The Listening Ear

New Opportunities For Inviting Others

One thing that I am convinced about is that our new Saturday evening service offers us a unique opportunity to invite other people not just to Saturday Night Light, but to all our services.

Since some of our members will be supporting the new service, there will me more room at our Sunday service. That’s a great time to invite new folks in.

It almost goes without saying that Saturday Night Light gives us a new chance to invite others. It might be a member who hasn’t been active in church for a while or maybe someone who is looking for a new church or someone who has conflicts on Sunday morning that keep them from attending worship then. Be on the look out for people you can invite. It will help our church grow.

Saturday Night Light Begins In One Week

Our new Saturday evening service called Saturday Night Light begins a week from today. I am excited about this new opportunity that we will be offering. It will be held at 5:30 p.m. each Saturday.

I think this new service has lots of potential for us and for our community. It seems like God has been at work to make this happen.

For one thing, we were looking for some new worship resources that would help us blend contemporary and traditional elements together in a way that would create a more informal type of worship. We think that this style seems in keeping with what many people expect from Saturday evening worship. After doing some searching on the internet, Deb Schmidt, our worship coordinator found something that should fit our need quite well.

We’ve also said that we needed a solid core group of worshippers that would commit themselves to attending that service for the first two months. We asked people to sign up and I think we’ll have at least 50 people who’ll help us launch this new service.

We also knew that we needed a new team of musicians for this service. We put the word out in the larger community and God has sent us people to be on that team.

All of this makes me feel that God is going to bless this new service and that it will be a way for us to reach new people. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

What Kind Of Service Will It Be

I received a question last week, asking what the new Saturday Night Light worship service will be like. The new service is scheduled to debut on September 12. It will take place at 5:30 p.m. each Saturday.

The worship planning team has put a great deal of thought into this service. Our goal for the service to be a blend of contemporary and traditional elements. It will also be more informal which seems to be the nature of most Saturday evening services.

In making our plans we drew upon survey data compiled by Percept, a company that specializes in demographic data. We were able to get data that is specific to Treynor and the surrounding area. It suggests that the kind of service we’ve planned should appeal to a wide variety of people in our area.

I am looking forward this new venture and am pleased that so many of our members have signed up to help get the new service off to a good start.

Whether or not you plan to attend Saturday Night Light, the next few weeks will be a prime time to invite someone to worship with us at any of our three services. It is an opportunity for us to be involved in mission right here in our own community.

What's Essential: Thinking About Worship

As we have been making plans to add a Saturday evening worship service to our schedule, it has given me an opportunity to review my own thoughts about worship.

I think that worship that is true to our Lutheran heritage follows a basic structure. Principles For Worship, a document produced by the ELCA a few years ago, names four principle movements in worship: Gathering, Word, Meal and Sending.

Worship begins with a gathering of God’s people. As we are called into worship, we have an opportunity to prepare our hearts and to join together in songs and acts of praise.

The reading of the God’s word and some kind of reflection on what that Word means for us is the second movement of worship. Reflection on the meaning of God’s Word often takes place in a sermon, but drama and song can also be used to deepen our understanding of what God’s Word is saying to us. Hearing the word often leads us to prayer for ourselves, others and the world.

A third movement in worship is the meal. Sometimes people ask whether the celebration of communion really needs to be included in weekly worship. Lutherans have always regarded the sacrament as a means of grace, a way that God offers grace to us. Why wouldn’t we want the sacrament to be offered each week as we come together for worship? We certainly wouldn’t want God’s word to be an optional part of worship. It is just as important to our spiritual health that we have a weekly opportunity to receive the Sacrament. It also strengthens us for the life of faith.

The final movement in worship is the sending. Our worship. our honoring of God, continues as we are sent out into world to do the work God gives us to do as individuals and as a congregation.

There are other things that are often included in worship: an offering, a confession of faith, special music, etc. Nevertheless, we want our worship to include the four basic movements of worship.

We expect that our Saturday evening worship will look a little different from our other worship service. Yet as the worship planning team prepares to offer this new worship opportunity, it is important to us to include these four basic elements of worship in what we offer.

Celtic Prayer

I got back from the spirituality retreat a couple of days ago. Since then I’ve been scrambling to catch up with things at the office and haven’t found time for this blog. Tonight I have a chance to put up a post or two.

One of the things I appreciate about our retreats is the chance to worship. It is so refreshing to be able to let someone else lead, especially when what we do is deeply meaningful to me. At our retreats it almost always is.

