Contemporary worship and tract homes

Recently I have been asked about the difference in the contemporary worship and what might be called "ancient/future".  I will take a couple of posts to tackle this.

There are a great number of faith communities in our area (and in the U.S.A) that "do" contemporary worship and "do it well".  The flow is unique in each setting but generally it has these elements more or less in this order:

• Open with 2-4 "praise and worship" songs that are upbeat.  One song must be a "slow down" song.
• What I call the opening "Salad prayer" - this is the prayer in which the worship leader prays something like, "Father God, just 'let us' give thanks to you. Father God, 'let us' be center our lives upon you and just 'let us'..."
• Community announcements given in a casual/comical way 
• Stand and greet your neighbor time
• Scripture reading
• Sermon
• Offering (with a song sung by band at the front)
• 1-2 closing songs
• Benediction 

This is not a "bad" order of worship, it can however feel generic.  If you attend a contemporary worship Mississippi then the next week you attend contemporary worship in Washington, then they feel very similar.  This sort of "removal" of uniqueness is much like tract homes.  They are quick to build and they are great homes, but they all look the same.  There is little room for character or local charm.  Efficient yes, but not very original.  

Please hear me I have nothing against tract homes they are great in that they empower many people to have a home of their own.  Likewise, contemporary worship is great for many people to feel empowered to connect with a faith community.  The rub is that the "creative class" and the "Millennials" are people who value uniqueness, local and grassroots more than big box, conglomerate, and generic.  For instance, the Millennial lifestyle is more inclined to fuel the knitting revival than the generation before them (Gen X).  

If we are interested in creating worship opportunities for these growing demographics, then why would we look to create another 'tract worship' in our area?  Should we not instead look to create a local, homemade, authentic, unique worship expression for this context?  What would a worship revival look like if the Millennials fueled it? 

The next post will explore that question more.

"You can sit and watch it"

"You can sit and watch it."

This is what my 3 year old son said in response to the question we asked him about what I am to do when he plays "church".


"You can sit and watch it."

My son attends worship regularly, and while only being 3 years old, I think that he has and understanding of worship that is similar to what many people might consider worship to be.  If is something that one can sit and watch.  

 Currently, I am reading "Preaching in the Inventive Age" in which Pagitt addresses that the sermon is, which is dominated by monologue delivery, is something that contributes to the understanding that church is that place where you can "sit and watch".  

Pagitt argues for a "progressional dialogue" with clergy and laity in the preaching moment.  I cannot tell you how great this book is.  If you preach, you ought to consider Pagitt's book.  

Here is a link to all my highlights so far.  And for those of you who are like me and would just like a sampling, here you go!

• "This dependence on preaching as speech making has become a form of communication I call "speaching""
• "Speaching is not defined by the style of the presentation but by the relationship of the presenter to both the listeners and the content: the pastor uses a lecture-like format, often standing while the listeners are sitting. The speacher decides the content ahead of time, usually in a removed setting, and then offers it in such a way that the speacher is in control of the content, speed, and conclusion of the presentation"
• "Preaching has so uniformly been equated with speech making that any other means of sermonizing is thought to be trivial and less authoritative."
• "There are those who assume that if more people are allowed to share their understanding of teaching, theology, and faith, then there's a greater risk of the church losing truth. But the history of heresy shows that it's most often the abuse of power-not an openness of power-that creates environments ripe with heresy. The church is at a greater risk of losing its message when we limit those who can tell the story rather than invite the community to know and refine it"
• "I have come to believe that there's a kind of dehumanizing effect when, week after week, competent people aren't allowed to share their ideas and understanding; when, week after week, one person is set apart from the rest as the only one who is allowed to speak about God; when, week after week, people willingly, or by some sort of social or spiritual pressure, just sit and take it; when, week after week, they're taught that the only way to be good learners is to be better listeners."
• "It's simply untrue that people need their information in small, bite-sized or even "pre-chewed" pieces. The issue may not be that we have too much information or that we aren't presenting it in compelling ways but, perhaps, the information we've chosen is not all that interesting. New methods and exciting delivery will do little to solve that problem. A better or more tech-savvy speach is still a speach."
• "What I know to be true is not negated by others knowing more or other things. Truth is progressive, not regressive or zero sum. When someone knows something to be true, it doesn't remove the legitimacy of other truths but adds to it. We may not agree with the conclusions people draw, but we're better when we're moved to additional ways of seeing the world."

