked myself the question my understanding slipped from my grasp. I could still do worship, I could still assess it, boy could I still do that, but I could no longer understand it.
And then, last night, as I read the above passage, it struck me, and my understanding came rushing back, more fully formed than before.
Worship is knowing God.
Worship is knowing God by Enjoyment of Him. It is the "participant, inhabited, personal, committed knowledge." We engage with Him and so he reveals himself to us through love and interaction. It is like the life of a married couple. They know each other through their enjoyment. And our enjoyment of God through worship should be not only in this technical sense but in the common sense that we delight in Him and in being with Him. This is what worship is. Almost everything else we may do in the Church is Contemplation, certainly Bible studies are, and those things are very important and nessecary, but with out the Enjoyment, without the Worship, we can never fully and truly know our God.
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