Our schedule included several times throughout the day for worship and prayer. The main resource we used is a book titled Celtic Daily Prayer. We’ve used it before and find it a good resource for stimulating an atmosphere of prayer.

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Celtic Daily Prayer has be produced by the Northumbria community located in Nether Springs, Ireland. They describe themselves as:

“... a network of hugely diverse people, from different backgrounds, streams and edges of the Christian faith. We are united in our desire to embrace and express an ongoing exploration into a new way for living Christianly - a way that offers hope in the changed and changing culture of today's world.“

If you want a flavor of what their worship forms look like, take a look at their website. You can find some examples of the songs they have written for worship here. (Scroll near the bottom) One of my favorites is ”One Thing I Have Asked Of The Lord.“ Click on it on their page and you can hear it. It’s beautiful. We’ve used it at our Lenten worship in years past.

Grounds For Thought Coffeehouse Worship

Last night we revived our coffeehouse worship experience that had been in hiatus for several months. We had held the last GFT at the beginning of August.

I think many of us who have been involved in leading and hosting this worship experience didn’t realize how much we missed it. At GFT we create a coffeehouse atmosphere in our fellowship hall, offer relaxed music and in informal reflection on a Biblical text. We pray and celebrate the Lord’s supper. And as you might expect, there is coffee and other things to eat and drink.

I had had a pretty good day all around yesterday. Nevertheless, the best part of my day was Grounds For Thought worship.

Creative Worship Idea

I was reading the Emergent Village blog and ran across a great experiential worship idea. Tiffany Montavon relates how at the closing worship for the Everything Must Change tour, worshippers were asked write on the palm of their hands, one commitment they would make to help solve the problems faced by our contemporary world. 

Montavon had a chance to photograph people’s palms after they had prayed and made their commitments. She set them up so that they appear on her computer screen, one after another. Each day she reads things like: “Teach reading to immigrants.” “Pick up trash weekly.” “Join environmental policy organization.” 

I think this is a great example of how we can give worshippers chance to respond to what they have heard in worship. It is an example of one of the four essential elements of worship, worship of the heart, mind, soul and strength. In this case the chance to worship through our will, through making a commitment, is the focus. Here’s an example of one of Montanon’s photos.

Grounds For Thought Update

We had a good meeting last night as we discussed the future for Grounds For Thought, our coffee house worship. Those who have been following this blog will know that we started GFT about a year ago as an attempt to offer a new opportunity for worship in our congregation. 

Those who have attended GFT regularly have enjoyed it, but it didn’t seem to be accomplishing as much outreach as we had hoped. The group that met last night decided to make GFT an occasional offering and recommended that more efforts be put into other forms of worship, especially worship opportunities for high school youth and the development of children’s church. I hope that we will be able to follow up on those recommendations.

The team that met did set Sunday, January 11 as the date that a Grounds For Thought worship service will be offered next. Coffee will be available at 5:30 p.m. and worship will start at 6 p.m. 

Controversy in Worship

In a recent post on his blog, Dan Kimble relates some the history of the introduction of the organ into Christian worship. He notes how organs were considered quite suspect and controversial when people began using them in worship.

Kimble tells a pair of stories that he heard from Nicky Gumble, the pastor who helped start Alpha training to bring people into the church. These stories help us see that styles of music and types of instruments have continued to change throughout history:

A letter was written from someone in the church, who was complaining about the song selection and music. The letter said:

 "

I am no music scholar, but I feel I know appropriate church music when I hear it.  Last Sunday’s new hymn - if you can call it that - sounded like a sentimental love ballad one would expect to hear crooned in a saloon.  If you insist on exposing us to rubbish like this - in God’s house! - don’t be surprised if many of the faithful look for a new place to worship.  The hymns we grew up with are all we need."

 This letter was written in 1863 and the song they were concerned about was the hymn " Just As I Am".

 Another letter said:

 "What is wrong with the inspiring hymns with which we grew up? When I go to church, it is to worship God, not to be distracted with learning a new hymn.  Last Sunday’s was particularly unnerving.  The tune was un-singable and the new harmonies were quite distorting.

’"This letter was written in 1890 and about the hymn "What A Friend We Have In Jesus".

 Kimble concludes, “It is fascinating how our own personal choices and preferences dictates what we feel is appropriate worship or not.” If you want to read the entire post, click here

Coffeehouse High

For some time I have been wanting to do a video post on my blog. Here's my first attempt. It features some reflections after last Sunday's Grounds For Thought coffeehouse worship. The video is my attempt tell why I like GFT, especially the dialog sermon I get to do at that service. Let me know what you think of my first attempt at personal video on my blog.