outside is better

Theology and the local church

One of my favorite Revelation commentaries is The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.).).  Yes, you can call it odd that this is a hard decision for me. I really enjoyed reading the introduction because the author (G.K.Beale) stresses how important his worshiping body was in the years he was writing the commentary.  He knew that there was no way he could write this book and divorce the study from the people.

So how often do theologians/scholars or just thinkers take their various thoughts about God (and even the Church) and practice them outside of the context of the Christian Community? Situating theology primarily inside of the local church is very important.  I think the mistake of not including the Church as a crucial part of theology leads to the many fractures that we have in America today.  I had a teacher that once said all theology is practical, because if it isn't-it is worthless.  To some degree everything must be worked out in the community, it just takes discernment to know at what level you need to speak at with certain individuals.

Part of these convictions are what took me away from an academic vocation and realizing that my call exists inside of the local church.  Several people (my good friend JD being one of them) are convinced that worship/song leaders are the primary theologians of the local church, and I tend to agree with them in some situations.  This isn't because the leader says and sings better things that the preaching, but because the repitition of the sung theological canon of the local church is highly formational.  

We are what we worship.  We need more pastor/theologicans instead of pastor/self help writers that are helping their congregations understand the very nature of God through a pattern of life together.  We need pastor/priests instead of pastor/CEO's...men and women that are steeped in the deep grace of God and understand the responibility of sacramental leadership within a group of people.  There are great examples of this out there already, and it makes me proud that some of them are my friends.

The local church is the best thing that can ever happen for this world. Lets not forget that.

Classics: Corporate(ish) Worship

I spent time this weekend in my archives and found some older posts that I want to re-hash.  This is post is a combination of a few from the same period of time.

Worship is a rehearsal of who God is and what He has done,and gives expression to the relationship which exists between God and His people.(Robert Webber)

In a conversation a few years ago with a friend we were talking about some “dancers” at their local church. Once I visited this church and noticed there were a small handful of people that were practicing liturgical dance. While it seemed odd, I didn’t want to judge them, because I had always believed that we (as Christians) should allow people to worship in whatever way makes them comfortable. The group wasn't dancing in the front of the congregation, but inside a small alcove

that was out of the way. I forgot about this until my friends were telling me that their service has grown so much that they really don’t have the room for the group to dance anymore. At the expense of a few, the congregation needed the space to grow (enlarge the seating capacity
of the sanctuary by 30 or so seats).

A day or so after the initial conversation it came up again. We were talking about if the church was infringing on this group of dancers and their form of worship. In the conversation I was thinking about a book that I have been reading the last few days (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracte...), and how it teaches about more liturgical expressions of worship. To my surprise I actually said that I think that the dancers shouldn't’t complain and that my friend shouldn't’t be sad about taking this space away.

In my years on the road we always taught that people should worship in the way that they felt most comfortable, whether this be sitting, standing, kneeling, raising hands...etc...etc. When I was designing worship for college students I always had a variety of things available in worship for individuals involved (more emergent expressions like candles, art stations, journals). So the idea of accommodating everyone was something that I had practiced for a long time.

When many folks think about worship the first thing that comes to mind is the hour on Sunday. This is the idea that most of us grew up with. The Sunday hour is when we come to refuel ourselves, and to prepare for the week at hand. We rush home to take a roast out of the oven and settle down to watch whatever ball is being thrown across a field that day. It is something that simply comes up in the rotation every 7 days.

As we have slowly drawn ourselves away from the mystical and sacramental part of Christian Worship we instead now focus on the individual. Some would go so far to use viotile descriptors such as narcissism to talk about how most evangelicals worship but I think that is taking it a bit to far.

What is the central object of our worship?

If we placed someone completely foreign to every ideal of the American church inside a normal protestant Church service what would be their initial reactions? What would they pick as the purpose of the event?

The focus is on a person giving an eloquent message?
The individual desires of those around them and what they are seeming to get out of the service?
The idea of individuals reaching a trans-formative place?

I think these are all good observations involving the normal church service. But the critique is correct by saying that there is a heavy individual bent in our own worship. But shouldn’t our motive in worship be to point towards the Triune God and that story in everything that takes place in our worship time?

Worship is a rehearsal of who God is and what He has done,and gives expression to the relationship which exists between God and His people. (Robert Webber)

So I will let this end here, but I do want to ask a question.

How do we let our worship express the relationship we have between God and His people? I am not asking an idealistic question, but one that pushes us to examine what we see on a weekly basis in our own places of worship.

