worship (singing) and the emerging church

I've just done a guest post at Jason Clark's site, exploring worship and the emerging church - the deconstruction/problems with it and asking what is a positve/healthy way forward (your reaction to the image for this post will probably help you identify whether you are in either a deconstruction/reconstruction phase :)...

Deconstructions:

I briefly picked out 3 areas where i often hear worship as singing critiqued in emerging church conversations:

• worship reduced to (only) singing rather than lifestyle (a la Romans 12);
• elitist/consumer activity where the talented chosen ones do something to us as the heard that we passively consume;
• worship that is over intimate/Jesus my boyfriend/auto-erotic - i.e. all about me and my emotional disconnect/highs/needs/consumption (the below clip might help - HT to Kamsin)

Where to go from here...

This being where I'm at, this section is longer - but primarily what i was struck by is my own consumer driven preference affects what style of worship i want e.g

• i may say that my life is about 24/7 worship but i seldom live 7/24 or even 0.7/24 like that - in fact the 1.5/24 on a sunday is a key part of actually re-orienting my life again around what i profess to believe but so often don't do and be re-encouraged that i am not alone in doing so;
• intimacy is no bad thing - worship becomes more about spiritual formation but also offers the possibility of exploring other themes - and the need for local songs coming out of our communities and contexts that reflect that.
• my own choice to put myself in a position to do something that is counter to my usual self chosen activities, that actually frustrate my own preferences, that give me time to recentre myself towards God and consideration/giving favour towards others preferences-n might actually be more spirtually forming in terms of growing/practicing love/generousity/grace and needing the Holy Spirit to help me than actually do my own favoured form of worship style...
• and finally the riches of our church heritage that is available to us to help us worship God - my way is only one way, my preferred way but maybe i need to be more humble and open to both the new and the old...

I'll leave you to read the post at Jason's if you wish but feel free to leave your own comments here about what questions/thoughts/feelings of your own you have about worship and the emerging church...

Comments

[Laura Anne]

An interesting post!!

I'm glad I read it all the way down the bottom, because when I read the first part I was getting ready to come in all fire blazing with all number of bible quotes on the importance of singing in corporate worship.

As a 'lead worshipper' or 'worship leader' or 'music leader' (Whatever you want to call it these days...!) I challenge myself and those who are in similar roles to do our best to ensure that we don't see worship as a music thing only.

Equally, as a musical lead worshipper, I've found myself trying to ensure that I am paying attention to the sermon more and being seen to worship in other ways. Now, that may sound really awful - and I might add that as much as possible I'm living for 'an audience of one' - I care most of all about what God thinks, not the rest of the world (but let's be honest sometimes I DO care about what other people think)

But I do think if I'm going to be labelled as a 'worship leader' then I should be setting an example of worshipping with my whole life, so people don't think that I'm somehow a great worshipper just because someone reckons I can sing down a microphone and it's in tune enough not to be distracting to the rest of the congregation!! Because if I can't worship from the back of the room when I'm not on a stage, or when I'm at home, in my workplace, with my friends and family and generally going about daily lifes ups and downs then I should be 'leading worship' at all?!

Equally, I think it's important that we use the gifts of everyone in our congregation, and I think there is place for those without musical gifting to contribute to how we do our corporate musical worship, as you say Paul - songs stick in our head, they have brought people closer to God in various ways.

One of my favourite books about musical corporate worship is by a guy who is not a musical worship leader, he makes some great and valid points, challenges and asks some excellent questions which the church perhaps needs to look at and think about...it's called 'Now let's move into a time of nonsense: why worship songs are failing the church' by Nick Page.

That's all for now...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us Paul! :)

-BK

[Kamsin]

I had several thoughts reading this, and the post over on Jason Clark's blog. One of which was that there may be a cultural thing about not enjoying singing if you perceive yourself not to be good at it. In Japan there's the whole karaoke culture and people recognize singing as great stress relief, some of the karaoke machines will even tell you how many calories you've burnt off blasting out a number! It's not about impressing anybody and nobody seems to mind if you make a bloody awful racket, it's just about literally singing your heart out and forgetting the real world for a bit. I was really frustrated when I came back to Britain that people just don't sing out in church much, perhaps because we're too self conscious. It took me years to get over having to sing in school assemblies, where no one sang, they just sort of looked at their shoes and mumbled. But yeah, I think there's a cultural issue with singing. There's the whole thing of mocking poor fools who show up on X-factor when they have no talent. And probably most Brits would only ever sing karaoke if they were drunk. But the idea of letting yourself get caught up in music and the physical and emotional release of singing are alien to most Brits.

