How picturing chairs affects your ability to schedule a meeting (part 1)

Currently I am reading I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way You See the World by James Geary.   If you are a language nerd then you may like this book.  If you have a PhD in linguistics then this book may be too simple for you.  If you do not completely love the show “A Way with Words” then this book might be a bit boring for you. 

However, there are a number of studies in this book that are quite fantastic and this post is the first of a couple of posts on this particular study on how we embody time.  Here is the study, and you can play along.

“Participants looked at a drawing of a chair with a rope attached to it. Half of the subjects imagined pulling the chair toward themselves with the rope; the other half imagined sitting in the chair and pulling themselves forward along the rope.”

 (If you are playing along, go ahead and pick one of the groups and imagine accordingly).

“Both groups then read the statement “Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward two days” and were asked: What day is the meeting that has been rescheduled?”

(If you are still playing along, write down your answer.)

“The answer to the question “What day is the meeting that has been rescheduled?” is not obvious, because the concept of “forward” in the context of “the future” is ambiguous. When the meeting is rescheduled, does it move closer to you or do you move closer to it?”

If you imagined pulling the chair towards yourself in the illustration then…

“Participants who imagined pulling the chair toward themselves more often reported that the meeting had been moved to Monday, consistent with the metaphorical concept that time moves events toward them.”

If you imagined pulling yourself forward along the rope…

“Participants who imagined pulling themselves along the rope more often reported that the meeting had been rescheduled to Friday, consistent with the concept that an event is a stationary object toward which time moves them.”

Did this match up with you?  If you imagined pulling the chair toward you did you answer Monday?  If you imagined pulling yourself along the rope did you answer Friday? 

The next post will elaborate a bit more on this idea, but wanted to open this up with you to ponder this question – how is it that imagining a simple action have an impact on the way we understand time?  

Unique worship does not dismiss tradition

It might be assumed that if you create new worship experiences then they will dismiss tradition.  This happened with the "seeker-sensitive/contemporary" worship movement.  There was a strong effort to remove a lot of Christian language and make it easy on the ears for those who might be seeking Christianity as a faith to live into.  So contemporary worship, generally, does not have things like creeds or liturgies or litanies or the like.  As such when people think of new worship many people think that this new worship will be anti-tradition.

And when you value being efficient over being unique then that may happen.

This is not the case when you value unique over efficient.

The worship services that are truly unique are those who are able to root themselves in the past while introducing something new.  Unique worship services are difficult to replicate and in many ways are often "one and done" worship experiences.

If you have ever seen "Glee" then you know what I am talking about.  This show takes the words from common songs but puts them to new music and then you can instantly sing along.  You can instantly join in a tradition while at the same time that tradition is brought to life in a different way.

Take this clip for instance.  Notice that they build on the tradition of the song and yet bring it a new breath.

 

If you like it or not this is not the point.  Not everyone likes Glee (I do not), Glee is a community (Gleeks) and the music that is created speaks to the Gleek community.  Yet, this community, while creating unique music, it is rooted in a tradition that is much bigger than the community.  They do not betray the tradition, rather they take the tradition (in this case a Christmas song) and "Gleek it up" to be an unique expression of that tradition in the Gleek community.  

Notice that a worship community does not have to be original to be unique.  In fact, it is a bit arrogant to think that you can be original in a world of 7 billion people.  Rather, worship that values unique over efficient identifies where their community fits into the larger whole while at the same time striving for uniqueness.  

In all the efforts to make worship attractive to people, faith communities across the nation have created tract worship experiences that appeal to a broad audience but are ubiquitous and generic.  So back to the original question, "What would worship look like if it were driven by millennials and the creative class?"  

It would look unique but not original.  

It would be ancient and future.  

It would be remix and mash up.  

It would be culturally located and not difficult to replicate in other locations.

It would connect with a tribe or community but not everyone who encounters it.

It would be something that I could not wait to participate each week.  

Unique/Efficient tension

Last post ended by asking, "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?"

I hinted at in the last post that many "contemporary worship" services look similar to one another. I used the metaphor of tract homes to describe the amount of variety among "contemporary worship" services.  There is some, but they all have very similar structure.

Millennials and the creative class are people who value the unique over the efficient.  Tract homes and contemporary worship are efficient but rarely unique.

Take music for instance.  Contemporary worship will take a tune that is common and write new words to the song.  Much like what Charles Wesley did in his attempt to take pub songs and change they words to be more "godly".  This is an efficient way to make that which is old new again because it is easier to rewrite the words than to rewrite the musical score.

In contrast, the music in a worship that values unique over efficient will sound differently.  It will sound different but you can sing along almost instantly.  How?  By changing the tune and using common lyrics.  This gives rise to the mash-up and the remix.

Notice in this mash up that many people can begin singing right away even if you have never heard this song before.  Yes, it is not the best song that will appeal to the masses - but that is not the point.  The point is the uniqueness is values more than the repeatably.  You may think the scarf your friend knitted is less quality than the nice store bought one, but you might just treasure it more because it is unique.  Likewise, mash ups are generally deemed as less quality but unique.

Take the remix as another example of unique over efficient.  Remixes are usually take a good amount of time to put together but are not really able to be used for long periods of time.  Remixes are current, culturally relevant and quickly fade.  Remember this little gem?

Sure you do, but it is no longer what at the level of relevance it once was.  It was great for a period of time but now is kinda annoying.

In worship, when we value unique over efficient then worship looks different but not that different.  It changes yet there is always something that stays behind to connect or root us in the past (tradition).

The next post will have concluding remarks on this topic.