The Questions we ask ourselves in Worship

Robert Webber is the Jedi Master of the worship renewal movement of the last two decades.  I first ran into his writing when I was 15 years old with Worship is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation.  The last book of his that I read was Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God's Narrative.

Its kinda funny when I put two and two together, and figured out the first person who ever made me really think about worship was really responsible for making me start taking it seriously again five years ago. I was cruising through some old notes today when I found this. Three questions Webber said we should ask about our worship....

1) How does this worship speak to God’s glory in heaven and God’s saving actions on earth?

2) How does this worship help people identify their dislocation?

3) How does this worship lead people into a relocation with God?

Would you add any questions to this list?

Community Formation and Worship

Community is a pretty good buzzword.  Sometimes I shrug off these trends and at other times I realize how important they really are.  The theological idea of community falls into the latter.  Anyone who has been part of a strong congregation that understands how important they are to each other will agree.  As the Church-we function together as both the body of Christ and the earthly embodiment of the Kingdom of God.

Our actions as the gathered body matter.  One of the books that I have been reading over the last few months is James K. A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies).  In this book Smith describes "cultural liturgies", the actions that we perform in our lives that orient us to what truly serves as the guiding desire.  He uses an analogy of the shopping mall as a current forming place. He continually asks the question "What is determining the shape of human flourishing?" 

I really like to think of worship as the most intensive forming act that Christians should be involved with.  The word liturgy means "work of the people".  It is any pattern or order that directs what we do.  Every church is liturgical-meaning they have patterns that build a life devoted to Christ, whether they classify themselves as a low church (congregation or Baptist) or a high church (Anglicanism, Roman Catholic, Orthodox..etc).  This means as worship leaders we need to be pretty intentional about our moves. Is our worship counter-formational to the world? 

Whereas our services need to be extremely intentional..the aim in worship is to unintentionally be forming our communities into kingdom citizens.  This idea is really spelled out well in Many Colored Kingdom, A: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation, especially in chapter 3.  It should be something that is happening so much and so often that it can't be named.

How do the services we design and plan further sculpt the participants into the body of Christ?

In our worship practices, we are pulled out of the kingdom of this world and molded into the kingdom of Heaven.  As worshipers we begin to believe in a different world.  The person in the seat next to us quits becoming someone who is part of our personal space and experience and is transformed into another human that is abundantly loved by the Father.  It is in these thoughts that we have to have a robust view of the Holy Spirit...because it is by the mysterious actions that we are taken up into life with the Triune God.

This is all a little more heady than I would prefer to write about here....but it is so important.  When we think this way, the little details begin to matter.  We subtly realize how often we sing I instead of we.....or how our prayers are really inwardly directed instead of being proclaimed over and for the whole world. Christ on Earth is our mission that controls us in worship and our daily actions.  Our memories of brokenness and hurt are transformed into our awareness of God and His abundant love for his people and the whole world.

So what guides us...or how do we proclaim Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the true elements of control in our world?

Planning Worship: The Flow and Function of Design

For the last the last three years I have had the luxury of a creative team that is together for at least 10 hrs a week, and that (usually) understands that work has to be done at odd hours of the day.  This is a luxury, because many places have a group of people that are scattered and large group planning really isn't able to happen.  For those of us that still think with paper (like me), I made some charts up a few months ago and have been playing with them and using them in a few different situations.  Below are .pdf's and they can be downloaded and used for free.  If you have some thoughts to pass on, please feel free to comment or email me...I look at these as evolving scratch pads.

Content Grid for Worship

This sheet has helped me simply get down all the needed elements into one place.  Sometimes services will be complicated and this first piece of design (although I have kept this with me throughout the whole process) needs to be a landing strip for all the participants, a dumping ground of information of sorts.  There is space for key participants, as well as larger blocks to list everyone else with contact info and details. The .pdf can be accessed here at my Scribd.com page.

Flow of Service Grid v.2

Really good planning isn't an attempt to kill the actions of the Holy Spirit in worship, but it allows us to set up a framework that is free flowing, but detailed enough to get off the tracks and get back on the tracks.  Whether you want to worship to be laid back or not, when you have multiple participants really good planning makes it easier for them to do their job and therefore lead folks better.

Sunday Setlist 8.15.10

This post is part of the sunday setlists meme over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

I love being part of these meme's.  Looking over other setlists and situations is really fun for me.  Here was this last Sunday's music set.

