Worship in the Emerging Church: What Resonates with PostChristians

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Worship in the Emerging Church What Resonates
with Post-Christians

• Dan Kimball, Sally Morganthaler
• CCN seminar May, 2005

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Definition of Worship

• To bow down, prostrate
• Submission to Lordship of Jesus Christ
• Encounter

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The Cosmic Work of God

• Early Christian response to the presence and work
  of God
• Psalms, hymns, songs
• Prayers
• Communion
• Proclaiming the story
• However we package worship, these are the crucial
  elements

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Changes in Culture, Changes in Worship

• Culture VABEs
• From Judeo-Christian to post-Christian
• Post-European
• Generational issues music, language, dress,
  worldview

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Worldview Gap From Modern to Postmodern

• Modern values
• Excellence (tightly run worship experience)
• Cognitive and conceptual learning through one-way
  preaching
• Sometimes, the removal of ancient or spiritual
• Going to church

• Postmodern values
• Avoiding any sense of performance (relationship
  and chemistry trump excellence)
• Experiential learning through interactive
  teaching
• encounter trumps information
• Palette of senses
• Sometimes, the desire of roots, history, and
  supernatural
• Being the church

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Teens and 20s in Church?

• Barna 4 of GenX in leadership in any church
• Emerging generations have the lowest rate of
  church connection of any generation
• Emerging generations suffer from being
  hyper-spiritual rather than being too secular

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Remix

• Ancient-future
• Multi-cultural
• Narrative
• Instead of abstract or bullet points
• Collaborative
• From print to broadcast to interactive digital

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What does it look like?

• From primarily cognitive graphs
• Order of worship
• Preaching and singing
• to palettes of visual and tactile experiences

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From Program to Gathering

• Not a performance but hosting a gathering of
  people to experience God
• Hospitality issues of atmosphere

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The Palette Brushes

• Prayer
• Involves the community of faith as co-creators of
  the worship they will experience
• Scripture
• We are not elevating simply the human experience,
  but the story of God that catches up our human
  experience

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Priesthood of All Believers

• Richly textured worship among co-creators
• Beyond McDonalds to gift-based, passion-driven
  expression of the community of faith

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Preaching in the Emerging Church

• Preaching heralding or proclaiming
• Not ourselves, but The Story
• From male, up-front, wordy, bullet-points
• To oral/aural, visual, tactile, interactive,
  kinesthetic

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How we learn and retain

• 10 what we hear
• 15 what we see
• 20 what we hear and see
• 60 what we do
• 80 what we do with reflection
• 90 what we teach

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In every classroom there are

• 2 auditory learners
• 4 visual learners
• 4 tactile-kinesthetic learners
• Chinese proverb I hear and I forget, I see and
  I remember, I do and I understand

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The point of teaching

• Is learning
• Not just a matter of the preacher saying, I did
  my job, hope they get it!
• We teach in different ways so that people will be
  more likely to learn and be transformed

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Creating a culture of dialogue

• Via small groups
• Reflection opportunities
• Post-preaching dialogues
• Beyond answer-spew and into engagement
• Early churches met in houses they had
  opportunities for dialogue
• From news-anchor to the blog
• From preacher has all the answers to push-back
  on the blog

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Sacred Space and Environment

• Worship spaces in the Bible
• Garden of Eden
• Jacobs pillar (Gen.2818)
• Tabernacle
• Temple
• Synagogue
• House churches

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Sacred Space and Environment

• Worship spaces post-Bible
• Basilica (co-opted government town hall space)
• Cathedral (pulpit replaces altar as center no
  chairs till 1400s)
• Lecture hall (after printing press)
• Tent and auditorium space
• Revivalism reflected in architecture tilting
  toward theatre
• Non-religious theatre

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Sacred Space Reflects Values

• If there is a desire for a sense of the
  transcendent, then how would the worship space
  look and feel?
• What value does your space communicate?
• How does our space help us connect to God and
  each other?
• If you value response, is there room for people
  to move?

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Music in the Emerging Church

• Recent excesses of musical worship emphasis
• Turning the leader into a star
• Equating music with worship
• Imbalance of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
• Imbalance of celebration and lament
• Music not often enough the servant art, too
  often the lead art

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Music in the Emerging Church

• Spontaneous worship
• Pay attention to lyrics and theology of songs
• Introducing ancient songs and hymns

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Prayer Stations and Interactive Response

• Not just teaching the importance of prayer but
  providing actual time, space, and permission to
  do it
• Creating non-chaotic prayer stations which
  enhance teaching and offer places of spontaneous
  response

• Making sure you have times and places in worship
  that give people opportunity to move and respond
• Offering places of conversation in worship
• Lords Supper? Offertory? Prayer time?

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Art in the Emerging Church

• Use of artists within the community
• Indigenous expression
• Artists, poets, photographers, web designers,
  hobbyists

• Then the Lord said to Moses, I have filled him
  with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and
  knowledge in all kinds of crafts to make artistic
  designs
• Exodus 311-4

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Film in Emerging Worship

• Have clip be a catalyst for response
• Use film to set a vibe
• Use during message, times of meditation
• Sometimes more difficult to produce indigenously
  and thus easier to buy

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Some Final Donts

• Dont begin experimenting, make sure you teach
  the why and theology behind it.
• Dont necessarily begin with sweeping changes,
  but incremental, subtle changes.
• Dont just copy another church make your worship
  an expression of the gifts and passions of the
  people God has brought here.
• Dont create worship consumers by focusing too
  much on the performance of worship.

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Some Final Dos

• Do start without waiting for huge budget and
  technology helps.
• Do keep Jesus in the center of planning creative
  worship gatherings.
• Do be mindful of how much money and time we spend
  on creative worship vs. what we are doing with
  the poor and needy and in fulfilling Gods call
  for us in the world.

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Resources

• www.vintagefaith.com
• www.sacramentis.com
• www.ccn.tv worship seminars on DVD
• www.midnightoil.com
• www.churchmedia.net
• www.sermonspice.com
• www.highwayvideo.com
• www.barnafilms.com
• www.angelhouse.com

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Worship in the Emerging Church What Resonates
with Post-Christians

• Dr. John P. Chandler
• Courageous Churches
• Virginia Baptist Mission Board
• John.chandler_at_vbmb.org
• Copy right John P. Chandler, 2005