Psalm 62:2 – God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

This past weekend, I took a crew of Lutherans from my church (mostly from our worship band) down to Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in downtown Atlanta.  This is a church known for its age, its size, and its marble columns. For years they’ve had a “contemporary service”, which seems to be yet another blended worship experience (a.k.a. “everybody loses”) somehow involving a jazz trio…

Yeah, I don’t know either.

Anyway, we went down because a few friends from AFFIRM are working on a fresh worship experience in Redeemer’s basement:  House of the Rock.  The goal seems to be in line with what I’ve been advocating for some time – a modern, yet liturgical Lutheran worship experience.  You may be thinking “blended”, but let me explain what I mean.

Liturgy can be defined differently depending on who you’re talking to, but the consensus when differentiating between a “liturgical” and a “non-liturgical” church seems to have to do with liturgical churches having a somewhat standardized order of activities during worship or, at the very least, a standardized set of activities that occur in some order.  In ELCA Lutheran churches, this order is more or less:

1. Gathering
2. Word
3. Meal
4. Sending

From my perspective, these four components make a Lutheran service, well, Lutheran. They can occur in any order, but they should all happen at some point. Sunday night’s worship experience at House of the Rock provided all four components somewhat seamlessly, with all components having a modernized and updated feel to them.

Let me point out a few things that make this worship experience seem “modern”, to me:

• Darkness - A little darkness goes a long way in worship. The folks at House of the Rock get this. They painted the ceiling black, blocked out ambient light from the windows, and set up their own lighting. Their service is in the evening, which also helps them out some. This is a huge departure from the “norm” at most Lutheran churches. At my own church, for example, we have a giant window just behind the stage. The walls are all white. Our service is at 10:45am. It is bright in there. I understand the arguments for having sunlight in the church – seeing the beauty of God’s creation, etc. The issue I have with an extraordinarily bright worship space is that people feel less “free” to express their worship. The brighter the worship space, the less comfortable worshipers will feel expressing worship to God in a way that differs from the majority of the congregation. The darker the worship space, the easier it is for people to forget about the other worshipers around them and focus on the One who is worthy of worship.
• Modern Music - This is probably a bit of a no-brainer, but the music on Sunday night was spot-on. Lyrically repetitive, yet musically dynamic – allowing worshipers to learn the songs as they were singing them, even if they didn’t already know them. The other trick is that the volume of the music was such that you couldn’t hear the person next to you singing. This goes back to my darkness statements above… the more we can do to get worshipers to forget about the people around them, the better. The goal is to create an environment that allows worshipers to focus on God. If the music is quiet, people feel more self-conscious about their own singing, knowing that the person next to them can hear them.
• Casual Vibe - Modern churches have a more “come as you are” approach to worshiping God, reinforcing the idea that worship can and should happen often, regardless of location, appearance, etc. Churches that push for formality – whether through musical instrumentation, attire, language, etc. – create a stuffy worship atmosphere. We were made for worship. Adding formality to it makes worship seem difficult – even less accessible. Using very formal language in church dialogues makes worshipers feel disconnected from the text. Having a pastor in a robe can make worshipers feel like the pastor is somehow closer to God than they can ever get. Even hymns create a disconnect. How many people listen to organ music during the rest of the week? Worship should connect people to God in the context of their own lives. The less connected people feel during Sunday worship, the easier it is for people to feel like worship is something that just happens on Sundays. If what they see, hear, feel, and experience during a worship service is put in familiar language, using familiar attire and familiar music styles, people are more likely to see worship as an ongoing experience – something that can happen anywhere at any time.
• Conversational Sermon – I find that many pastors sound like they’re teaching a class. This academic style of sharing the Word is another immediate disconnect created during many worship services. Sunday night’s experience at House of the Rock was far different. The presentation of the Word was (in my humble opinion) theologically spot-on while being delivered conversationally and casually. It felt more like hanging out with the pastor and chatting than some sermons I’ve heard. The world isn’t changing, the world has changed. The way people receive information today is far different than it was even ten years ago. People engage in various communities and play tug-of-war with ideas. The conversation is global and interactive. This is how today’s generation is used to learning and growing. Our pastors need to get on board with this.