1.  Crown Him with Many Crowns
2.  Your Grace is Enough
3.  Create in me a Clean Heart

4.  Be Thou my Vision

5.  Whiter than Snow

This last Sunday was at the congregation that Meredith and I atten and I have been doing surpervised ministry at the last month and a half.  The Sunday congregation is primarily a traditional service, with a serious contextual look at how music is used stylistically and lyrically.  Besides the songs I lead, we also sing the Gloria Patri and Doxology.  I am intentional with picking songs that are somewhat "country" or fit inside a country gospel framework, while also looking for pretty strong songs.  This past Sunday had more hymns than usual, but it really fit the sermon which focused on the gospel message handed down...and it never changes.  The sermon text was from Revelation 2, so you know that got me going.  All together, it was a great day of worship.

The Worship Seminary

A couple of years ago, my buddy Omar shot these videos with me and JD Walt.  There are a bunch on here, but they are great little snippets of worship theology.  JD has a great and unique view on worship-especially regarding those whom are in the pews.  JD and I work on resources that aren't about key changes and cut-capos, but more about the story of a Triune God engaging the entire world.  You could say that it is worship for the masses.  Here is the first little intro video, and you can get to the rest of them via youtube.

The last 10% in worship

Between vacation and a quick trip to pickup a new (to me) vehicle, I was able to spend alot of time in conversation with my Father, who is the pastor of a pretty decent sized Baptist congregation.  For years Dad and I didn't have things to talk about since he fished (I am terrified of anything aquatic) and enjoyed sports (I quit playing anything after I discovered that books don't hit you in the groin) and I pretty much chased the Rock and Roll dream the first 20 years of life.  Over the last 5-6 years, we have had ministry to talk about.  In the past, I was overly critical while I was sorting out my issues with faith, so I was often accused as being a Debbie Downer when it came to Sunday services.

Now--when we talk about how well services were executed, I come from the perspective of a qualified worship designer and leader.  It makes for much better conversation.  As we were sitting at the dinner table on Sunday, the conversation came to a new location and worship service my Dad's church is starting.  Meredith, my mother and I had glowing reviews...because it really was great.  I had a few things to bring up, and I think there were flashbacks to my grumpy past.  I don't think I even really thought of what came out of my mouth next...

"These tiny things...the picky little stuff...the last 10% are what make a worship service truly great....."

This was after thinking about little stuff that some folks would never realize is an issue, or recognize as a problem if asked.  Things such as keys of songs,tempo, powerpoint backgrounds, the sacred vocabulary used by various speakers, temperature of a room.......the tiny little bitty stuff. 

After taking a moment to think about what I just said Meredith jumped in with the same thought and answered..."the things that we don't see are what make a service." 

If you want to design a truly great service, one that unfolds the story of Father, Son and Spirit,these things aren't the icing on the cake, but they are the crumb layer that really helps everything pop.  They are subliminal, most likely not even recognized.  This isn't an issue of catering to folks in worship...but realizing distractions and ways to make us concentrate more on attentiveness to God while we worship.  It is thinking intentionally about everything.

I also want to put a line between performative excellence and doxological excellence.  When we want an excellent performance, we design something slick because we think people want and expect it to be slick.  Sunday after Sunday (or whenever your group meets) we have to "top" ourselves to provide a better, creative or more compelling worship experience (I hate that phrase...it makes it seem that worship is about us).  The vehicle for excellence is what matters, not necessarily the execution. 

When we are focused on doxological excellence, we realize all of the background work (including the technical stuff done live) should only be seen as failure when the congregation realizes we are there.  It is about designing a service that tells the story of salvation, and the focus in on God Himself....and it isn't just our congregations, but the entire world caught up within sacred time.  We worship together, one with the Church on earth and with the Church eternal.

So these little things that we fret about, especially when we don't think they are really that important, are the elements that make a really good service a truly great service.  We want things to be perfect because we want everything to point towards God, not the intervention of man. Yes-we are vitally part of salvation (and humanity has a distinct role inside the story of God that has a place in the service), but worship isn't the time for us to "show off" or practice creativity for the sake of being creative.  With all of our attention (even our unknown attention) directed towards God, we are better able to discern His presence among us as we worship.  These tiny details are important, but must always be understood as important for the sake of the glory of God.  

So consider this the introduction post for "The 10%".  Over time I want to flesh out these tiny details better.

A little quote....quick thoughts on Worship and Artistry

I have been on vacation for the last week and a half. I had grand goals of sculpting posts for the next month, but instead it turned into a mini prayer and scripture retreat. I don't think I am going to complain about that.....

This evening when Meredith and I got home, I was flipping through a magazine and found this quote in an ad for a guitar company.

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist.

