“Worship Ways”

While I was interviewed by the Search Committee I was asked for a “sermon tape.” I explained that I could provide them with a sermon tape, but I understood myself more as a worship leader than a preacher. This allowed me to begin sharing how I understand worship. I have been waiting for a time like this to share some of those thoughts with the entire congregation.

To begin, I think the word “church” should not be a noun: it is not a place to go or an object that can be given. “Church” is a verb: it is an activity. In the same way, “worship” is not a noun but a verb: it is an activity done with other people.

Our evaluation of worship becomes distorted when we gauge it according to what we get out of it. Worship is directed to God, not to us. The well-known Dutch theologian / religious philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described worship as a theater: we humans are the actors and God is the audience. Kierkegaard was criticizing worship styles where the congregation was a passive audience and the “professional” leaders were the actors. As many congregations use multi-media presentations, highly skilled volunteers, and incredibly motivating speakers we can still miss the mark when we assess worship in terms of what we get: we should be asking what we can give while we are at worship.

I was taught to welcome all people into worship. One implication is that worship should not be segregated. Christian history is full of examples were certain groups of people were not permitted to worship with others: at different times, women, people of color, and certain kinds of laborers have been excluded from Christian worship for the fear that they might somehow taint the activity. A group that many US congregations continue to segregate from worship is children, often rationalizing children do not understand what is happening and are a distracting disturbance. My own perspective is that children have different sensibilities about God than adults do – neither better nor worse, simply different. Because of the difference, children have different ways to express their understanding and respond to the presence of God. We cannot expect them to be little adults; rather, I feel we need to shape worship in a way that permits children to participate according to their abilities while anticipating those sensibilities will change as they enter new stages of their lifespan.

Similarly, I am very aware of the needs of people who learn differently. At various times in my life I have worked with people with learning disabilities, people for whom English is a second language, and people with severe physical disabilities. My hope is to eliminate as many barriers as we can so that anyone can find their way into participating in our worship.

As a teacher, I am applying a mixture learning theories explaining how we receive, store, and express information. There are numerous varieties detailing ways we “know” something, but almost all of them stress that everybody has unique preferences. By creating worship experiences intentionally appealing to many different styles of learning and expression, I hope that every attendee will find some part of worship which deeply engages them.

Worship should also challenge us. While all of us can know God, none of us can claim we have completely figured out God and God’s way of relating to humanity. We all spend our lifetimes discovering more about the God whom we worship. By including a number of different kinds of experiences in worship, we provide both a number of different entryways and a number of new ways to experience God, perhaps in ways we had not previously considered. Sometimes that may be a new way of thinking, and other times it may be a new way of expressing

I hope you have been noticing that in every worship activity you are invited to participate if you are comfortable. You do not have to do every activity the way it is described: sometimes praying with your hands just isn’t going to work for you, and some mornings it is more difficult to stand for the hymns. That’s OK: you should worship in the ways that help you be closest to God. I also try to provide you with many ways to do the activity (in my notes they are often identified as “small, medium, and large” options). Not all of us are ready to lift our hands above our heads, but lifting our hands up from our laps is enough to feel the activity.

In the past decade, religious leaders have been lamenting “biblical illiteracy:” our culture has become increasingly unfamiliar with basic biblical stories and imagery. Because I worked extensively with youth in the early part of my career, I am used to having to introduce biblical stories. I find those same kind of introductions are necessary for today’s adults – because for many of them the Bible is unfamiliar literature. By relating the many parts of worship to the scripture lessons of the day, I find we are introducing and reintroducing the bible stories numerous times in a single hour.

Another significant cultural change is how we pay attention: many say that our attention spans are decreasing, but the number of things we do pay attention to at one time is increasing. Twenty and thirty years ago people would sit and listen to a speaker for 20 minutes without a break; nowadays even speeches by presidential candidates are getting shorter!

All of these affect the way I preach. I was taught in college 20 years ago that if you could not deliver your message in 10 minutes you’d never be able to deliver it in 20; recent figures claim most people will not pay attention for more than 7 minutes.

My strategy has been to introduce additional preaching moments throughout the service. Comments about the Bible passages