Book Chapter 6

 Chapter 6  Worship

Worship/Liturgy- ‘The work of the people of God’!

I want to be honest. It can feel like a battle as the various factions fight for dominance.

   I remember being told by two stewards that they wanted their church to ‘change’. They meant I believe more than just the Sunday service. The only problem was they wanted things to change without changing. They didn’t want the pain of conflict, and if push came to shove, they ended up settling for the status quo, which means as in all situations, the kiss of death not just for Sunday services but the whole life of the church.

    Here in lies one of the greatest stresses for the minister. Regardless of your own position re the style of worship, you are called upon to lead a community in worship. If that community is a reflection of the wider community in terms of age and background, then there will not be a one fit solution for what you do. Rather week by week, month by month, year by year, you will have to attempt the impossible of creating services that speak to an age range from 0-100, with people of different political persuasions, of differing emotional expressions, with different theological stances, and with very different musical tastes. If you accept that, then over a year you may be able to meet most if not all of these needs, then you will just about cope.

    But to try to meet them all each week will leave you physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. No one will thank you for trying! They don’t mean to be nasty with you; they are just selfish when it comes to worship.

The minister who is in pastoral charge of a church community needs to be clear in their own mind about the nature of the church and the direction it should be going. This applies to our worship. You cannot have too many people directing where the church should be going.  Being called into leadership by God and affirmed by the wider church means to be willing yes to listen to others, recognise needs, but ultimately you need to set the course. Only one hand can be on the tiller, and if you are in tune with God through your spiritual life, then you set the tiller so the church catches the wind of the spirit to drive it.

      Underpinning worship for me is my belief that the community of Christ in general is to be rooted in its locality. That a church community’s overall life should reflect that there are not clear distinctions between its service to the community and its corporate worship. In this respect I would acknowledge the influence of the Iona Community in my own thinking, where worship and work are seen as one, each flowing into the other. This means our service to the world is our worship and our ‘services’ worship our work. So the gathering of people in a Sunday service, is a gathering of people from the local community who are the disciples of Christ, seeking to work out their faith in the current day. Hopefully they will be people of all ages and backgrounds. This is no eclectic church of people who gather because they want a particular style of worship, and even more to the point, a particular style of music. 

    Where ever I have lived I have seen people prepared to travel miles to go for a style of worship that suits their personality or theology. There will I suspect always be that need to have churches that are on the extremes in their theology and style of services. To be honest again I find such an outlook exclusive, often leading to a form of fundamentalism that becomes divisive. The thinking and the theology of such groups can be shallow and ultimately they refuse to engage with the world that God has created, it all has to be on their terms. I do not see this fitting the pattern of the community that Christ calls into being. I would admit to this being one of my prejudices, and we all have them! 

  

For the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind.

 I understand that those who answered Jesus’ call to ‘follow me’, were not allowed to choose who else could follow, as in the words of the last verse of the song ‘Oh where are you going’ Iona Community 1987 Jesus says:- 

I’m going on a journey

 And welcome companions,

 But don’t ask me how we’ll survive, where we’ll go,

 Or who will come with us,

 Or what we’ll be doing.

 Just join me in travelling 

And learn all I know.

(Wild Goose Songs Volume 1 John Bell and Graham Maule Wild Goose Publications 1987)

So a community rooted in locality will bring together people from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of needs and prejudices. In some way if we are to be true to the Christ who brought us into being, we have to find a way of holding together. I believe the very act of rubbing shoulders with those we disagree with, is part of the creative purpose of God that will change and transform us, into the people God desires us to be. 

   When we walk away from the struggle we walk away from the willingness to be transformed. What does that say about our discipleship? That of course is very different from moving away from a church that is dead. 

Trying to hold together a church community that seeks to express in worship such a breadth of understanding is not easy and it is costly. 

   You will perhaps try to make the Baptism service more ‘user-friendly’ to those visiting, using language and songs that they find easy to join in with. You will get words of thanks from the family only then to be told by members of your congregation it was not suitable. What they mean is it did not give them what they wanted, nor did it fit in with their preconceived ideas of what is appropriate. 

    You will blend each week  familiar hymns and songs only still to be told ‘we don’t have enough modern songs’ or ‘we don’t sing enough well known (traditional) hymns anymore’!

 You will be told that there’s nothing for the children, yet in my experience when you ask those adults to play or suggest songs suitable, they end up playing the songs they like, claiming they are children’s songs.

     I do believe that children are short changed in our worship, but they are short changed just as much by the evangelicals as by the traditionalists. Those who go on about modern songs still fail to take into account what it is we are teaching our children. When we give them either meaningless drivel or language that may be biblical, but is just the same as traditional hymns only with perhaps lighter and brighter tunes, we serve them poorly. There is a real lack of understanding in that we need to give to children and young people tools for life. 

