worship – Page 6 – Salvaged Faith

Passion Sunday

Posted on April 5, 2009Leave a comment

For about two and a half weeks now, I have been working on and reworking and tweaking our Passion Sunday worship. Last year, our format was pretty much a lessons and hymns service – where we read the scriptures and sang songs in between chunks of the reading.

I’m always torn about whether or not to really focus on Palm Sunday or to span the gammit and do the whole Passion Sunday reading. Knowing my congregation, probably only 15% of those who regularly attend worship will be at our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. And that is only 5% of the whole church. So if we didn’t hear the Passion story on the Sunday before Easter, the depth of the journey, the betrayal and the sacrifice would go unnoticed. And Easter just isn’t Easter if you haven’t journeyed through the cross.

But how do you tell the whole story on a Sunday morning? I’ve been reading a lot of other pastor’s litanies, and how they have put together worship and used some ideas from here and some ideas from there. The main structure that has fed into the service we will be doing tomorrow is a responsive singing of “Were You There.” The verses are not the typical ones, but each one ties into the readings that have preceded it.

What I did end up doing however, was take each of the scripture readings and put any spoken words into particular people’s voices. There is a narrator, but then there will be someone speaking the words of Jesus, of Peter, of the Disciples, of the Crowd, of Pilate, of Judas, and of Caiaphas. And then as I continued to wrestle with the text, each of those voices tell a bit of their own story and give some context to the message as we hear again the story of Christ.

I’m pretty happy with the final script, and I’m putting it all in God’s hands for tomorrow morning – praying that the spirit will be in our reading, and will help everyone present understand the Journey Through the Cross.

O.M.G.

Posted on March 6, 20091 Comment

So, I just got linked to an article about the new Bi-Lingual worship service that I am helping to build in our area of the state. See Article Here.

I am ASTOUNDED at all of the negative comments. Just a few months ago, I was so excited about the progress made in Nashville and their efforts to deny an “English Only” amendment in the city. And I’m not saying that Iowa is the most progressive place in the world. But I just wasn’t quite expecting the immediate bitter comments.

Please pray for our team as we navigate the landscape around us and continue our efforts to help people pray and worship God in their native tongues and as all of us learn to praise God in the many languages and in the diversity of creation which we were made.

senseful worship

Posted on February 23, 2009Leave a comment

I am a strong believer in using all of our minds, bodies and souls in worship. And one of the primary ways that I try to encourage people to reach that place is by thinking of all of our five senses and the worship experience. What are the things we hear? What kinds of smells do the scriptures bring to mind? What does grace taste like? What does the gospel feel like? How can we use color and images to see God?

Now – all of that is much easier said than done. It takes so much work to craft worship experiences and to be honest, for the most part I stick to a basic liturgy and try to throw one of the senses we neglect in worship (taste, touch, smell) in every now and then.

I have been thinking a lot about wanting to pick this practice back up again for Lent – even if I focus on just one sense each week. The scriptures for Lent 1B include the promise of God to Noah in the rainbow, and two years ago, we used that scripture in our emerging worship service in Nashville to literally paint a rainbow among the congregation. We had six canvases set up around the worship space and people were invited to travel among them and write/paint images, words, colors that expressed their understanding of promise and covenant.

I would LOVE to do that with my congregation. It would incorporate touch, color, movement, engage our minds etc.

I’m having more troubles thinking of what to do with the next week and the Lent 2B scriptures. Our theme is “Challenge” and the focus is on taking the leap of faith to trust in God’s promises – using Romans 4:20-22 and Mark 8:34-35

dos lenguas

Posted on February 6, 2009Leave a comment

I have been blessed to be able to work with other pastors in our district on a new hispanic ministry opportunity. We are working to build a monthly bi-lingual worship called “Two Languages, One Flame” and we had our second official meeting to plan today.

We talked a lot about how in many senses, most of us are gringos trying to do this for others. But what is really important is that we do have some partners in the hispanic community who are partnering with us, and we are just the starting point. Ideally, this is a shared cultural experience, where we have the opportunity to learn and worship in Spanish, and the hispanic community learns and worships in English. And as we worship, we help one another to discover gifts and talents and our dream is that a church will be born out of this community.

As we begin planning, one thing we are not aiming for is perfection. =) At least not yet. For me, it is much more important for the worship to be vital and authentic and from the heart – and if we make mistakes in translation along the way, we will laugh together about it and move on. We just want to praise God in two tongues through the power of the Holy Spirit that we share. If we do that, nothing else matters.

Take Me Home.

Posted on January 15, 20091 Comment

Today was bitterly cold outside. So cold in fact that they cancelled school. And I cancelled church activities. You just didn’t want to go outside unless you had to. I’m not being a wuss – I’m talking record setting all time lows here – you would get frostbite in 7 minutes in this weather.

I have never been in weather that was quite this cold before. And I didn’t really feel all that prepared for it. At least not footware wise.

