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SUNDAY MORNING from the pastor May 5, 2002 This is the week of lilac and iris. Fragrant week. Purple week. (Not all irises are purple, but the ones in my yard are.) I only have three irises in bloom, and so my appreciation is tinted with faint streaks of guarded jealousy and protectiveness. Do I pick them and bring them indoors? Or do I leave them outside to revel in their natural environment? Since Alison is arriving later today for a two day visit, I think I’ll pick one for her room and leave the others. There. I’ve already made an important decision today and it’s not even 7 a.m. We are in the midst of some experiments in worship these days. Before I note what we are trying to do, let me share a little background. What Abraham Lincoln said about people and politics is also true for people and worship: you can’t please all the people all the time. We have varied tastes in music. We vary in how formal or informal we like our worship. Some like it short and some like it long. Some like to greet their neighbors in worship and some find it disruptive. You get the point. And so we thought about having one type of worship at 8:30 and another at 11. But that didn’t fly. The only thing the people at 8:30 can agree on is that they want to come to church early. And the only thing the people at 11 can agree on is that it is unholy to get up too early on a Sunday. So we decided to have ‘itinerating’ worship services. In other words, we would develop a type of worship, and then we would move it back and forth between 8:30 and 11. (Abraham Lincoln did say you could please ALL of the people SOME of the time.) Even though we only have two worship services each Sunday, we realized that we have more than two TYPES of worship. In fact, we have identified EIGHT different patterns (so far). So our plan is to itinerate (move around) these eight types of worship services--in and out of both the 8:30 and 11 a.m. time slots. The eight patterns are as follows: Blended, a mix of traditional and contemporary and experimental worship elements; Blended short sermon, (self-explanatory!); Campmeeting, an old fashioned, revival type service of old hymns and preaching; Formal, organ music, rooted in Methodist heritage of the Anglican Church, prayers and liturgy drawn from traditional and contemporary poetry; Contemporary, a highly participatory worship of song, word, and movement; Seekers, a service of low key participation where the leaders perform most of the songs and acts of worship; Teaching, focused on helping people learn worship, doctrine, and Bible; and Musical, a service developed almost entirely around music. Check our website, newsletter, or bulletin to see which type of service we will be having each week. The schedule is already made out through August. And welcome to a new chapter in our dialogue about worship, what we need in worship, and what God wants from us. --Mike |