Regardless of the stylistic trimmings and presentation methods, we gathered in His name, received the Word of God, came to the table for communion, and were sent out to serve.

Gathering.
Word.
Meal.
Sending.

Just because it’s modern doesn’t make it less liturgical.

I’m personally grateful for the effort these guys have put into planning and executing this worship experience. I hope it catches on. It’s filling a gap that has existed for some time within the Lutheran church. Moreover, I can honestly say that it had a quality to it that I’ve only experienced at bigger (and better-funded) churches. If you’re in the Atlanta area, definitely check it out!

It’s been just over a year since my last post here. I’ve spent the last year working hard on several “projects” which I felt the need to focus on. Yeah, I probably could have blogged along the way, but I find my days don’t have enough hours in them anyway. Ignoring this site was a conscious decision – an attempt to streamline my activities so I could focus my attention on making some key changes.

For starters, I got a new job… sort of. I ended up going back to work for the company I’ve spent the vast majority of my working life at. I resigned from there a couple of years ago and moved to Atlanta. After I started a new job here, my old company began to contact me. Ultimately I worked out a deal that would allow me to stay in the Atlanta area and work for them in what appears (at least so far) to be much better circumstances. At the moment I work from home (or from the Land of a Thousand Hills coffee shop), which is great considering how wild my work schedule can be.

Beyond my work, I have my second (unpaid) job:  church. The goal I set for myself for this last year was to assess my abilities and figure out how to plug my abilities into needs at my church. I feel like I have a few things to offer:  music, business (especially in marketing and communications), and project planning and management. So, here’s what’s going on there:

Worship Music
I really wanted this year to be a whole new phase in contemporary worship music development at my church. During the Easter service in 2010, I had a glimpse of the potential we had to get something really great going. Up to that point I had been on the fence – getting fairly cynical about the process of developing a contemporary worship experience in a Lutheran church. Easter was the turning point. I decided that I was either going to cut my ties and go elsewhere, or commit 100% to trying to develop the service into what it could be. I chose to commit to it and have worked diligently to “step our game up” at the contemporary service. We gained a couple of new band members and attended a worship seminar led by Paul Baloche. I feel like we now have a shared vision for the service’s music and its potential. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I’ve never been closer to my goal than I am now.

Worship Service Planning
Similar to the above, I had a goal of making some progress on the planning of our contemporary worship services. My thought was that if I could get one or two services to be planned as a group with the best ideas from the group being executed successfully, I’d have a couple of good examples I could point to as “the right way” and could take action to push both church staff and volunteers to commit time and energy to planning our worship services each week. I feel like I’ve met half of this goal. Good Friday and Easter 2011 were the best planned, most meaningful and impactful (yes I know that’s not a word) services I can remember attending at any Lutheran church. I know the congregation recognized it too, based on the feedback. The problem is, the amount of time and energy required by a handful of people to get those services together was far greater than it needed to be. I want to spread this effort out to a larger group in order to minimize the amount of time and energy required by the few who are involved in the process currently. This hasn’t happened yet. I had every intent of writing up a plan to get this done – but the task has recently been put on the back burner while I work on a few other things.

Church Communications
Our church web site sucks. It’s sucked for a long time. I realized that I should stop complaining about it and start doing something about it. So, I whipped up some stuff in WordPress and presented it to the staff. It’s been received well. I’ve involved a few other people (because I do NOT want to be the “church web site guy”) and the development is progressing well. My hope is that I can get a number of volunteers trained up to take the site over once development is complete. I don’t need another job, and I don’t need web site management pulling me away from other activities I feel are a better use of my time. HOWEVER, the work on the church web site has exposed many other issues within the church – namely, the lack of any sort of communications plan. Our church is easily 10-15 years behind the communications curve. Our church secretary uses templates to produce bulletins and newsletters. She posts these to the church web site (the ONLY dynamic part of our church web site). Nevermind the clear technology  gap that needs to be bridged – it’s clear to me that our church doesn’t really have a clear voice. Each scrap of material that gets published is written by someone different – and each has a spin applied to it that seems intended only for current church members. It’s growing more and more apparent to me that when my church communicates, the only audience in mind is themselves. This needs to change. Beyond changing the audience, I believe my church needs to change its message. If I had to sum up the current message of our church based on everything we publish and announce, it would be:  ”we’re reluctantly trying to be more youthful and contemporary so that we don’t lose people to some other church.” This is obviously not the message we need to be sending. We actually do have several community-oriented pockets of activity within our church. What I’d love to see happen is for these pockets to grow from the bottom up and to gradually change the culture of our church from being inward-focused to being outward-focused. As this culture changes, so will our message. Then… we’ll finally have something truly of value to communicate out to the world.

