Ingredient Five: Illuminating Worship

Now I’m venturing into dangerous water–worship. Opinions are strong about what kind of worship is best, right, and even permissible in the church. And we all have our cultural and personality-based preferences. But I can best describe my bent as illuminating. By that I don’t mean theatrical lighting and lasers. I mean worship that illuminates a vision of who God is and the reality of his presence with us.

Ideally worship at Church³⁶⁵ would not be where people come to be “filled up” for the next six days, but where we gather to see the cosmos as it really is–a God-with-us world in which Christ is reigning. Everything would be positioned to help us see this reality and diminish the false visions we’ve ingested…

Today I visited Ground Zero for the first time. Despite the ongoing construction of the Freedom Tower and memorial, it’s hard to absorb that 10 years ago it was a scene of chaos and carnage. This afternoon, like September 11, 2001, was a clear and warm day. I walked though the canyons of Lower Manhattan trying to imagine what it would have been like on that history-changing morning. I couldn’t.

I hadn’t planned to visit Ground Zero on my quick trip to New York. But yesterday I got an invitation from Greg Wheatley at Moody Radio to be part of a panel discussion on his program, Inside Look. The special episode will air around the anniversary of 9/11, and will focus on the events of that day…

Back in college my professor of American religion gave us an interesting assignment. We had to visit a number of local churches, sit in their sanctuaries, and write down our observations of the spaces. Based on these observations, we were to deduce the theological beliefs of each congregation. How were the seats arranged? What was the visual focus of the space? Why did the Presbyterian church have a soaring pulpit? Why did the Episcopal church have a baptismal font at the entrance? (The most intriguing churches were ones where their explicit theology did not conform to the implicit theology communicated by their space.)

Because of this assignment I was intrigued (and rather proud) when I discovered my 9-year-old daughter conducting a similar exercise. Zoe has joined me at…

Many churches focus on providing a compelling worship experience. The desire is to attract people to an excellent production where they can sing, learn, and leave feeling renewed. For decades we’ve called this approach “seeker-sensitive.” But does that sensitivity have limits?

News reports broke last week about a 12-year-old boy with cerebral palsy being removed from Elevation Church for being a “distraction” during the Easter service. The boy’s mother said, “Easter Sunday he got all dressed up, got ready to go, no small feat with a kiddo like him.” But, according to the report, after the opening prayer inside the sanctuary the boy voiced his own kind of “Amen.”

“We were very abruptly escorted out,” the mother said.

Following the incident, the boy’s mother contact church leaders with…

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through the belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

…

Jennifer Taylor has confessed her sin publicly: she’s bored at church. But unlike many people, she’s not interested in a more whizz-bang service with hipper music or preaching. “I’m not looking for a slicker sermon series or a faux-hawked worship leader or designer coffee in the back lobby.” And she’s not about to leave her church to find a different mountain to climb:

“I also believe you make a commitment to one local church and invest in community with those believers long-term, I’m not going to start shopping for a new church. Besides, all those churches would also have long sermons and rambling prayers and worship leaders in skinny jeans. That’s the problem.”

So what is she bored with? What is she looking for? Taylor…

Last week I posted an excerpt of an article by Jonny Baker from “Grace,” an alternative worship community in London, about the hunger among the young for both liturgy and tradition. There have been a number of other resources documenting this same trend. And now Samuel Freedman from the NY Times has written about the movement of Protestants toward the Orthodox Church. Here’s a bit of his article:

The visible shift began in 1987 with the conversion of nearly 2,000 evangelical Christians, led by Peter E. Gillquist and other alumni of the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Campus Crusade for Christ. More recently, a wave of converts has arrived from such mainline Protestant denominations as the Episcopalian and Lutheran.

Some 70 percent of Antiochian Orthodox

…

Earlier this year, we published an issue of Leadership on the theme of “Rediscovered Roots: Timeless practices that keep us grounded and bring new life.” Jonny Baker, a leader of Grace, an alternative worship community in London, wrote a fantastic article for us called “Something Old, Something New.” In the piece he discusses the transformation of worship among the young away from a purely contemporary style toward an appreciation of history, liturgy, symbol, and even tradition.

I recently came across this cartoon called “The Evolution of a Worshiper” which reminded me of Baker’s article. The ‘toon progresses from an outwardly enthusiastic (can we call it Charismatic?) style, through the reserved form of popular evangelicalism, to the cynical postmodern with iPod and goatee, to the fully liturgical high-church Anglican.…

Earlier this year, we interviewed Keith and Kristyn Getty for an article about worship in Leadership Journal. The Getty’s are Irish songwriters that seek to write modern day hymns. Some of their more popular songs are “In Christ Alone” and Keith wrote “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” with Stuart Townend.

As outsiders, Kristyn and Keith had some interesting comments about their perception of worship in contemporary American churches and the value of remaining connected to the past. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation. You can read the whole article here.

Kristyn: In America, “new” is a positive word. The positive energy and desire to do new things in America is certainly wonderful. But the truth is life isn’t always just a blank page. The Christian…

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has written a new book advocating the use of pop music in churches to help explain the Bible to a generation of irreligious people. The book, Finding Faith, has been supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams who called it “profound and challenging.” In it, Bishop Baines explains how music from artists like The Beatles and U2 helped him articulate and express his faith.

Transmitting popular music into the church isn’t new. It’s widely known that Martin Luther used the melodies of popular pub tunes for a number of his hymns, and the Wesleys used folk tunes during their revivals in England. But what are we to make of contemporary secular pop music? Does it have religious value?

Leadership…