I think it is a fascinating metaphor for both our worshipping life and our experience as the church.\u00a0 Is the church a place and a program that\u00a0meets your needs\u00a0or are you an active participant with something to contribute?\u00a0 Are you being served or are you serving? Are you a person in a pew or a part of the body of Christ?<\/div>\n
I happen to love food.\u00a0 And I love potlucks even more.\u00a0 I’m not sure that you can be a good methodist without<\/em>loving these two things!\u00a0 So, it’s probably obvious where I fall and where I encourage you to land in the choice between a banquet church and a potluck church.<\/p>\nBut how do we turn our churches into potlucks?\u00a0 How do we encourage folks to bring something to the table?\u00a0(or the sanctuary?)<\/p>\n
First, I think we need to create opportunities in worship for folks to be active.<\/strong>\u00a0 Participation in a responsive liturgy is not enough.\u00a0 We need to ask people to get up, move around, think, respond, speak, and do things in worship.<\/div>\nThis can be scary for churches that are accustomed to stand and sit worship.\u00a0 But what I have found is that people are hungry for the chance to be stimulated mentally, physically, and spiritually.<\/div>\n
In my own congregation, we have interactive worship every so often.\u00a0 It is never something that is forced upon folks; people can stay seated if they want to.\u00a0What is important is that whatever we are doing directly is related to the message for the day.<\/div>\n
One of the first pieces of interactive worship we used related to the Lent 1 text from Genesis in cycle B.\u00a0 As we remembered God’s promise to Noah after the flood – we affirmed, as a congregation, that we are blessed by God.\u00a0 We proclaimed that\u00a0God desires not the death of a sinner, but that we all repent and live. We celebrated that God promises\u00a0\u00a0to be, and has been, with us through the storms of our lives.<\/div>\n
Our youth group prepared the canvases by painting them red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.\u00a0 Then, following a brief mediation on the texts, I invited people to come and paint on these canvases signs of God’s promises to us.\u00a0 We remembered how God has shown us grace and mercy.\u00a0 We wrote words of hope and life.<\/div>\n