I can tell already that I’m going feel unfinished and dissatisfied with this post – but here goes. One of the biggest personal observations that I made in the US, was this nagging sensation that some component of ‘gathered singing worship’ was missing.
I’m reducing it down to this – worship is not only key to community, but a context of community is key to worship. The role of local narrative is vitally important to some (not exclusive) aspects of worship as the people of God.
It started in Chicago with a sense of disconnection from ‘local’ songs like Mighty to Save & Hosanna being sung by 2500 strangers. The song was familiar, but the story was not. If I partake in the metanarrative/grand narrative by virtue of my belonging in the kingdom, I still remain connected to my local narrative. At first I put the sense of disconnection down to being away from home and still singing songs that I was so connected to.
However, in Indianapolis, I sang songs that were even older, with which I had personal, individual narrative to connect with and I stood with family in a foreign church worship environment. This too had it’s conflicts and strange rumblings.
In St Louis, I started to dig back into my “Worship in Context” studies and ruminating over the role of gathered worship in the life of the Israelites both in local and grand narrative. I realised the significance of connecting the songs of praise/lament/sorrow/supplication to our narrative in local scale. To gather as the ‘people of God’ but as relative strangers serves a joyous purpose of extravagant praise, but left something amiss in my heart. It felt somehow incomplete.
As I made friends and started to share my individual story with people around me, we collectively built some ‘local’ narrative. The physicality that the worship leaders called for – the dancing, clapping, shoulder & hand connections began to feel more comfortable. After all, NYWC isn’t just a corporate gathering – there is already a commonality to the local narrative of youthworkers around the globe.
So what does this mean? Well, maybe nothing new except to say that if I worship as one, then my ‘worship’ can take any form, indulging in the individual narrative, bathing in romance and wonder. But when I worship in community, I am now going to abandon my ‘one-ness’.. when I worship with people now, gathered worship is going to become exactly that.. I’m going to look for ‘our’ stories as well as drawing attention to ‘the’ Story. What will that mean? I gosh-golly don’t know.
If nothing else, my “with-worship” has to live up to the challenge of telling local narrative with it’s struggle, celebration, sorrow and fullness. Like any good story, “with-worship” must have a sense of connecting people and ideas, with darkness and light in contrast.
What about “all-worship”? The impending festival season approaches with annual pilgrimages planned, culminating in the Parachute festival at the end of January. Do the numbers determine the role of ‘my-narrative”, “our-narrative” and “the-narrative”? I don’t think so – but I’m still trying to answer the questions around how that could or ought to look.
I think that smaller faith communities have much more of an advantage here – the intimacy of the “our-narrative” seems much more accessible on a smaller scale, but the bigger question is how do I implement a connection between ‘worship liturgy with a lot of singing’ and the active, fluid, responsive “our-narrative” of the church community.
I’m also wondering about what it means for the “our-narrative” of denominational gatherings, training gatherings, volunteer gatherings. After all, why do so many Christian gatherings that have nothing to do with gathered singing worship, always start with gathered singing worship? More on that later…
Lord… you have heard the words of the poet behind every beauty there is some kind of pain my burgeoning labour weighs heavily on me with the unanswerable questions like “why do you believe?”
I have no answers but a voice that sounds like yours it’s a voice on the wind it’s the summer i long for it’s the hope in the picture i’m painting where late summer sun will warm my skin again please let me not be cold that long
Lord… you know the wrestle of my heart unseen the knifeblade of decision that sharpens on integrity where is my justice Lord, where is my hope? I have rested in your strength these years but i am weary, the skies darken over me You are not weary Lord, uphold me
everlasting one, draw near to me and i will yield to you make my confessions of longing and hold on to my breath catching my tongue on tears, kneeling on fist, head to floor oh in this moment not to be alone not to be in silence, not out of arms
and here is my whole heart and vision falling under shadows here is my will submitting Where is my justice Lord, where is my hope? what now for the people? what now for tomorrow? what left is sacred, what is left?
