WorshipHelps

Dr. Steven Taylor is the founding pastor of Graceway Baptist Church in Ellerslie, New Zealand. He has a PhD on the Emerging Church and a Masters in Theology in communicating the cross in a postmodern world. Steve recently did a course at Fuller Seminary entitled “Communicating the Biblical Text in a PostModern Culture” in July.

He argues that to communicate the biblical text for today’s context requires one to “incarnate, indwell, our culture.”  Taylor goes on to use the phrase “DJing” with respect to the community.  A record DJ learns the historical stories (old records) and uses them authentically in contemporary culture and integrates them into the community's stories.  There is too much to summarize here, but do look for his book “The Out of Bounds Church: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change” from Zondervan.

Taylor cites Bono of U2 as a person who effectively DJs today.  According to Taylor, Bono is in fact a worship leader for over 40,000 people; Bono recontextualizes the biblical text and leads concert goers into a time of community worship and prayer. Taylor plays the “Vertigo ‘05” DVD and shows us how Bono is leading worship.  This intrigued me to the point that  Dr. Taylor and I discussed this further after the workshop. The following is from Steve’s article “7 Things I learnt from Bono about Worship Leading.”

1.    Connect uniquely. In the Vertigo DVD, Bono speaks about Chicago and his memories of Chicago. He makes a unique connection with context, day, and time.
2.    Engage through familiarity. Bono includes songs that resonate with previous experiences and previous encounters.
3.    Use repetition to call forth prayer. Bono uses the repetitive “Hallelujah.” It is easy to sing. The simple repetition enables the audience to sing with the band.
4.    Secure a 5th (visual) band member. U2 now has a 5th member of the band to add a visual layer to the experience. A wise worship leader will look to add not just singers or musicians, but a “visual” person to their team.
5.    Create hope by drawing the best from the past. Bono tells the audience in the Vertigo DVD, “We as a band are looking to the future. We’re taking the best of the past and moving forward with hope.”
6.    Plan participation. Bono can draw one boy from the audience to sing to, one woman from the audience to dance with. He uses repetition to call forth prayer and encourage congregational singing.
7.    Invoke passionate practices. Bono invites the audience to hall out their cell phones and to text “Make Poverty History campaign.”  A worship leader turns singing into action. He turns entertainment into justice.Continue reading...

Ron’s story about baptizing his nephew and the connections of baptism to our care for creation show how multifaceted the layers of this sacrament are. All of life, for those of us born of water and the Spirit, is wet. In other words, every moment of each day is grounded in baptism. Even if we are not following the will of God, those moments are redeemed in God’s grace, which is one aspect of baptism (cleansing from or forgiveness of sin). This is why confession or at least a reflection on how we “missed the mark” or sinned is a part of the compline prayer. The ancient “compline” prayer, or prayer at the close of the day shapes our sleeping and rising in the death and resurrection of Christ. This image is one of baptismal life; continually dying (repenting and turning from ways that separate us from Christ) and rising to new life each day.

Throughout the worship service there are several moments each Sunday where we can engage water in ways that help us understand and live more deeply into our baptism. Here are a few examples:

During the gathering of the people you can pour water into the font or baptismal pool with words that accentuate our inclusion into the family of God such as:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you m ay proclaim the mighty acts of the One who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)Continue reading...

A couple weeks ago I baptized my nephew at his home church in Chicago.  Per his parents' request, we used freshly imported water from Lake Michigan.  Let's just say that we certainly followed the ancient advice to use "living" water.

His parents were eager to do this because their families -- on both sides -- have deep connections to the "Big Lake" as home. In the service, I pointed to the appropriateness of the link the water made between family initiation and initiation into the larger family of God.

But more than that, I suggested that using water from this natural resource -- so dominant and precious to us in the midwest -- highlights the deep connection between the grace of God offered in baptism and the responsibility we gratefully take on as Christ's disciples to care for the world in which that grace is manifest.  It says something damning to us if the water in our backyard streams, or rivers, or lakes is so polluted that we cannot in good common sense bathe in it, or in good conscience call it "living" water.  Perhaps my nephew Samuel will grow up, in service to Jesus, to be a biologist who concerns himself with the health of Lakes Michigan, Superior, Huron, Ontario, and Erie.

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We have written before (here, here, and here) about incorporating lament into worship.  Most often such prayers are corporate rather than individual.  The harsh language of the Psalmic lament is difficult for most individuals to appropriate in their own devotional lives.  We have somehow learned that asking questions of God is irreverent, especially if those questions have a rebuking tone.  But the Psalms teach us that such questions are a central part of a relationship with God, and Scripture as a whole teaches us that God can probably handle our mild rants once in a while.

One interesting way to encourage folks to pray prayers of lament (whether publically or privately) is to prompt the prayers with an interrogative word, like "why" or "where" or "when" or "how long."  (The phrase "how long", in fact, is used over 20 times in the Psalms alone.)  This way, our prayers for peace in the Middle East, for example, are not merely petitions for wise leadership; they become  expressions of our own helplessness: "When, O Lord, will your children in the Middle East stop firing rockets at one another?"

