the future of worship

see previous posts in this series...
future directions in worship
is god vaguely bored by our worship? and no it wasn't me asking
more worship musings - what are we afraid of?

on the worship symposium discussion day following our presentations there was lots of q and a and small group discussion which threw up a whole host of issues and questions. i didn't jot those down though. but at the end of the day the four of us on the panel were invited to present concluding thoughts in relation to the future of worship. here's what i jotted down...

joel edwards

• make no assumptions
• we need to ask ourselves where god is at work?
• boredom still needs addressing
• no room for complacency
• embrace the tensions
• close the gap between saturday night and sunday morning

mark earey

• need to get beyond a dominant consumerism
• multi-cultural
• worship that shapes us for mission, to offer the rest of our lives as worship
• much of our worship is non-inclusive - recover hospitality

graham kendrick

• make space for innovators (remember people who made room for me) - encourage, mentor, befriend
• recover the use of psalms in daily lives
• constant reality checks - ask what has service got to do with real lives of people here and the real world?
• eschatology shaping us - god's future for the world and our hope in that

me

• grow worship in the soil of your local culture - contextual rather than off the shelf
• diverse - we only know who jesus is as we see christ's many faces round the world, and expressions and theological takes, so diversity rather than sameness opens up for us who god is. so the future is local and global.
• in anglican speak this is a vision of a mixed economy
• i rehearsed the passage jesus tells about new wine and old wine to suggest that we need both old and new but that if we want new in the future we need to create space for pioneers now. that new will also be uncomfortable because it won't just be about stylistic change but will include a deeper questioning and re-theologising.
• worship leading will not be about provider/client leading but about the creation of environments of participation, and nurturing connection with the whole of life (i.e. breaking dualism).

Comments

[Carole]

Thanks, Jonny. Your reports have really got me thinking...

[Mark]

It's nice to see some much common ground, though of course one wonders what the words might actually mean in action? I'm struck by Kendricks call for innovators, it seems to me that the innovate "worship" has happened outside the mainstream understanding of "worship" i.e. it has been in the liturgical, symbolic and 'alternative' traditions, whereas the mainstream evangelical expressions haven't really changed since I was a lad - the sections of mor/folk/rock singalongs have just got longer!

It has struck me recently that we are at last coming out of the NOS shadow, we are seeing some highly creative young and leftfield worship/meditation (we tend to refer to our "worship" as meditation in response to the compartmentalisation of worship, action, prayer, life etc.) and the suspicion that went with everything 'alternative' is dissipating. (e.g. communities like The Garden) - Obviously this is a sphere that Proost is aware of and encouraging... and the internet is making it possible for creatives to get their 'stuff' out there for others to see, use and be inspired by.

I do think (as you say in your final point) there needs to be a shift away from 'production' to 'creativity' - the process of innovation and creation being more important than any product at the 'end' - taking "worship" out of solely the domain of experts and professionals - making it truly liturgical (the work of the people not just the professionals) - focusing on learning, struggle, participation and not on slickness, performance etc.

One question - what did Edwards mean by to "close the gap between saturday night and sunday morning" - presumably he doesn't mean having a Kebab & 10 pints of Lager instead of Bread and Wine? Seriously these things are easy to say, but what do they mean and how are they being encouraged by the people who say them?

[David Derbyshire]

Thanks Jonny. I particularly like the comment about old and new. I think we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of saying, ‘Your style of worship is no good we're going to do it our way’, we can bring new ways of engaging God along side the old and, who knows, we may find the old ways infused with new meaning too.