Wash the mud and spit from my eyes, heal my sight wash the mud and spit from our eyes, heal our sight make uncertainties clear, truth to light from fear the many, make simple, make few, make right… make You.
Holding My Breath This one’s for the lonely. Hold your breath with me. Close your eyes and let it out slowly. You are ok. We are going to be just fine.
“There is much mental suffering in our world. But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other’s loneliness away. “ Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out
It’s too easy to fall back onto others to fulfil the emotional and physical expectations of what it would feel like to be present in our own lives. We live so vicariously in our own skin through the people we experience our life with. Their reactions, words and responses to us begin to shape our own perception and satsfaction with life. We fill our loneliness with other people because we are so terrified of ‘aloneness’. Aloneness requires we know ourselves before and beyond the reactions, words and responses of others. It requires we are physically present in our own lives without interaction or touch from another body. It means we feel each breath and step, and own it. No wonder we would rather fill up our loneliness.
As much as the body aches to be known, the spirit to be loved, the mind to be explored by ‘Others’.. so it longs to be known by the occupant. Take a deep breath and dive into ‘aloneness’… you will find loneliness is not so bad.
Love Love Love we never think things through We fall all over each other
And there’s no telling exactly how this ends cos we fall over each other to get to it I certainly need you red wine nights and moonlight songs It’s so much waiting at the door it’s as little as needs to be said between the dawn and the dusk of it
How many days must we do the same old things To get to the same old places that only bring us back To misery
Your love is a lightening strike A deep, dark warmth on a cooling night A walking contradiction I can’t go past so I come here again
how many days must we do the same old things still find one another at the end of it
Said the Lover of the Beloved
“Who is this that grows like the dawn, as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun, as awesome as an army with banners?” Song of Songs 6.10
All jokes about clusters, vineyards, fawns and gazelles aside .. isn’t this the most stunning line you have ever read?
A Big Space Of Empty Going Nowhere Fast The weeks after Eastercamp are always strange and new for me. No one year follows the same pattern of ‘winding down’. Usually there are a few glum days, and a few days where the feedback piles in on top of me, followed by a few indignant days while I wrestle with the theology often presented to me in that feedback.
This year though, as with so many years past, there is a healing process that transpires in a little cafe in Mt Eden called Circus Circus. Many of the Eastercamp dreams have been birthed sitting in the low-slung narrow pavement facing seats, looking across at the Eden Methodist Church building on Ngaruahoe St watching the world go by.
So on Friday, when I was decidedly blue and funky, instead of going home, where the kind office boys sent me.. I ended up there instead. 3 long blacks, 4 and a half hours and pages and pages of journalling later.. I left feeling just as blue as before but much much less alone.
I don’t know if it’s simply the busyness of Mt Eden Village, or that familiar faces and friends passed me by as they went about their business, but sometimes sitting in a place like that for a few hours is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to celebrating the work that was, and birthing the work to come.
So many people have asked me whether or not this camp was the best ever. I think I would like to say that it was a great camp, but not the best yet.
It’s The Lonely For me it’s the lonely hours between sleeping that are the worst in these days. I feel like I am my most complete self when I am working with and leading my crew and watching, listening and responding to young people hearing the Gospel for the first time, alongside youthworkers and leaders who are seeing it with desperately needed fresh eyes. Once everything is packed away and there’s nothing left to it anymore..
I miss the familiar faces, the voices, the smell of closeness with the dearest and best people I know over those days. There are some of the best friends I know who sacrifice so much of themselves over that weekend because they are loving serving my dream and my passion for this camp. They work so tirelessly on my team and they love it. I am blessed beyond belief .. Surely it’s nothing of my hand in this, because I am undeserving of such loyalty.
I miss the ‘standing alongside’ element of it all. That the dreams and God ideas that take shape in my head then take on arms and legs, and I stand alongside the people that carry them out, and that God uses as instrumental in the process. I miss that so much.
Those that come to camp will never know the depth and the significance of the love that the crew pour out on them. They pour out over one another, and over the place. If there was ever an example of building an atmosphere of praise, where the tangible presence of God could be seen and experienced.. then it happens in the team that makes it all happen. And that is a good, good, good thing.
