Last year I read and subsequently purchased Rex Miller’s Millennium Matrix for a course I took with Dale Dirksen at Briercrest. The book is helpful in framing a contextual grid for some of the distinctions in pre-modern, modern, and post-modern dynamics in church life. Miller has started a blog recently and I have tracked for the last couple weeks. He’s been posting a series of takes on mistakes that worship leaders make. I think he is identifying some of the core problems with contemporary systems of worship (the order and content of spiritual gathering times). Recently mistakes number 7 and 8 seem to evoke some tension in my mind. (check out these posts in order familiarity, routine, and a response) Let me frame the tension as I see it…
From personal experience I know that when a congregation has settled into a routine, complacency and rigidity that is counter productive to spiritual vitality. As Miller puts it, “That kind of formula actually creates a fear of intimacy which leads to a solid wall of activity and noise. No breathing room. No silences. No room to hear and respond. No room for the Presence.”
But I have also seen where the people who lead and design the ‘service’ have used to much new material and led in too many diverse spontaneous ways so as to alienate the congregation from engaging. Miller: “the ratio of novel to the familiar keeps worshipers off balance in most gatherings of the church.”
So how do you find a balance and what is the trick to being able to do enough familiar stuff to foster intimacy and not let it become crippling routine? How do you do new things in the gathering times without again alienating people?
In our church, we always pray before we receive the offering. Most often it is a pastor who prays and the content of the prayer is usually about the concerns and needs of the church community. One time when it was my turn to do the prayer I suggested that people stand up where they were and pick one of the needs listed in the bulletin and pray for them. This shift caused a stir. Several people appreciated the variety in what is easily a staple part of our gathering time. Others were ‘concerned’ that people might be nervous about getting up or that some people might not be able to hear or worse yet that a pastor might not be the one to pray for their concern. (We wouldn’t want common people to pray for Aunt Agnes now would we…)
So what do you think?
From personal experience I know that when a congregation has settled into a routine, complacency and rigidity that is counter productive to spiritual vitality. As Miller puts it, “That kind of formula actually creates a fear of intimacy which leads to a solid wall of activity and noise. No breathing room. No silences. No room to hear and respond. No room for the Presence.”
But I have also seen where the people who lead and design the ‘service’ have used to much new material and led in too many diverse spontaneous ways so as to alienate the congregation from engaging. Miller: “the ratio of novel to the familiar keeps worshipers off balance in most gatherings of the church.”
So how do you find a balance and what is the trick to being able to do enough familiar stuff to foster intimacy and not let it become crippling routine? How do you do new things in the gathering times without again alienating people?
In our church, we always pray before we receive the offering. Most often it is a pastor who prays and the content of the prayer is usually about the concerns and needs of the church community. One time when it was my turn to do the prayer I suggested that people stand up where they were and pick one of the needs listed in the bulletin and pray for them. This shift caused a stir. Several people appreciated the variety in what is easily a staple part of our gathering time. Others were ‘concerned’ that people might be nervous about getting up or that some people might not be able to hear or worse yet that a pastor might not be the one to pray for their concern. (We wouldn’t want common people to pray for Aunt Agnes now would we…)
So what do you think?
2 comments:
hey Dale came accross ya! Hope you and your fam are doin well
I thought it was the anabaptists who believe in the priesthood of all believers!
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