The one trip I did make out of doors was to the nursing home for my monthly worship service there. And of course, I wore my cute little ankle boots with the pointed toe and heel…. but with fuzzy warm hot pink socks on underneath. I need a pair of uggs, or at least really warm boots, or something.

I really enjoy worshipping at the nursing home. I almost always share communion with them, and found that I am the only one who brings communion to their community worship. The Catholics have a separate mass, and the other denominations are more exclusive about who is welcome at the table. So, it is a joy to be able to walk around the room and share the bread of heave and the cup of salvation with these dear old folk.

Today, however, I largely used the service from the previous Sunday in church, and so we remembered our baptisms. I had a basin of water and invited them to dip their fingers in and remember that God loves them and has called them each by name. As I came to one woman, she said with joy, “I was baptized in the Iowa River!” Of course, there was the other woman who had fallen asleep and was gently nudged by her neighbor when I showed up with the bowl, but that is pretty typical with this group.

This congregation is largely women – in fact, I think there was only one man in worship today. His name is Bill and he is a beloved old member of my congregation. He was a farmer and milked cows by hand for 60+ years, which has caused his fingers to literally freeze up all curled together from the arthritis. I think about my dad and what he will be like at the age of 97 if he lives that long, and I see much the same type of body. A hard worker whose body has long ago worn out.

There was one woman in particular that I sat with after worship today. Her name is grace and all throughout the service, she asked who was going to take her home. At the end I had a chance to chat and she really wanted to know why she had gone outside in this weather and who was going to come and get her and take her home. I told her gently that this is her home now, this is where she belongs and there are wonderful people who are here to take care of her.

Partly it was her dementia, but partly, don’t we all want someone to take us home? To take us back to that place of comfort and rest and belonging that we know so dear? And aren’t there all of those songs that tell us we are just waiting to be rescued and taken to our eternal home?

We sing a lot of those songs in worship at the nursing home. “I’ll Fly Away.” “In the Garden.” And I think what is hard for even us to understand is that THIS is our home. This is where we are meant to be right now. And we too, have to get used to this place, to find our place here, and figure out how we can be at home among one another.

Epiphany

Posted on January 6, 2009Leave a comment

Today I really got back into the swing of church work because our regular groups started meeting again in the new year. This morning, it was the Sharing As Caring Christians fellowship, or SACC. They meet around food and take turns sharing devotions and then a lesson for the day.

This is one group that I really feel blessed to be a part of, because normally, I’m just another member of the group. I don’t have to have my pastor or teacher hat on, unless I want to have it on. I can simply come and be.

For the next six weeks in the group, I will be leading our lessons based on Joyce Rupp’s “The Cup of our Life.” It is a study that I have been wanting to do with others for some time now, and I’m really looking forward to it. A hidden desire out of this is also to get the group to each bring their own mug for use each week, so that we aren’t constantly using styrofoam cups.

After SACC group, I took some time to finish work on the bulletins for Sunday. I am a very rudimentary piano player… I can pluck out a tune with one hand, and sometimes I can get some harmony in there if I am really slow about it. But it is always easier to pick hymns if I am at the piano and know what each one sounds like. It lets me know how easy they are to sing, how familiar they might be, and something that is also important to me – how well they each fit together.

One of my passions in worship is a well fit together service. I want the message in the music to match the message in the written word, to match the message in the spoken word, to match the message in the prayers. Then, at least in one way or another, the congregation will have the gospel come to them, and hopefully reinforced.

What makes that difficult, is that it takes a lot of time to put a service together. And because I change the order of worship and the liturgy to match whatever season we are in, it also is a challenge each time a new season begins to craft the structure for the next few weeks. The upside is that the congregation never fully settles into a routine in worship, and at least while I’m here, they can’t ever say “but we’ve always done it this way…”

FF: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Posted on January 2, 2009Leave a comment

As we look back we may come to understand how God has worked in and through us in joy and saddness. how we have grown against what may seem impossible odds. As we look forward we may do so with expectation, and we may do so with fear and trembling. As we look back and forward in New Years liminality I offer you this simple yet I hope profound Friday Fivein two parts:

First list five things that you remember/treasure from 2008

My very first church
Adding Turbo and Tiki to our family
Worshipping with my new congregation – especially Maundy Thursday and Christmas Eve
Wednesday Night dinners with the family
Learning how to disc golf with some great friends

Then list five things that you are looking forward to in 2009

Becoming healthier (exercising in particular)
Learning to play the guitar
More time spent with my immediate family
Finding my rhythm as a pastor… less trial and error, more consistency
Building stronger ties with other young adult pastors.

Holy Cow, Batman!

Posted on December 24, 2008Leave a comment

It’s Christmas Eve!!!!!!

And I am excited and nervous and excited and praying that I have everything planned and all the i’s dotted for the two worship services tonight. I guess we’ll find out when the get here!

I would appreciate prayers for safe travel tonight too – we are heading to my inlaws for dinner between the 5:00 and 11:30pm services, and I want to make it back! (I NEED to make it back).

Holy cow!!!!!