St. Francis of Assisi

I am not sure if we can correctly attribute that to St. Francis, but it struck a chord in a conversation that is very easy to get me into...the artistry of worship design, more specifically the artistry of those who are writing the worship...whether it be prayers, responses, music, sermon or the overall flow.  This is a subject that we need to be talking about (and should come back to.)  Beauty is a characteristic of worship that reflects the beauty of God, not our own creativity.

Just some thoughts before bed.  Glad to be back.

The Community's place in worship

Whenever I lead worship or attend a church that is pretty intentional about naming what happens in worship I always pay attention to the language used over the congregation.  One of the named goals of many services that I have been at over the years is the desire to "Create space for the individual to encounter God."  While using worship as a pragmatic drive towards conversion is a pet peeve, this isn't the place for that discussion.

What bothers me about using individual language in worship is how it simply isn't biblical.  The Old Testament as well as the various Epistles in the New Testament are direct about worship as an action of the gathered community of God.  Sure-individual things happened, but this wasn't a designed aspect.  I find that being intentional about the language used within the service is a great step towards helping the congregation understand worship as a communal act.  This is a slow step of habit forming, not a drastic tune up done in desperation.

Here are 4 marks of how a communal view of worship will enhance not just a service but the overall congregational theology of worship.

1.  It will place God's actions not on the individual-but the redemption of humanity.
To think that the purposes of God are directed solely towards the benefit of a group of individuals makes God very small, and I do not believe in a small God!  Yes, a relationship with Jesus Christ will drastically transform our lives...but the purpose is always to bring us to the community built inside the kingdom of God.  Through this, our mission will act in its fullest because we realize how the Church is called out to serve as a beacon towards Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

2.  It will pull us out of a self-centered and realized religion into a Gospel view of "The other."
In our very self referenced culture, it is easy to practice a privatized view of religion that has room for others, but is still focused on ourselves.  We can inspire people to "love on others", but this leaves no room for a shared life together that is built off of the radical notions of hospitality that Christ showed in the gospel. 

It takes this view of the other to dine with our cultures versions of tax collectors and other notorious sinners (like Luke 15.)  Think of the dramatic stories of reversal that Christ taught in these situations.  Understanding that we are part of a cosmic plan of redemption that is inside the very nature of the Godhead changes us.  The best way to teach this concept isn't through a complex theology bomb, but the habitual practice of worship formation.

3.  It will encourage a Philippians 2 humility.
My good friend JD likes to say "The Way Down is the Way Up."  The way of Christ is not the way of man...in fact it is the exact opposite.  The path towards a deep and intimate life with God is not found by tenacity and sheer persistence, but a long life of abiding.  To think that this is a gigantic journey to be accomplished by ourselves is impossible.  The relationship between the Father and Son that we see in John 13-17 teaches us about the power of the relationship inside of the Triune God.

These are small steps to be taken as a group in worship. If anything, a communal view of worship is us recognizing that our God is the perfect relationship. . At the end of the Christ hymn we find all of creation bowing at the feet of Jesus (Phil 2:10-11) not a conglomeration of individuals.

4.  It will form the desired Church through corporate acts of remembering...taking us out of our specific place and time, joining us with the world and the community of Saints.
While that is a mouthful, it is the truth.  How many ministries use Acts 2 for a mission statement, wanting to show a deep commitment for community?  These types of relationships are forged through a holy bond to those who have been through the journey together.

Inside of worship are the places of healing, reconciliation, and maturity that are needed to truly form a community like this.  Remembering isn't simple memorialization (check out my friend Tom's post about the idea), but an embodied remembrance that thrusts and instills the past among the church.  We learn to claim the stories of the Old Testament as our journey out of the wilderness.  We lament the sins of Israel and Judah because we know we have committed them ourselves.  We communally recognize how we betray Christ, but also rejoice together because of Pentecost.

We aren't alone on this journey...but we attach ourselves to those who have gone before us and think of those after us.  The church of Christ is caught up in relationship together with the Father.  Jesus is our worship leader and high priest at the same time-not the object of our Worship. 

In our day and age of hyper-individualization, lets not bring our culture's sin into worship.  Because of Christ, the new Adam, we are remade into a corporate body devoted towards the Father.  The power of the Holy Spirit connects us to these mysteries.  Because we know Christ we know the Father, and we know the Spirit because we are in relationship to the heavenly Father.  These are lessons learned when we gather together to praise our God through song, prayers, holy scriptures and speech.  It isn't about traditional or contemporary-but relationship.  If is a life together that forms us, why break apart in worship?