A Dangerously Long Comment on Fallout from the “Emerging Church”…
Here is the genesis of my dialogue, plus some. From Steve’s site. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that I don’t think Steve himself is actually being attacked. And I think that Lynne’s fruit counts, and is valid.
The danger is.. that people get all caught up in it being one way or the other. There are a couple of very ‘Modern’ pastors at my church, who have read the Emerging books and now think that’s how we should do church.
Some thoughts on to Emerge or not Emerge.
Exegete the culture of your community. Who are the not-yet followers? Tell the story in their language, and celebrate the story in the language of your community. That’s what our explorations should be based upon.
We are storytellers. Employ whatever means you like to tell the story, there is no set way.. jsut know that for some people they will like to skip to the end, some like to read for themselves, some like the same story told the same way over and over. We have the freedom to do that, so long as we tell the right story, it doens’t have to be about telling the story right.
Well, doesn’t this one come close to home?
I think, read and observe, that proponents of the Emerging Church do carry this ideology close to their hearts. So it’s almost understandable how things quickly seem to become viscious and snide. It’s why the blogosphere is a great place to air ideas, but only if you have a thick hide. Much like print media, you have to accept that someone will always read and interpret in a contrary tone. So the suggestion of coffee is a good one, but the suggestion of an open forum is also excellent.. and inevitably the kind of exercise that will hopefully bring widespread productivity to these discussions.
As a relative new kid on the block in terms of ministry, theology and experience, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have anything relevant to add, but.. I am living and breathing in the generation that is meant to be delighting in their ’emerging’ nature, and I don’t really see a lot of it. My peers can talk about the ideology, but their practice of worship, community etc, remains unchanged. And I am a proponent of the Gospel, so I shall endeavour not to focus my energy on changing the way we do church, but working to ensure that however we do church, it’s relevant to our immediate context.
We are storytellers. Employ whatever means you like to tell the story, there is no set way.. jsut know that for some people they will like to skip to the end, some like to read for themselves, some like the same story told the same way over and over. We have the freedom to do that, so long as we tell the right story, it doens’t have to be about telling the story right.
In a congregation that does experiment from time to time, I count more failures in our experiments than successes. That is a lot to do with my weaknesses, for sure. But I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of so-called ’emerging’ practice isn’t simply not relevant or connective with the people I am ministering too. It’s relevant to me. But then, so is a major rock’n’roll concert. Here am I, caught in a parallel. Sometimes I like church to be like a rock’n’roll show too.
I work as part of the team organising a youth gathering that’s highly evangelical. Here’s what I’ve learned that’s still true about youth culture..
big is beautiful, in fact sometimes size really does count.
sometimes celebrating small is easier in the context of a large gathering.
hype is sometimes just fun, and that’s ok.
stages that look great don’t have to dominate the landscape of the message.
Stages that look great make sense to kids.
it’s an uplifting experience for kids to see a God who is working, real and relevant in the lives of their peers across the country.
Arty kids and sporty kids, extroverts and introverts can all find expression and a sense of belonging in a big kick-ass event.
In the five years between adolescence and young adulthood.. what are we really expecting to change?
My environment is a challenging one, because things are openly critiqued, vigorously so. Not much is done just for the sake of it. But it’s an open critique that has a good motive underneath it. We are responsible for ministering to, leading and opening up doors for longtime, middle-aged, newbie and no-yet followers of Jesus, and the way we tell the story must bear all of those things in mind. So we experiment, but we try and do it with wisdom.
I, for my part, respect the fact and the manner with which our national leader is engaging and endeavoring to dialogue on these issues. It seems wiser and safer to me than others who seem to delight in picking up the books, and immediately wanting to leap into implementing new worship styles. It speaks to me of being all things to all men, and a willingness to put the needs of others ahead of self. After all… there are many ways in which I can connect with God, but I care much more about how my sisters, my neighbour and my friends will connect with His Story. That is the overwhelming, pressing urge on my heart.