None of these are “small” tasks. I think I’m to the point now where I’m making progress with each of them, and I have some (fuzzy) goals I’d like to reach over the next year. Just as I made a conscious decision to NOT blog over the last year, I’m making a conscious decision TO blog this year. I’m hoping that by writing out my progress, it will push me to drive harder to the goals. I’m also hoping that discussions and feedback will pop up here and there to help me when I feel “stuck”.

Here we go…

I’ve finally recovered (I think) from last week’s activities, so I think I can post some thoughts now.

Last week I participated as a staff member at AFFIRM 2010. AFFIRM is a 5-day long youth event sponsored by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Southeastern Synod (SES). This year’s AFFIRM event consisted of 300+ youth participants and 80+ staff worshiping and learning on the campus of Berry College in Rome, GA. It was both exhausting and invigorating all at the same time.

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect leading up to AFFIRM. I’d heard mixed reviews. My friend over at soulmunchies.com is completely in love with the event, even with its flaws. Other friends had sworn the event off, saying it wasn’t worth the time. I did my best to stay open-minded about it as the staff training weekend approached.

I first heard of AFFIRM through Bishop H. Julian Gordy. Bishop Gordy was visiting my home church a few months ago and I was leading worship at the contemporary service as usual. He stayed for a lunch at the church and I had the pleasure of sitting with him and chatting a bit. He mentioned AFFIRM to me and it definitely piqued my interest. A region-wide synod youth gathering with young leaders from across the southeast? Sure… sign me up.

Most anyone who knows me knows that I’ve felt a bit jaded by the Lutheran church, especially in the southeast. I realize that in other parts of the U.S. where there are larger numbers of Lutherans, things sometimes work differently. But here in the southeast, it seems like most local Lutheran churches are taking small strides backward even as a new generation of leaders is begging to push things ahead. I often feel tension, even in my own church, as suggestions for forward momentum are often ignored or directly opposed. I’ve felt very alone in my efforts, a feeling only recently remedied through some acquaintances made through Twitter and other online communities. Meeting other like-minded young, energetic Lutherans rekindled some hope in our church. AFFIRM served a similar purpose.

For me, AFFIRM served as an assurance that I am definitely not alone in the SES. There are indeed other young, energetic, forward-thinking Lutheran leaders in my synod. Many of them are as annoyed as I am with the way things are in our church, but they haven’t given up. They continue to press ahead and hope and pray for change. At AFFIRM, we were free to shape worship however the Spirit moved us. We didn’t have to deal with disgruntled traditionalist members coming up and whispering in our pastor’s ears. We didn’t have to deal with church councils or staff asking us to “dial it back”. We didn’t have to deal with worrying about our worship being “Lutheran enough.” We went where the Spirit took us without hesitation. It was beautiful.

Back home now, I’m settling into a post-AFFIRM depression. I checked my e-mail yesterday and saw the order of worship for this Sunday in my inbox. It’s another copy and paste from last week, just with slightly different music, dialog, and scriptures. It lacks excitement. It lacks energy. It’s the same thing we’ve been doing for years. I’m trying hard not to let my experiences last week make me feel even more jaded than I felt before, but it’s admittedly tough. I’m trying to look back on AFFIRM with a hopeful eye, realizing that there are others out there like me… expecting great things from our church and willing to press on until we get there.

I’m not alone… I’m not alone…

TEC is a pretty unique experience, I have to admit. As a youth growing up, I went on countless retreats and trips with our youth group. In most cases, these events had huge numbers of youth and really only a handful of leaders and supporting personnel. Similarly, in my experiences as a leader on such trips, I’ve found that same paradigm to be true. Leaders are typically overworked and under-resourced.

