When I Feel Reconciled To God - George Grinnell

Why Worship? The Rev. J. Gary Brinn in Constructive Faith

We worship God because we are toward God and toward God- as-experienced-in others. Moments of communal worship are moments of doubling, of tripling, of giving and receiving; a threefold relationship of self, other, and God.

As many studies have shown, communal worship is in decline. Many of those who were raised in the church no longer regularly attend what the church offers as worship services.

Yet many of those who no longer attend still seek for meaning and still have spiritual lives. It's just that our worship services often tend to fail to both emphasize a communal experience of God and to connect attendees to something larger than their individualism. 

This perhaps isn't surprising - given that we have worked on the how of worship often without ever addressing the why. The failure is ours as the church.

It's inarguably true that experiencing moments of transcendence and being a part of efforts that make a difference in the world can happen in places other in than in church services; perhaps even in better and more authentic forms.

So then why do we gather together to worship?

We do not praise God to bargain with God, so that isn't the reason.

We do not praise God for God's own sake, so that also isn't the reason. 

Praising God should driven by our humanness and our hardwiring for connection and community because we are oriented for that interrelation with God in our being.  Praise is just one mood of this relatedness.

Our thriving as humans depends on our interconnectedness. We are not simply animals designed to rut and reproduce, because we have this x in the equation; our souls. We see evidence of this mysterious x in art, in sacrificial love, and in that part of us that soars toward God and toward the other (the other beyond one's own family/tribe, for even thieves take care of their own).

And so we act out our praise of God - and of the way in which we are hardwired toward connection God - in community, in acts of communal worship which are moments of doubling, of tripling, of giving and receiving; a threefold relationship of self, other, and God. This is why no worship that is about meeting my individual needs will ever be real worship.  

Worship can involve transcendence, can speak to changing the world, can give you the tools to get through next week, and can give you comfort when you need comfort and challenge you when you are stuck, but it does so properly only when it aligns with being toward God and toward God-as-experienced-in the other.

The full article is available here

Benediction: The Values of God's Way Of Life (based on Matthew 5:17-19)

May we embrace the values of God’s way of life; values of love, justice, and truth.  May we live out these values with the guidance of our faithful, loving, and empowering God.

Worship Words: Too Important to Neglect - Joan Huyser-Honig in Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

Our words form us whether or not we pay attention to how they are doing so.  The church is starving for a richer picture of the God we worship. 

God speaks through Balaam's donkey and speaks through flawed humans.  So is using worship cliches or cliche practices that much of a problem, as long as we're sincere?

The answer = when your congregation's worship language includes only a couple names for or aspects of God, then worshipers receive an imbalanced understanding of God.

Worship language deserves far more attention than it gets in the average congregation.

Ron writes, "Christians frequently talk about salvation as 'inviting Jesus into my heart," as if the day you got saved, you made a bargain with God.  That's such an incomplete understanding of salvation and especially dangerous in our consumer culture."

Debra writes, "Our words form us whether or not we pay attention to how they are doing so.  Just as children quickly learn to speak with the vocabulary, tones, and inflections of their parents, so we learn to 'speak' our spiritual lives with the words and tones, with the emotional and theological range, of what we experience at worship.

"The [church] is starving for a richer picture of the [God] we worship," Debra writes.

To discuss how songs picture God, Worship Words quotes Lester Ruth's research on Trinitarian language in contemporary worship music. Ruth, who teaches worship and liturgy at Asbury Theological Seminary, used Christian Copyright Licensing Information (CCLI) top 25 song data from 1989-2004. (Many songs stayed so popular that only 72 songs made the list during that time).

None of the songs named the Trinity or God's triune nature. Just 3 songs mentioned all three persons of the Trinity.  Most named only Jesus.

This research demonstrates the difference between how God is spoken of in contemporary worship song and how the Bible speaks of God.

The full article is available here.

Community As Christ - Henri J Nouwen

Awaken and Develop - Christina Grof

Responsive Benediction: God Breathes Life (based on Genesis 2:7)

Reader: We believe God still creates ...
All:  ... so may we continue to be made new.

Reader:  We believe God still speaks,
All:  ... so may we listen carefully.

Reader: We believe God still guides ...
All:  ... so may we walk in God’s way.

Reader: We believe God still breathes life into being ...
All: ... so may we be light and life to God’s world.

Downward Mobility & The Way of Jesus - Henri J Nouwen