CyberGroup Discussion - Beyond the Worship Wars

Wayne Holst

Memory and Celebration

Worship Characteristic 7: Vital and faithful congregations have a relatively stable order of service and a significant repertoire of worship elements and responses that the congregation knows by heart.

We learn the basics of the faith (creeds, hymns, key scripture passages, responses, etc.) by being in worship and hearing these key themes cited week after week until memory and motivation converge and we join in the chorus of worshippers with conviction.

To worship effectively by heart, three major factors must be present: a stable order of service, an order that is dramatically meaningful and suspenseful, and an active memory bank of congregational responses. Congregational worship gains power when the order of worship remains fairly fixed over time. A congregation that can never change its pattern of worship is certainly in trouble, but one that changes its worship every week is in deeper trouble.

C.S. Lewis wrote that a service works best when, through familiarity, we don't think about it. The perfect church service is one where we are least aware and most able to focus on God.

To be meaningful and suspenseful there is a need to learn the dance steps of worship; but the best worship is like a waltz with a stable order of steps generating movement that has coherence, beauty and depth of meaning. Because we learn these graceful steps by heart we become absorbed by the great Gospel narrative these steps are telling, and our attention is focused entirely on God.

We know the ritual, we know the motions, the words, the songs. Everything is ingrained in our common memory and it becomes a great and joyful moment!

Nothing can be further from the truth that congregational prayers and responses should be newly fashioned or spontaneously uttered every week. Bulletins should exist mainly for visitors. A worship guide can help newcomers but should not be necessary for veterans.

Walter Ong, a Jesuit scholar, claims that the spoken word has much more power to form community than does the written word. When a worship focuses on the printed bulletin and his or her own private reading world, the unity of the congregation is shattered. Prayer books can be helpful, but the purpose of fixed liturgy is to move from literacy to orality; not to read from the book, but to learn the words by heart.

Using strong prayers and other elements repeatedly in worship, reenacting them week after week, allows them to register in the memory banks of the worshippers.

Forms of focus worship education are used by many of the most vital congregations.

The goal of worship should always be a movement toward a place of joyous feasting and song. The classic worship order has a fourfold worship structure: gathering, word, thanksgiving, dismissal.

Worship Characteristic 8: Vital and faithful congregations move to a joyous festival experience toward the end of their worship services.

Most, but certainly not all, of the vital congregations included the Lord's Supper as a regular part of their Sunday worship. The move toward celebration, or giving thanks in worship, should always be initiated by a sermon, or homily. The eucharist is a natural reenactment of thanksgiving and can consistently serve as a foretaste of a great heavenly feast to come.

In addition, congregations can include the joyful elements of music, dance and testimony as part of the climactic, festival experience.

Leadership

The idea that a congregation is defined by the personality of its pastor(s) or that people would shop for a church based on the popular appeal of the clergy flies in the face of much that Christian theologians want to affirm about the church and its leadership.

The Christian community is to gather around the presence of God in Christ, not any human.

Yet, the truth of the matter is that the personality and gifts of pastoral leadership do matter. Like it or not, the personal style of leadership in a service of worship is a major factor in the effectiveness of that worship.

When a pastor is a strong, attractive presence, the church and its worship often come alive.

Worship Characteristic 9: Vital and faithful congregations all have strong charismatic pastors as worship leaders.

It is possible that the power in worship of the leader's personality and style can occur without playing into the personality centered, celebrity-dazzled aspects of our culture.

All Christians are ministers and are called to discover, with the help of the community, the gifts they have received and to use them for the building up of the church and for the service of the world to which the church is sent.

Clergy are to use their gifts and energies to enhance everyone else's. They are people of deep integrity who have the power to bless others, the willingness to ask in Christlike ways as they lead, and the ability to allow a service of worship to be a place of honest hospitality and the sharing of gifts.

The worship leader should establish positive personal connection with the congregation. They should conduct the service with a quiet, inner calm and allow the interpersonal dynamics of worship to point always beyond themselves to the relationship between the people and God. Instead of trying to be powerful, popular, and adored, they should seek to be strong, loving and wise.

The worship leader should gather the gifts of the congregation in support of everyone, the music, the event. The worship leader is like an orchestra conductor, not an emcee. Every person brings gifts to worship. It is the responsibility of the leader to receive the gifts, to allow them to be placed on the altar of praise and to pronounce God's blessing upon them.

The primary leader should share the leadership of worship with others.

The worship leader should, in word and action, embody the holy character of worship as both an ordinary member of the assembly and a representative of Christ.

People who come as visitors should be welcomed with a warm, public voice primarily as worshippers, not simply as visitors.

There is a joyfulness at the heart of healthy worship leadership that will be remembered long after what the leader said is forgotten.

Four Summary Insights About Vital and Faithful Congregations:

1. Pastoral leadership is the key to worship renewal.

The practical reality is that if the pastor doesn't move it, worship doesn't move. In all vital and faithful congregations, the renewal of worship happened because the pastor of the church has a vision of what worship could be and boldly took steps, using persuasion and personality, to turn that vision into practice.

2. Whenever worship is renewed, some congregational conflict is inevitable.

Draw the line between strong, and strong-armed pastoral leadership. Congregations know when they are being creatively stretched and when they are being bullied. But whenever change occurs, some measure of conflict is to be expected.

3. To change worship, significant lay involvement is necessary.

Real worship reform involves an increase in congregational participation in worship. Locate the directory and determine what people bring what gifts to worship life.

4. Education and publicity help pave the way for worship renewal.

Use articles in the church newsletter, courses for children and adults, information and talk-back sessions, book studies, teaching moments at worship, sermons,letters and brochures. Everyone, active or casual, needs to be given the signal that worship is urgent and ever being renewed.

Questions

1. Discuss Walter Ong's claim that the spoken word has much more power to form community than does the written word. Do you agree with Long's claim that a stable order of worship is more effective than a variety of liturgical orders.

2. Discuss the claim by Long that a worship leader should be strong, loving and wise rather than powerful, popular and adored.

3. Discuss your basic impressions of the worship course so far. Strengths. Weaknesses.

(the end of Vital and Faithful Worship, part one).

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