TEC, on the other hand, seemed completely lopsided by comparison. As the weekend progressed, I realized that the event is “supported” behind the scenes by a seemingly countless throng of people. One such supporter told me that the ratio is nearly 4-to-1. 4 supporting personnel for every attendee.

This particular TEC experience was based on a Lutheran modification of what began as a Catholic youth ministry. While the “liturgy” of the weekend was Lutheran, several churches from several different denominations were represented. What a great model for ministry:  a diverse body of Christ gathering together for a single united purpose, led and supported by laity with only a guiding hand from the ordained.

Oh snap, hes messin with the holy communion.
But I aint never dissed your precious hypostatic union!

(h/t to @JesusNeedsNewPR and jesusneedsnewpr.blogspot.com!)

I’ve been thinking a LOT lately about worship services and I’m admittedly uneducated about the whole topic. In a way though, I’m sort of glad I’m uneducated about it. When I talk to other people who are perhaps more educated on the topic (pastors, church leaders, etc.), I get the impression that the education has tainted their impression of worship services. They’re so integrated with the services they’re a part of that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a church visitor, looking for a church and a worship experience that is appealing.

Yeah, I said it. I used the word “appealing” in the context of worship.

I bet some people just stopped reading.

I typically get a lot of backlash when I use words like “appealing” to describe worship services. Usually the argument is something like this: “Looking for an ‘appealing’ worship service is a self-centered approach and worship is supposed to be God-centered.” My problem with this argument is that while a worship service may be created as a God-centric time, the choices made while designing the service are based on human appeal and preference.

Let me describe what I mean. Some churches I’ve been to have fancy (ostentatious?) lecterns or pulpits from which readings and preaching take place. Other churches have little to no supporting “props” to support such activities. One extremely large and very local church (it’s maybe a mile from where my wife and I live) typically has just a simple stool and a small table where the pastor is able to lay his Bible down while he’s preaching. Is either approach more “God-centric”? Is either more worshipful? What drove the decisions to choose such decor?

Another example is music. The church I mention above uses loud, energetic, contemporary worship songs complete with drums, electric guitars, huge projection screens, moving lights, etc. Other churches use pipe organs and choirs. Which is more “God-centric”?

Yet another example is language. Some churches employ flowery or archaic words when they craft (yes, craft) their prayers or select their opening call and response texts. Others use simpler or more modern (more straightforward?) language.

Is an organ holier than drums?

Is a robe more Godly than jeans and a t-shirt?

What role do personal preferences play in designing a worship service? How much do the personal preferences of church leadership and members influence a typical worship service? If personal preferences drive the choices we make when we design a service, does this make our services self-centered?

(Thanks to @somelutheranguy for sharing this with me!)

It’s like 5 minutes of your time. Just watch it already!

This is fantastic:

Part of it is making the pulpit a place where perplexity, where doubt is spoken and shared in the community. Where we really face darkness together, where we really stare down darkness in the thickness of life. [...] I think part of the reason younger populations of people don’t hear much in preaching is because they don’t hear anything that’s at stake and there’s no one that seems to, in this moment, bare reality.

I find myself thinking a lot about relevance and what it means to be relevant. Specifically, what it means for a church to be relevant. There have been a few blog posts over the last couple of weeks to address what young people are looking for from a church. Obviously, items like modern worship made the list. But oddly enough, theology seemed to play an important role. Young people seem to crave not just cultural or generational relevance, but theological relevance.

I find what Andy Root says here to be quite significant. How often do you hear real perplexity or doubt or darkness shared from the pulpit? These are things that are plaguing young people on a daily basis, and yet are often missing from the sermons of many pastors and preachers.

One word that keeps getting lodged in my head is accessibility. Today’s young people are amazingly accessible. They’re on Twitter and Facebook and blogs. They’re used to sharing openly and they expect such openness from others. Consider this from a 2004 article on the subject of the online disinhibition effect:

It’s well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly. Researchers call this the “disinhibition effect.” [...] Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. Or they show unusual acts of kindness and generosity.

