Valerie Hess

This is part of the MSFL blog conversation going on about the book Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation by Kent Carlson, Mike Lueken. It deals with a bigger issue behind why a seeker church may find itself at a place it doesn’t want to be at down the road. What do you think? You can comment here or go to http://msfl.arbor.edu/?page_id=133 to join the discussion there.

When I was in graduate school, working on a Masters in Music/Church Music and Organ, one of my worship professors said, “We are not free to worship as we please. We are bound by the Gospel.” That statement has stuck with me throughout the years and always comes back to mind when I hear about “seeker sensitive” churches or churches that are trying to be “relevant” or “authentic.”

Besides the inherent problems that come with using “shorthand” language (define those terms above, for example), worship leaders are asking the wrong question first when seeking to craft a “meaningful” worship service. When they are making the gathered people of God the subject and not God the subject, they are already off on the wrong foot. When we are asking, “what do people want,” and not “what does God require,” we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Whatever happened to the idea of following the way the Church has worshipped since New Testament times and on through the centuries? We DO know what that worship was like, even as we may not know how the music sounded. We know that wherever Paul took the Gospel, he also taught new converts how to worship. That early worship was based on what later became known as the lectionary and the historic liturgical forms.

That historic form, Gathering, Word, Meal (yes, the Eucharist was an every week event), and Sending, and the cycle of readings, which we call the lectionary, was built from the ancient Temple worship that God commanded way back when ancient Israel built the Tabernacle, down to the color of the pomegranates on the curtains. The basic forms have been made Christo-centric, for example, the Psalms are now seen as pre-figuring Christ, and they get filled in with various languages and music styles (yes, you can do praise choruses with this format) but they are still what the Church has seen as a pattern since the early chapters of the Book of Acts.

So why is it, then, that a church like Oak Hills is surprised when, after re-inventing the worship wheel, the leadership discovers that people aren’t being fed by it? Why do we find it OK that there is an entertainment approach to worship in many faith communities, with the performers on the stage as people watch from the auditorium? Why are we surprised at a creeping consumerism when, in trying to be “relevant,” we wake up one day to realize “relevant” has shifted with cultural changes? Dean William Inge says it this way, “A church that marries the spirit of an age, becomes the widow of the next generation.”

While I applaud a book like Renovation of the Church, I also shake my head and say, “what did you all expect?” When we walk away from the path that has been clearly laid out, either from ignorance or arrogance, we will get less than optimal results. We will get people who go to church but have no interest in following Jesus. We will get the opposite of worship that is, as the Nairobi Statement of Worship and Culture says, transcultural, contextual, counter-cultural, and cross-cultural.

May God grant us the ability, through the discipline of submission, to follow his ways in all ways, especially as we worship.

Christmas in the Church is now ended and we transition into the Feast of and season of Epiphany. Here we come to realize that the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is not a regional story but one for the whole world. Jesus came for everyone, from the shepherds (the poor and marginalized) to the Magi (the wealthy and educated).

May the Light of Christ shine more brightly in our lives and in the world this year.

On this January 1st, we celebrate not only the beginning of a new calendar year but the naming of Jesus. Eight days after his birth, he was circumcised and named. What name do you bear? Not the one that people call you but deep down in your soul, what name do you answer to? Is it a put down? Is it accurate? Is it a blessing?

May you learn the name God gives you this year.

On this Fifth Day of Christmas, I was reminded again that in traditional iconography, the icon of the Nativity shows Jesus in swaddling clothes that are, in reality, grave clothes. “Christ was born to die” we sing to a catchy tune. It is easy to miss the real meaning of Christmas which can get buried under all the hype.

On this Fourth Day of Christmas, the Gospel story tells of Herod’s murder of the boys in Bethlehem who were two or under in age, in a futile attempt to kill the newborn “King of the Jews” the Magi were looking for. This story, coming so close on the heels of Christmas Eve with its candlelight and warm fuzzies, saves Christmas from being a nice story with no practical realities in our day-to-day lives. Jesus’ coming was a force to be reckoned with from day one and put the powers of this world on notice from the beginning. Jesus was born to die, as the carol “What Child is This?” reminds us and which we so often forget in the hype of modern Christmas observances. We must always see the cross and empty tomb through the manger.

An our call today is to seek out those children being murdered or otherwise harmed in struggles for power between modern day Herods. We are to pray for them, at least, and seek to hide and save them as much as we can.