Worshiping worship - Part 3

If we consider that institutions are organizations that protects the gains of previous movements, then we can argue that institutions are rooted in the past.  This is not a bad thing at all, it is vital to us that institution protect the past so that we are not apt to repeat the same mistakes.  We have laws against slavery as a result of a past movement, and those laws protect the gains of those movements.

If we consider that movements are organizations that call institutions into new social gains, then we can argue that movements are rooted in the present.  This is not a bad thing, it is vital to us that movements live in the present so to not become stale but remain nimble and can adapt to the current situation.  The "Tea Party movement" is rooted in the present.  While not this simple, it might be argued that if there was no debt then there would not have been a Tea Party movement.  Movements are rooted in the present which also makes them look odd when we look at movements out of the context they were originally located in.  Take the following video:

Weird huh.  But this was a huge dance "movement" and in the moment it made so much sense.  

All of this to say that the UMC spends a lot of time discussing the value of the institution and the need to become a movement again.  However, this creates a dualism in which we pit institutions and movements against each other only to see which one will come out the victor in the end.

Christians are called to be Trinitarian in our thinking and in our lives.  Which means that these two aspects of Church are not enough..  If institutions are rooted in the past and movements are rooted in the present, then we ought to consider what is rooted in the future to help us avoid dualism and idolatry.

I do not have the answer, but I would submit that perhaps the thing that is rooted in the future is imagination. 

When we are rooted in the future we have to use our imagination because that future is not completely known.

All of these past three posts are all an attempt to encourage us in the Church to not only value the institution (past) and praise the movements (present) but also to have courage with our imagination (future).

If we are are busy working on preserving the institution or finding the popular trend in culture, then we have limited resources to dream and vision a future that is not yet here.  As we read the story of Jesus it is clear that Jesus was very much a leading from the future sort of guy.

He had harsh words for those who preserved the institution.  He was not against the institution, but when the institution becomes an idol then that is idolatry and this is in part why Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 a couple of times in the gospel of Matthew.  Many people worshiped act of the sacrifices to the neglect of mercy.

Additionally, Jesus did not spend much time crafting the movement around him, he trusted his disciples to tend to that.  For instance when he was faced with feeding 5000 people, Jesus told the disciples to do that!  Jesus knew that when we get wrapped up on the movement that it can quickly devour us and we do not have resources or the ability or time to do the vision and imagining that is required for the Kingdom of God.

Jesus spoke in parables, he spent a lot of time in prayer, he fasted, he isolated himself from the group regularly, he was constantly on the move - all of these are evidence that Jesus was doing the imagining work that was required for the revival of the Jewish institution and the progress of the movement that was forming around him.

The work of imagination is hard, labor intensive, valuable, necessary and vital to the life of the Church but we seem to not be very good at it.  If we want to reclaim the way of Jesus and imagine like he did, then I think it would not be a bad start to practice the things he did:

Pray.
Fast.
Isolation and meditation.
Move with purpose.
Contemplate and reflect.

We might call these tools of imagination.

We also might call these spiritual disciplines.   

Worshiping worship - Part 1

Among many of the leaders of the area of the UMC which I am located in, there is a premium placed upon worship.  Worship is often described as the most important thing that we do as a Church.

A previous post touched on this idea which you can read if you would like.  

It is not clear to me that there is one thing in the Church that ought to be the most important thing.  To say such a thing seems more of a reflection of the priorities of the person saying it than of the reflection of God's priorities for the Church.

Can we really think that corporate worship is more important than working to eradicate slavery in our back yard?  Or that teaching about the message of Jesus is more important than prayer and meditation?  

How can one hold one aspect of the Church above another?  Did not Paul speak of the Church being a body that is made of different parts and no one part is greater than the whole?  Can the hands of service tell the heart of worship that they do not need it?  Of course not.  

When we elevate worship above the other aspects of Church I would submit that we are in danger of moving toward an idolatry of worship.  We worship worship.  

From the infamous golden calf to elevating sacrifice above mercy to worshiping Cesar, the Bible shares of of many stories of humanity struggling with idolatry.  

The Church also seems to struggle with idolatry in that different parts of the Church elevate one expression of God over the others.  Mainline Church elevates God, Evangelicals elevate Jesus, and Pentecostals elevate the Holy Spirit.  Try talking about the 'Holy Spirit' in the mainline and you will find it to be more uncomfortable than talking about 'God'.  

The Trinity is a teaching about the nature of God which says, of many other things, that no one aspect of God is greater than another.  Yet, our Churches fall into the idea that there are aspects of being Church that is greater than others - namely worship is the "most important" thing we do.  

What if we were to take the idea of the Trinity and apply it to the Church?  

The next post will explore this a bit more...