Anyway, I personally love singing and love "worship" songs. It's my favourite bit of church, that and the choc-ie bicies at the end!

[Paul]

Thanks Kamsn, i always thought that's why charismatic churches like to crank it up loud, if you can't hear your self sing then you figure you're pretty safe to go for it, that and the whole losing your individuality in the community activity/one voice thang.

Good call on the choccie biscuits, that will have to be the next i digest, i mean deconstruct ;)

(hmmm and if we installed calorie burning monitors in the seats, motion cameras to catch any arm waving - then we could let people know exactly how many choc biccies worth of calories they had burnt off and were now able to consume :)

[Paul]

Thanks Laura Anne, great comment and much appreciated - nothing like coming in all bible verses blazing - you'll notice i skipped the whole case for worship (being about God instead of me) completely - did i say i was a consumer??? ;)

I did have a whole worship/addiction couple of posts on the back burner as in you become what you worship rather than i'm a worship junkie, lol.

The question of authenticity is a good one - as a worship leader or any other christian what does our life look like - Julie Clawson over at one hand clapping has made some good comments on this trying to tease out the authenticity of the individual vs the compromise of doing an activity that is communal in nature. here's a link...
http://julieclawson.blogspot.com/2007/09/uprooted-panel-discussion-authenticity.html

Maybe that's the point - it's not meant to easy on our character and comes with a cost?

Thanks for the book recomendation as well - as titles go it's up there with the best i've heard of this yr :)

[James G]

Hello. Random papist wandering into an evangelical blog here. If I may ask, what is the emerging church? I'm not really familiar with the particulars of contemporary worship and practice, although I was formerly a Seventh-day Adventist, which some people consider to be evangelical.

That being said, I still have a very, verrry strong interest and a passion for worship and how it's done in the church. In the Catholic side of the spectrum, there's a huge revival of traditional, liturgical worship: the Latin Mass, Gregorian chant, Palestrina, "smells and bells", etc. It's like the Oxford movement on steroids. I see you work near Parliament? Well, Parliament heard the first Latin Mass last year in almost five hundred years. Also, the French called CIEL had a conference at Merton's College, Oxford last year also, where the old Latin Mass and Divine Office were said for the first time there since the Reformation. Here's a video on Youtube of a little part of it. It's the Magnificat (Mary's prayer, "My soul doth magnify the Lord") sung while the altar is being incensed during solemn Vespers. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vzq6_IkqWrI

The reason I brought it up is because 1.) I wanted to disspell the common stereotype (not saying you ever said it) that traditional liturgical worship (especially Latin Mass) = dead. I'm only 19, and I have many, many friends of similar age who are really into the new liturgical movement. For example, I now sing Gregorian chant at my church according to the style of the monks of Solesmes Abbey in France. And 2.) I was wondering if any of the Protestant churches were looking into a return to traditional liturgical style as a valid expression of faith, or if it's generally looked down upon as ritualist, like in the time of the Oxford movement.

[Paul]

Thanks James, random papists are always welcome, especially the wondering sort :)

Your Q on what is the emerging church is a great one - I would suggest this article in christianity today as a good place to start: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

As at the moment there is no 'emerging church' as an institution but a lot of churches emerging across a lot of different church streams it is often called the emerging conversation. Within the conversation there are a number of hubs/influences, there is a good explanation of this here:
http://jasonclark.ws/2007/09/13/emerging-church-paradigm-shift-or-passing-fad-part-ii/

I think there is also revival of liturgical styles other than singing going on in the emerging church, although i am not sure that anyone is doing something like holding Mass in Latin. Experiential and participatory worhship is something that growing and liturgies whether of the spoken or sung variety are certainly part of that.

My friend Marc Alton-Cooper is probably better placed than I to talk about protestant churches engaging with liturgical styles - i'll ask him to drop in here but you can also find him at his blog here:
http://creation.blogs.com/emergent_uk_media_arts/

Thanks also for the links, i'm off to go watch :)

[Marc Alton-Cooper]

Hi James...

I lead the 'liturgical ministry' at our church, Vineyard Church Sutton.

We have been introducing spoken liturgy into our main services using different aspects from the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox services.

When we do Holy Communion we will have a painted symbols or Icons on the Communion table, we have incense, we sing the doxology and hymns as well as contemporary worship.

It is a real mix that works very well for our congregation, the traditional church is valued greatly in all it's forms by our leaders so as well as formal prayers for people and places we have 'hands on' prayers for those who ask for prayer.

Now when you consider that the Vineayard church in general are evangelical that is quite something.

For us it is about about using what I see as our christian heritage, part of the histrical church.

hope that helps...

[Paul]

Thanks Marc, you're a legend!