I wonder if anyone would like to share some ideas for some creative ways to teach about worship? Starting May 14, we are going to spend several weeks teaching on worship at our church.
Here are some themes that we’re considering….
1. Revelation and Response - God reveals Himself, worship is our response to that revelation…not just about singing, but about our lifestyle….we worship what we value the most
2. Sacred Pathways - based on Gary Thomas’s book….the different ways we tend to most readily relate to God (i.e. Nature, Senses, Activism, Celebration, Intellectually, etc.)
3. Postures - biblical foundations for worship postures (lifting hands, clapping, shouting, kneeling, etc.)…it’s not about ritual, but helps express what’s in the heart
So, what are your ideas - visuals, sounds, experiential, etc - to help engage people with these concepts? What have you seen? What have you always wanted to try?
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May 3, 2006 at 7:32 pm
onelife
sounds interesting… an altar of ‘living sacrifices’ comes to my mind… maybe where people write on a piece of paper, something they will full heartedly commit to doing for the glory of God, that they aren’t doing already…?
May 3, 2006 at 7:47 pm
parke
Those are some great topics — often under-addressed in a culture that is fairly ignorant of the “whys” of traditional practice. A few passing thoughts.
- some time outside for number 1 so that people can be reminded of God as demonstrated by nature
- sharing postures in clusters so that people have some limited freedom in what they express and learn to value multiple practices happening simultaneously
- send people out of the room in groups to serve in the community in some small way as an act of worship (would require strong group leaders and definitive plans likely)
- some solo music time so one of the musicians can demonstrate and then talk about worshiping as a musician (might be instructive to the team as well)
May 4, 2006 at 5:03 pm
segue
I really love Thomas’ book ‘Sacred Pathways’. It was the basis for a sermon series that I did several years ago.
Worship as lifestyle is a difficult notion to get folks to actually remember. Church is ’structured’ in such a manner as to define worship ‘functionally’ as being in a church at a particular hour once each week. Our church ‘methodologies’ speak louder than our verbal teachings - however eloquent and clever the presentation. The notion of lifestyle worship is embraced only for a short while because our practice of putting so much money, skill and time into the one-hour-per-week corporate gathering convinces most people that ‘it’ is the ‘real’ worship time. I’ve struggled with knowing how to teach ‘one’ message in both word & practice. It will be interesting to see what happens during this series.
Some of the things that I’ve seen others try:
1. not meeting corporately every week, in the same place or at the same day/time or with the same order of ’service’.
2. adding sacred dance, availability of art/sculpture/paper (to write poems,etc) during corporate worship times allowing others to be free to express their worship alternatively
3. having ‘corporate’ worship times that are just a dialogue with the congregation - no music, not preaching - just people asking questions and getting answers from the staff and from each other on biblical topics.
4. removing the ‘tithe & offerings’ time from ‘church’ and encouraging members to mail it in each week/month since many define worship as wherever offerings are taken!
5. What has probably helped me ‘deconstruct’ my traditional definition of worship and reconstruct a more biblical notion, has been the opportunity for interaction during worship with the ‘facilitator of worship’. Again, the ’structure’ of sitting in rows, moving as one unit, being spoken to without being able to respond, not being able to share what God is doing within me right at that moment inoculates us against any other verbally communicated notion of worship.