    Quite frankly I get fed up with the diet of songs that go on about how beautiful God is and which uses a language based on feelings. Mind you I can’t stand the old rugged cross either!

    There is a wealth of material now available for use in worship. I found congregational prejudice made it hard to introduce such material, but you have to keep slogging away at it. For me it was an ebb and flow approach, bring in something new, use it again, give it a rest then use it again. Eventually it becomes part of the local churches agreed hymnody but it takes years. 

     Modern technology can be a great boon. If you were to buy all the latest books you would forever be laying out hundreds of pounds and most churches cannot afford that, and if we care about the environment nor should we. Take for example what is now old 'Songs of fellowship' a book containing over a thousand songs. In all honesty you know they will not all be played, perhaps over its lifetime maybe half of them. So why do we keep buying such books. Multi Media projectors or screens mean we can use new songs without the need for lots more books. You will have to produce a handful of copies for those who cannot see the screen because of height or their own vision or those who still prefer a hand written copy.  

Do a reality check sometime for yourself and your congregation. There are 52 weeks of the year so 52 Sundays. On average 5 hymns or songs in each act of morning service. So 260 hymn/song opportunities. Take out Christmas and Easter seasons and you begin to see that you will inevitably work with a small number of hymns and songs. Clearly you can’t have five new songs each week, unless you want to commit worship suicide. So any new song will take time to become part of a local church ethos. 

    You have then to resist the music group who want to keep playing whatever is in the latest top ten of modern songs. They may have been away to yet another Christian gathering where a music group has led the worship and most likely have performed the songs, bit of a big clue there! Performed songs are not always congregational songs. I thought weekly worship was about the work of the people of God, who are called upon to praise their God, not leaving it to others to do so. So we begin to touch upon what works against worship of quality. And you as the minister will take the blame.

       You introduce a multimedia projector and the complaints come. ‘ I didn’t come to church to watch TV’ and the moans that come your way while its worked out what size font to use, what colour to use etc and every church building is different. Then again you have to put up with the so called expert on the computer. They will not take on board that you have to do it well, otherwise the tool of the projector, spoils the worship and gets in the way of the worship. Yes it does matter if 

• week by week spelling mistakes litter the screen. 
• the words are too small to see, 
• the current slide ends half way through a line of the song, 

and yes you as the minister will get the flak. Oh for the quiet life it would be easier not to introduce changes. But if you don’t things go backwards and the life goes out of the fellowship. So be ready and accept the fact change is uncomfortable and don’t take it personally. Of course you will. So make sure you have a good team around you to encourage you to keep going and keep things in perspective.

So let’s look at one of two things that get in the way of worship being good.

Leadership of services.

Depending on your church tradition or denomination this may boil down to one person or a number of people. Setting the direction of the tiller does not mean that you have to do it all. In fact having set the tiller and holding firm to the course helps to set the boundaries within which worship will be offered.

    First major tension for a minister in the Methodist tradition is that they will not have overall leadership of the services week by week because of the system of local preachers.

      In my first appointment I had five churches, three chapels with morning service only, one with an afternoon and evening service and my larger church with morning and evening. Your first challenge is to create a sense of continuity. Somehow they will all have to have a communion service in the month and there will be the need to conduct baptisms. My first mistake was to plan myself at each church every month. It seemed a fair and reasonable way to do it.  This led eventually to a sense of frustration when I just was not at my larger church enough to create a sense of direction. This is where you have to make hard choices.

     Some ministers believe that a larger church should be able to cope better without its minister, and so they give equal time to the various small chapels. Historically this may have been true when there were larger congregations, greater lay leadership and there were more settled congregations. I still remain to be convinced!

    Now however, congregational makeup can change week by week, as peoples pattern of attending varies greatly, and the minister can now be the focus of continuity. I believe that you need to develop as much contact time with as many people as possible. So you have to recognise that to work with 160 people every other week is more effective than just once a month. You can develop themes, ensure there is a variety of music and keep an eye on pastoral concerns. 

    To be at a small chapel say of 12 folk every other week does not make sense if it means you cannot be at the church with 160. That is not to say you don’t see the smaller chapel folk.  In fact if you are involved in a fellowship group in a small chapel, perhaps every other week or even once a month, then taken with the monthly service and visiting you can just as easily get to know them if not better than the larger church.