When emerging fits for them, that’s great. And when they go to Hillsong and love it, that’s great. And wherever they find the truth of the Gospel, that’s the answer to my prayers and the cry of the Kingdom.
For the sake of the Kingdom, we need to, and I implore all.. to humble ourselves enough to admit, we all need God to lead us and speak to us through one another.
In the States recently, I saw a lot of creativity for creativity’s sake that was more about artisitic expression, than about relevant spiritual engagement. It was as off-putting, stale and inauthentic as some of the more theologically inaccurate mega-congregations I could attend in Auckland or Sydney. And it was at one of the flagship Emerging Churches. Which throws up lots of questions for me in regards to what Emerging Church really does look like, feel like, sound like. In terms of production values, and performance intensity, speaking with some of the practitioners there revealed remarkably similar values to a Hillsong, or large-scale ‘Modernist Icon’ church.
Some of the congregations that we read about, happily denote that the success story of what they are doing is the numbers of faithful who are retaining ther faith, staying in Christian community, being discipled. But Both-And tension is so vital here, because as a youth worker I have a responsibility to communicate the importance and relevance of the Gospel for us and others, and if we do not value the numerical growth as well as spiritual growth of our ministries we are in trouble. In the ministries I have participated in, people leaving, or people sitting and not participating or engaging with the mission are signs of trouble. Celebrate the raspberries, and remember to plant lots of them.
I am in a ministry context that is experimenting with some different approaches to worship, communication and community. Some things work well and become meaningful, many do not. I am a keen experimenter, but I count more failures than successes with my work. Why? Because I read and think and talk.. and it suggests that there are ways my congregation ought to be engaging, or would like to engage.. the reality is that they don’t. When we create and invite them into those spaces and experiences.. more often than not, it doesn’t carry meaning when part of our services. It’s the same over a small but significant number of congregations that I have participated in and/or observed on a micro-level.
But we have some great sports teams. Touch teams that participate in community tournaments, smaller community groups going to the beach together, adventure sports together and more recently.. lawn bowls for young adults. It has all the elements we emerging ones love.. embracing nature, community, participation, the old and the new, it’s embracing and inviting, it’s evangelical by way of relationship.
So whilst church with candles, symbols, prayers, words, images, darkness and light works really well for me, I also have to accept that the majority of these supposedly ‘post-modern’ young adults who all connect really well with the ideology in their heads.. actually prefer the practice of community that looks more like Hillsong, or CLC or CCC. It’s simple, and understandable. It’s accessible to the masses.
Swing to the other side of the pendulum. So much of our emerging energy seems to get spent up on healing and restoring those who didn’t do mainstream church well, those who didn’t fit. Read the blogs, the books, listen to the seminars. There are a lot of church folk out there who just are looking for a way of doing church that suits them. It will always be that way, but I don’t think we will ever have an entire generation that will pick up the post-modern flag and wave it on a hilltop. And there are some people who need to stop preaching that message. And it shouldn’t ever be that way, because all of this debate comes dangerously close to pulling us away from the task at hand..
Lord, hear the cry of your Children
We are weak, we are limited in understanding
Grant us your eyes to see and ears to hear
For the sake of the Kingdom, may we strip ourselves away
For the sake of Your name, may there be nothing left
For the sake of those who do not yet know Your Love
Make us humble at the feet of our brothers and sisters
Teach us to learn from those around us
Teach us to walk in Your ways
Refocus our eyes, change our lens
Cleanse from us the sin of pride
In a world where there are many Right Ways
Simply help us to avoid the Wrong Ways.
In a world where there are many Voices
Help us to listen wisely, and to speak more so.
For the sake of the long-time, middle-aged, newbie and not-yet
For the sake of Us, the Followers
Tell us again the Story of finding and feeding sheep.
Tash McGill is a broadcaster, writer and strategist who works with people and organisations to solve problems and create transformation. She believes people are the most important thing and that stories are powerful ways of changing the world. You can find out more at tashmcgill.com or by visiting her LinkedIn profile.
