Reflecting on worship
After spending the weekend with Youth Forum as their chaplain last weekend, I’ve been reflecting a lot about worship.
Worship has evolved over the eons. Passive, active, interactive, contemplative, silent, musical, it’s an ever evolving movement for the body of Christ. Our most popular in Western culture is passive worship. The music happens at the front. The message and prayers all come from the front. We all sit in our pews and face forward, standing occasionally… if we have to.
I spent 4 days experiencing something different. I experienced worship that moved. I experienced worship where the only place to sit was on the floor, and that was only when something had to be said. I experienced worship where the youth (and the adults among them) sang with all their hearts and voices, dancing, conga-lining, jumping, doing actions… and it was joyful!
I find it interesting that when the youth head to the floor of the conference meetings on Saturday night, almost no one dares miss it. When the youth begin to line-up people parking their cars run to get their seats before the youth enter into the arena.
Why is this?
Let me describe what happens.
The band (the amazing “The Message“) begins playing and all the youth run in dancing and weaving through the tables making our way to the front where we continue singing, dancing, jumping and waving. Most of the room is with us trying to keep up. (Confession: I was completely winded by the time the first song was over)
We do skits, we sing some more, we read scripture, some reflection on what we have been doing over the weekend and we sing our way out just as we came in!
It’s a high energy service that gets the blood flowing in youth and seniors alike.
But there was also the communion service right after when we returned to our common space.
The lights were low. Tea lights everywhere (battery powered for safety, don’t worry Mt. A staff). Youth were sitting in circles with their small groups, singing, praying and sharing in stories as the liturgy moved around them. Musicians, vocalists, prayers, scripture, all moving around the room, enveloping them as they sat together. They passed the bread and juice among themselves, serving each other.
Interactive worship.
Worship that moves the body and the spirit is what I experienced fully last weekend with 100 other people, and at times with 500 people.
Yet when we come home to our churches with the seats bolted to the floor with just enough room to walk in and sit down, I wonder what we might be missing. I wonder how we can bring such interactive worship back into our churches where we learn and grow together as one family.
Just some thoughts I’m dealing with this week.
What are your thoughts about worship?
Singing. Praying. Laughing. Learning.
This weekend was the Annual Meeting of Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada. On the floor of the conference lots of business work was done. Some motions were made. Some debating was done. And so on and so on.
But I missed almost all of it. I was with Youth Forum this year as one of their chaplains.
I spent the weekend with around 80 youth from across the Maritimes and Bermuda singing, praying, laughing and learning with one another.
Beautiful Africa
This weekend we were richly blessed in my town.
We were blessed by the presence of children, children who have very different lives than we have.
On Sunday morning people from about 6 different churches came together to worship on Pentecost Sunday. Why? Because we had some special guests among us. And boy did the Spirit of God ever move among us!
The Watoto Children’s Choir from Uganda came to our town and led us in worship. And what powerful worship it was.
The children are all orphans, mostly due to losing parents to AIDS. They have been taken in by a loving Christian community called Watoto. Here the children are in homes with 7 other children and one “mother”. Some have power, some do not. Some remember their parents, some do not.
But this morning they came, they sang praise to Jesus. They told stories that brought tears to the eyes of people listening. They celebrated life, and they celebrated the future to come in Africa as these young people dream of becoming great leaders in their continent, bringing about change and hope in the name of Jesus.
In the end, we raised over $3700 for the ministry. As we have been blessed, we returned a blessing back to them from our abundance as people really opened up their hearts, their homes, and their wallets to help those in need.
Our town has its struggles. No doubt about it. But there is also no doubt that we are a generous people.
It’s my hope that some day, these children won’t need to tour any more to share their stories, because God will have brought about healing and hope, change and transformation to a part of the world in great need.
Thank you again to Watoto and their amazing ministry and music. A tour that began in January in Vancouver and has taken them completely across this nation as they now make their way to Newfoundland.
Blessings be upon them, their families and their journey.
Brought back down to earth
“Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight turns you into who you are tomorrow, and the day after that. Look at who you want to be, and start sculpting yourself into that person. You may not get exactly where you thought you’d be, but you will be doing things that suit you in a profession you believe in. Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.”
~ Chris Hadfield, Commander, Expedition 35, International Space Station
Today a Canadian hero returns to the earth. Commander Chris Hadfield completes his five month mission aboard the International Space Station and comes literally crashing back to earth. At one point he offered the above words of wisdom as he described what drove him to become an astronaut.
These are words we need to take to heart.
It’s a question many of us may want to ask ourselves, “What drives me? What am I passionate about?”
What drives you… what forms you as a person is the environment you place yourself in. And to be honest, the world is telling us we can sustain ourselves. That we are in control of our own destiny. But where has that led us? Huge corporations have crumbled to the ground because of the greed of the leadership, even banks! Much of the world lives in poverty and violence as we feed our desire for more power and more money.
Is this what God created the world to be?
God desires for us to be loved and to love. To share with our neighbours, and to care for those less fortunate than we are. This is what He showed us Himself when His Son came to the earth in Jesus.
Sometimes it takes a new perspective on our lives and our planet to help us see it. Commander Chris Hadfield has inspired many to think about the earth and how we care for it from the perspective of someone who spent 5 months watching from above. To see the full beauty of creation without walls our borders, just simply the beauty of this planet in stunning imagery.
God has far greater plans for us than we think. God has eternal plans for those who follow Him.
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him” ~ 1 Corinthians 2:9
Prayers for and of the church
Photo by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TheUsher
The church is going through significant change, at least in the mainline denominations. Whether they like it or not.
Today, in the United Church of Canada we’ve heard that 28 people will be notified they will be without work in our national office. 14 through direct layoffs, and 14 through some sort of attrition. We hold all those affected in prayer. It’s not good when someone loses a job.
It’s no secret that this denomination is up against the wall financially. We must find ways to cut costs. Unfortunately one way is through workforce reduction. And as much as I don’t like to see people lose their job, it’s come to this. Having worked in the technology industry when the “bubble” burst just over 10 years ago, I know it’s unpleasant and can even be ugly at times.
But getting back to the church, and I mean no disrespect to those who are going home to their families today with broken hearts, we need to cut national and even conference budgets drastically.
We’ve built up this national bureaucracy that literally takes millions of dollars to maintain each and every year. At the same time our churches struggle each and every day to keep their own mission going.
The shift needs to return to local mission. It needs to return to serving our own communities in the name of Jesus Christ as the head of our church. We need to re-engage with our neighbours, not supporting a structure and waiting for it to tell us how to think and act.
Church is local. Mission starts locally.
We need to re-envision our church. Strengthening local ministries by becoming locally focused, not by centralizing functions in central offices where someone can do the work for us, whether it be at a national office or in conference offices.
Jesus walked the streets feeding, healing and offering hope.
These things can’t happen in a bureaucracy.
They happen in community.
For friends and colleagues who are learning they are losing their job today, I pray for support and direction forward. For our church, I pray we embrace our local missions, which is our congregations, and empower them to release the Spirit into our communities in the name of Jesus Christ.
Please join me in these prayers.
Amen.