   In the end I made the choice to be at the larger church every other week and it began to make a difference. I could plan to do things, draw others in to help. But it did mean a different approach to the chapels that might only see you leading worship three times in a quarter. This of course raises another issue for you as the minister. Do we really need to have all these chapels? In many places they would better be regarded as house groups or cells. Better still if they met in a home or another public building if they really insist on a weekly service. Ideally, if they went to a church building nearer to them on Sunday and met mid week in their own community that would be creative. 

The next big frustration, is that not being at the same church each week, means you come back to find out that the person who led the service the week before, has undermined what you have been trying to do. 

      In Methodism we celebrate the fact that many services are led by local preachers, and the variety of views and insights can of course be enriching. Equally it can be the kiss of death to a church’s worship. I come from a family of local preachers so I know what I write now will upset many. Some local preachers refuse to see the service as belonging to the congregation. They feel they have been appointed to take the service and it’s their service. They barely will allow someone to read a bible passage, let alone influence their choice of music, even though they do not know the local congregation and its needs. 

    I have sought on numerous occasions to invite preachers to team preach; follow themes, even having provided material to draw upon. Many will respond and it makes a difference. But some stick their heals in and proclaim ‘they will not be told what to do’ The fact that you discover in their preaching they revert to such a traditional style, that newer people are put off, that they uses sexist language, and sometimes even have a dig at you to undermine what you are trying to do, makes it very hard, because they reinforce people in their prejudices. 

    The sad fact is in Methodism we are not as diligent in our selection and training of preachers as we should be or pretend to be. We are too frightened of saying no to the fact someone has not got a call to preach. Too frightened of having an empty pulpit, so we allow some people to become preachers. I know it’s true because I have voted someone through in a local preachers meeting when I shouldn’t.  Then we allow preachers to stop developing and get stuck in some kind of time warp. Attempts at ongoing development have by and large failed, and preachers carry on doing the same old tired thing.    

    So even though time and time again I have heard the ‘hymn sandwich is dead’ they continue to deliver such a service, and wonder why our congregations do not grow, but rather diminish. Of course what we really need to put to death is poorly led services.

     In my experience the biggest cause of division in worship stems from the music. This is of course ironic as it’s the one medium that potentially includes all people in participation. This trouble comes in two particular ways, musicians and the choice of music.

We all know the old joke ‘What’s the difference between an organist and a terrorist? 

You can negotiate with a terrorist!

A cooperative musician can really help worship. An uncooperative one can kill it. Mind you I had one small chapel early on when the organist could barely play a couple of tunes, and it was really hard work, a grind, we really should have sung unaccompanied. 

   Then again the ‘choir’ can be a killer. Week by week at one church they would get up to do the introit. Then I would spend the next ten minutes trying to recover the service from disaster.

 So to musicians:- 

• you need to try and create a working relationship with them that is based on the fact we are offering worship to God.
• they are not performers.
• they do not have a right to dictate to a congregation. 
• they do have a right to offer their God given gifts to a congregation to help enhance worship, doing it in such a way that they appear to be in the background. 

    I had an organist who would only play certain styles of music, and, who if he felt it was right would strike up again the chorus or last verse of a hymn. It was hardly spirit led because you knew he was going to do it, it had become a little ritual all of his own. To counter balance this music we thankfully had a young people’s group of musicians and so we could have variety. In all these situations you find yourself being blackmailed. 

    I once turned up to a chapel on an evening and requested a tune to a song I had brought along. It was not difficult but the organist just refused point blank No! He would not play it as it wasn’t in the hymn book. This from a man converted at a Billy Graham rally back in the 60’s. The stewards were embarrassed but did not help.  So we said the words of the song instead, and next time I took one of my daughters to play her flute. We cannot have musicians stopping worship. Over dependence on one individual is not healthy. 

     Congregations who are so worried that they will lose their organist that they do not introduce new material will kill off their worship any way. In my time in ministry I have of course witnessed the rise of the ‘music group’ or ‘praise band’ or whatever polite term you want to call them. While I will discuss later the problems of different styles of music, I have in fact only really had problems with the music group when it was not young people. 

    At one of my larger churches we were fortunate to have many gifted young teenagers who practiced every week and led the singing in Sunday worship, alongside the awkward organist. They were great. Oh yes the drummer annoyed the congregation but not me, but they did not dictate what we could do. 

     However a music group can become a focus of discontent and disruption to a church community. In an ideal world I would always want to see musicians situated physically out of eye line to the side or even behind a congregation. Music groups tend to perform and not lead a congregation. They often select music that is performance in style and get cross when a congregation does not appear to want to join in. They think all musicians have to play all at the same time. Just as much as an organist they can dictate to a congregation, but this time a congregation votes with its faces and voices, and does not participate, except in their complaints to you as minister.