After the jump is a short devotional service based on this idea.  It embeds the prayer of lament within both a sung Kyrie and a concluding Alleluia.  It also contextualizes the prayer  -- both the lament and the declaration of God's ultimate sovereignty -- as continuous with the "words of the faithful in all times and places."

Art courtesy Mary Ann BartleyContinue reading...

A chapel service I helped plan recently juxtaposed the dominant community calendar (the academic one) with the church's liturgical calendar.  So the chapel service the week before Ascension Day was entitled "The Blessing of Week Nine."

One of the neat features of the service was a skit composed and improvised by seminarians that illustrated the contrast between the flippant way we use the word "blessing" and the powerful way the word is understood in scripture.

They did this by juxtaposing funny 3-4 line sketches with longer scriptural or other readings.  Examples of both after the jump.

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I've written elsewhere about Kevin Twit and the Indelible Grace project, whose hope is to "help the church recover the tradition of putting old hymns to new music for each generation."  Of course, Kevin and his friends aren't the only ones doing this -- a student of mine from Fuller Seminary, Luke Hyder, has been doing it for years, too.

The other day I came upon one of his compositions while I was searching for an upbeat setting of Psalm 103 as a way to conclude a Eucharist service.  Psalm 103 is commonly used in this liturgical position, but the more common settings -- by Andre Crouch, or Brother Roger of Taize, or Graham Ord -- weren't quite right.  This one was.  He agreed to let me post it here, as a gift to the readers of this blog.  Click here for the PDF.

In some worshipping traditions, the "prayers of the people" are anything but.  The people don't do much praying at all-- they mostly endure the sincere but longish monologic ramblings of a pastor.  Those congregations who practice a bidding prayer fare a bit better, but their responses ("Hear our prayer, O Lord") can sometimes become dry and rote rather than heartfelt affirmation.

Here is one suggestion for addressing these deficiencies while accomplishing a number of ancillary purposes:

1. increasing congregational participation in the prayers of the people;
2. letting the prayer's shape be suggested by the prayerbook of God's people -- the Psalms;
3. making room within the prayer not only for speaking, but for listening to God's voice.

More details after the jump.Continue reading...

Here is an idea to strengthen you experience of baptismal renewal. Take a walk!

This may not sound very revolutionary, but any movement at all in my congregation carries the threat of something going awry. Our large mainline congregation typically restricts its movement to arriving, standing, sitting, and departing. Now we are about to take a walk together past the baptismal waters as a sign of remembrance and renewal.

We are about to reflect together upon the story of Peter walking on water. His first steps brought the threat of sinking. Our steps bring the threat of tripping over someone’s walker or stepping on a neighbor’s foot. – As the pastor receiving Monday morning quarterbacking, I’m not sure which is scarier!

Placed in the context of Peter’s walk, our congregational journey will be just a token of the faithful risk we are called to share. Members will bring their offerings forward as they physically move toward the front of the sanctuary. (I’m told there are some African communities where this act of offering is the most joyful and powerful part of the service!) Upon placing their offering (and their heart!) before the Lord, they will pass the baptismal waters and be given opportunity to touch the water and remember God’s claim on their lives.Continue reading...

It often seems that tradition is in the eyes of the beholder.

A friend visited for a while with our large suburban congregation and suggested that what she discovered was a heritage of worship that was part town hall meeting, part local talent show, and part lecture series. Perhaps there are other congregations whose Ordo follows in a similar path.

As pastor of the congregation for a little over two years, I have been faced with a number of questions related to local tradition. Making appeals to the great traditions of the church and faith don’t carry much freight for people who mark tradition according to what their parents taught them or what the last great preacher suggested.

For large churches, change often comes slowly with much conversation – especially if change is rare and sometimes has been disastrous.Continue reading...

Everyone wants heightened spirituality, but don’t know what it takes to get there. Most pastors and worship leaders have such a hectic schedule that it is impossible to slowdown enough for quiet time or solitude. Yet the Apostolic Fathers of faith placed a high value on it.

If leaders have a problem with carving out quiet moments can you imagine what the congregation is feeling? Jonny Baker and Doug Gay’s Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church, provides a “ritual” that contextualizes the spiritual practice of being in the desert that can be used as part of a worship service, small group gathering, or as teaching illustration.

Items needed: Removed Van seat, a boom box, selection of CD’s (ideally instrumental), a video projector and VCR. Video tape a drive down the highway, even being stuck in traffic, or driving through the city.

Description: Traveling in a car is the closest thing for most people get to solitude. “Setting up this ritual will hopefully help people to reflect positively on the space they have next time they are driving alone in the car” (Baker and Gay, Alternative Worship, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 2004, 86)Continue reading...