This new generation is comfortable online. As a result, they’re more open and accessible than any generation before them. How open are we, as a church? How open are we when we preach Christ? Are we tackling real issues head-on? Are we embracing perplexity from the pulpit? Are we facing the doubt and the darkness?

Are we speaking out of the thickness of life?

He expands on this a bit by providing the following “five quick predictions” on what the church will look like once today’s young people find themselves in church leadership positions:

1. Home groups, cell groups, mid-sized gatherings will move to the forefront as the primary evangelistic tool for churches.
2. Large group gatherings will still have a place in the local church, but they will be seen as “icing on the cake,” instead of the cake itself.
3. Because of the shift towards smaller communities, pastors will take on bi-vocational roles for A.) budgetary reasons, B.) evangelistic reasons.
4. Denominational seminaries will become a thing of the past. Most theological learning will move online or become highly contextualized and internalized by the local church itself.
5. “Sinner’s prayer” evangelism (i.e. “linear” evangelism) will give way to a more messy form of discipleship that includes dips and valleys; doubts and discussion.

This tiny list of prophesies speaks volumes. I wonder how many churches understand the shift that’s taking place even as we speak. You don’t have to look hard to realize that there is a new generation of eager young Christians just chomping at the bit to get their shot.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “catalyst” lately, and what it means to be one. What I’m finding is that the more people talk about what the church will look like at some undefined point in the future, the more I want it to happen now.

I want the shift to happen.

I’m getting tired of just talking about it though. I want to take action. The shift is already happening, but I think we can find ways to give it a push. I have some ideas for specific actions I can take to become a catalyst for change.

What ideas do you have?

It’s funny. I promise.

The thing about a blender is that what you pour out of it is only as tasty as what you put into it. A fruit smoothie is good because the flavors you’re putting into it are complimentary to each other. All the blender does is combine them.

Blending, in and of itself, doesn’t produce positive results. The results come from combining flavors that work well together.

“Blended worship” is a phrase which is often overused, especially in the Lutheran church. For a church that’s historically slow to change, blended worship sounds like a great idea. You take aspects of a contemporary service and aspects of a traditional service and combine them for a tasty frappuccino of worship goodness. It’s a compromise. Everybody wins, right? And, it means we don’t have to commit! We’re not contemporary, so we don’t scare off the traditionalists. We’re not traditional, so we should see droves of young people flocking to our services any day now.

Seriously! Any day now. Really, any moment. Just wait, they’re coming… No really, they are!

What happens if you take a banana, a handful of strawberries, and a jar of pickles, and blend them all together? All are fine on their own, but combining them might not produce appealing results. Worship is much the same. Worship music, song lyrics, dialog language, prayers, sermons… all can have various and unique flavors. Combining them in a way that encourages worship requires similar skill and instinct as that of the chef knowing what ingredients to combine and, more importantly, what ingredients not to combine.

Many churches seem to move to this blended approach because they’re trying to make everybody happy. The end result, at least from my experiences, is the exact opposite. Nobody is happy. The folks over at stuffchristianslike.net bring up this phenomenon in #424 of their list of stuff Christians like. The author hits the nail on the head when he mentions that both parties lose when you compromise. I sense more frustration in blended worship services than I do in worship services that seem to commit to a single consistent style and language.

To make matters worse, I’ve seen many Lutheran churches claim to have a contemporary service only to walk in and find a blended one. This seems to happen a lot as these churches try to transition from traditional to contemporary. Many of them create an additional service for the contemporary approach but a combination of factors might prevent it from reaching its full potential. It may be that they have worship service planners who still think traditionally. It may be that they have a mixed bag of attendees at the contemporary service and they feel the need to cater to all of them. It may be that they just don’t understand what “this contemporary thing” is all about.

Whatever the reason, I often see these services becoming a confusing mix of language, music, lyrics, and “vibe”. The best advice I can give is this:  commit. If you’re helping to plan a contemporary service, start fresh! Don’t just take your traditional service and add a few Hillsong tunes and call it a day. Don’t just take your traditional responsive readings and try to spice them up. Think creatively. Find other creative people in your church and get them involved. Take risks!

Don’t blend things that shouldn’t be blended. Some flavors are better on their own.