   What has happened is we have swapped the tyranny of the organ for the dictates of the music group. 

   

Underlying all of this is a lack of understanding about corporate worship that it is for God and is by the people of God. If God’s people cannot praise God in words that speak of their lives they will be divorced from the worship further. Too much of what some music groups do, is to play one style, and not take into account the theme of the service, the need of the congregation or even think that maybe this song just needs a voice and maybe one instrument at most. 

    I would like to say I have found a way of resolving this problem but I have not. (See John Bell of the Iona Community and his books on singing for really good ideas and help (The Singing Thing – A case For congregational song & The singing thing too – Enabling congregations to sing John Bell Wild Goose Publications 2004 & 2007)

I end up having to restrict what they do and bring in others to do what I know will help the worship, a soloist here, a flute there.

    

But the rise of music groups points to the other aspect of this area that causes trouble; that is the style of music itself. A congregation will have its own history and with that comes a body of hymnody. It cannot and should not be thrown out because it is part of who and what they are. Some aspects will need to be dropped because the hymns speak in a language that is no longer appropriate, or they imply a world view that the Christian church no longer holds. I no longer select ‘onward Christian soldiers’ it was of its day and that is not now, unless you are a gun totting President Bush/Trump. 

   Having said that I believe we are then called to broaden the world view of our congregations and to find music that enables them to speak of their lives in new and fresh ways. This has got to be more than lots of songs that say how wonderful Jesus is. There are some wonderful new songs, and some will last the passage of time. But our hymns/songs need to speak of the breadth of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They need to speak of the world we currently inhabit, and the injustices we are called to challenge. They need to reflect more than a white western view of life.

     The wealth of material now available is fantastic. But you cannot keep buying lots of new books and a congregation can only take on board so much new at any given time. One or two new songs in a service are plenty and not every week. Unless your congregation is blessed in a director of music who has broad tastes it will probably fall to you to make sure that this happens. If not the music group will play praise songs forever, at least twice for everyone played, and the organist will want to play Charles Wesley and the odd Isaac Watts (if Methodist). 

    I make a plea to all ministers draw upon the work of the Iona Community’s Wild Goose Resource Team. The wealth of songs from all around the world, with guidance on how they can be used, is a resource no minister or church should be without. But be ready for the complaints and the dislike that will come your way. You need to persevere in these things because you have the responsibility to broaden and educate Christians for the world today. After all, what will they be singing in their old age?  God forbid it should be ‘If I were a butterfly’

Using others in worship

Participation by others is essential for the worship of today. But why do we want others to be involved? Well back to basics. Liturgy is the work of the people of God. So it cannot be a one person show. In planning and delivery more people need to be involved while recognising that means it will take longer to prepare. 

There are of course simple straightforward ways of getting people involved. A weekly rota of people prepared to read the scriptures should be normal. Similarly people invited to write prayers of intercession gives rise to prayers from the locality. Visiting local preachers in Methodism tend to be quite general in their prayers. While the local person knows the need, so why not use them. Some people clearly have a gift for this, it may be they write them and someone else reads them.

    Church stewards offer leadership to the church. So why not allow them to welcome a congregation at the outset, lead in prayer and take the congregation into the first hymn, again it breaks the pattern of the one person show. Then it becomes more important to follow themes if others are going to share in the worship. Organists and music group can then in advance choose music from which the leader of worship can select, which can then be practiced.  

     These sound very simple but all require good organisation and demand that people give proper time over to preparation. If you end up being the one drawing up the rota’s, organising the worship planning group meeting, it will begin to go wrong, unless that’s all you do. Secretarial support is essential in some format if these rota’s are to happen without causing problems, so use your secretarial support to make it happen.

    Identifying people for leadership in worship is really important for the church of today. The fact is not everyone can lead a congregation in worship. By that I mean have the confidence of the community to be led through parts of the service. This is not about reading a bible passage, or saying a prayer. It is the gift to be upfront but draw people’s attention to God. It is to be able to lead and enable others to worship. Now this is not about being word perfect. We have all heard someone read a bible passage fluently and well, but we have been moved more by the person who reads it not quite so fluently, but with meaning. That is because they have read it before hand and have gained an understanding of its meaning for themselves.

    So we look to identify men and women old and young who God clearly has gifted with an ability to lead worship. Such people need to be encouraged and trained. They need to be educated in the broadest sense about the nature of worship. So when they lead they know where they fit in. Ministers should have a key role in this selection and training as such individuals will impact on the weekly worship.

But we all need to recall that worship is for the God who made us, loves us and holds us and if it comes from a genuine heart that feels that then it truly comes alive.