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10 Things Smart Progressive Churches Know About Worship, Part 2
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| Essay by Rev. Fran Pratt
February 27, 2020
This article is a continuation of : 10 Things Smart Progressive Churches Know About Worship, Part 1.
5) Fewer Songs are better. Having a small repertoire (20-40 songs) of familiar, beloved songs that a congregation can sing their guts out to is way better than a 500-song repertoire no one knows or can engage meaningfully with.
Here are some of my best practices for managing my repertoire:
I introduce no more than 1 new song per month, and place it in a set among familiar songs. On a song’s first time out, I actually pause to teach it. I might say “ok I have a new song for y’all and here’s how it goes… I’ll sing the chorus a couple of times then you can jump in…” When I introduce a song, I repeat it 3 weeks in a row so that folks have a chance to become familiar with it, and so that I have a chance to assess whether the song is WORKING for us.
Some questions I ask to assess whether a song is working are:
Are people *actually singing* after they’ve heard it a time or two?
Do they seem to like it? I actually ask people this after service: hey guys, what did you think of that new song?
Is there a feeling in the room of resonance or energy? Do people close their eyes, smile, weep, move their bodies, or otherwise hint that they’re “in it”? Or are there blank, bored faces? This can be tricky to assess and fairly subjective, but I’ve learned to go with my gut.
Can the musicians/band pull the song off well given our various constraints? Does it sound good? Can the leader sing it with heartfelt authenticity?
Once my repertoire is a comfortable size, which means we get around to each song in it approximately once per month, I practice a one-in, one-out model: bring something fresh in, retire something tired, or less resonant, or less useful.
6) Aesthetics are important, but emotional manipulation is bad. How a service or gathering looks and feels DOES matter. People pay attention, more than ever, to vibes. And the most important vibe of all is authenticity, closely followed by intentionality. Your gatherings will function best when they are planned with intention, when the details, themes and elements are attended to and brought into coherence. The difference between an intentional and coherent service and a slapdash, underprepared one is experienced by the congregant.
Your production value absolutely should not distract people from being able to connect with each other or the Divine in the gathering - this is why skill matters, why you need competent and thoughtful musicians, worship leaders, speakers, etc. In other words, your music cannot suck. Sucky music is a huge distraction and turn-off. So is a boring and overly-serious service.
But. If your gathering relies on lights, smoke machines, or backing tracks to make it happen, set the mood, or otherwise manipulate the energy, people are going to smell an inauthentic rat. Content - that is, lyrics, spoken words, contemplative elements (including silence) - matters far more than any gimmicky or flashy extras. Solid sound and media quality (this includes your printed guide if you have one, and any projected lyrics, images, or videos) should support your content and not replace it. Focus on providing a nourishing gathering experience. Allow people to feel, but don’t try to make them feel.
7) Inclusive language matters. If you only ever call God “he” then you are doing God a disservice, even if that language is Biblically accurate. There is so much more to say about the Divine than only to assign a masculine pronoun and imagination. We have progressed our understanding of the Divine, and our liturgy should reflect that growth.
We are divesting ourselves of the idea that God is, as Christena Cleveland calls it, “whitemalegod.” We are broadening our idea of the Divine, and diversifying our representations of them. We can use liturgy, songs, and art that imagine God/The Divine as female, non-binary, Black, Indigenous, and many more metaphors/similes. We can sing “father,” but we can also sing “Mother,” “Spirit,” “Creator,” “Ground of Being,” and a host of other addresses. In the end, we are always talking around a Grand Idea, an Expansive Wholeness. Whatever words we use will only ever point in the general direction. I look for songs with a variety of addresses or none, and if I can’t find what I need I get a group of creatives together to write it.
Similarly, the people in our congregations need to feel included. We can use language in the most inclusive ways we can imagine. We pay attention to our people and use language in our liturgy, in our songs and prayers, that is broad, robust, and welcoming.
8) Fun and beauty are necessary. I think music in particular should be a place where we explore fun, joy, and experimentation inside our gatherings. We can make our music and liturgy as beautiful and holistic as we can imagine them, so as to enliven our hearts with their winsomeness. We should work to articulate hope, even as we acknowledge the difficult and tumultuous, often tragic, times we live in. This goes back to my point #2 in Part 1 of this article.
Our focus on fun and beauty is not to bury our heads in the sand on tough issues, but rather to face them with resilience. We can foster resilience and courage in our communities by making beauty and human enjoyment part of what fuels our drive toward justice and Kin-dom society.
I often do this in the context of the musical “worship space” by creating levity, laughing with the band whenever we make a mistake, speaking fun out loud to the congregation, and experimenting with hopeful songs. Including kids in the liturgy helps also, as does inviting various forms of art into the gathering. Any moment that we can seize to laugh together and enjoy the company is a good moment. Try not to take yourself too seriously. Fun is resistance that can be cultivated.
9) God doesn’t have an ego that needs to be stroked. If all you’re singing is “magnify” and “exalt” and “glorify” then you are in danger of projecting a human ego onto God. We absolutely need to point out the goodness of The Divine together, and that may involve singing songs about it, but that’s about us and not about any need God has for us to tell God about God’s character.
What we do need is to place ourselves inside a bigger story, a story of transformation and resurrection and new life. We need to be able to access a higher consciousness and broader way of seeing both the Divine and each other. In my church, in general we sing two kinds of songs: songs that are prayers, and songs that tell the grand narrative of redemption and wholeness. We tell the story of where we have been and where we are going, so that we can be encouraged on our journey.
Part of what progressives have an opportunity to do in this moment is redefine what “worship” means. People of faith once thought that worship meant animal sacrifice or placating; then for a while we thought it meant singing songs together in church because this is our duty to praise or extol God-in-the-sky. And our understanding is still evolving and growing more precise and more broad. We are gradually learning what Christ means in saying “true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth.” And to that end...
10) “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
This is a quote from the late poet Mary Oliver. In another poem she says, ““To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” She likely came across a similar idea from Simone Weil who said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
These thoughts are currently revolutionizing my ideas about what we have traditionally called “worship,” as well as the practices I work to implement in my own sacred community. Especially as I’ve let go of the idea that God needs ego-stroking “worship.” I’m learning to think of the “worship space” more as a space in which we pay attention to the Divine together. We use the tools of spoken and musical liturgy to help us learn to pay attention. We flex those muscles together by singing and speaking about how we understand the Divine and how we want the world to become in light of that. And we foster our relationship with the Divine by addressing our liturgy to Them, as opposed to about Them. We exercise our devotion to Love by paying attention to Love in our communal spaces.
This paying attention to the Divine, to Love, is the best thing we can do together; learning to follow Love’s cues and agenda, learning to have Love’s mind. I say attention is the purest form of worship.
~ Rev. Fran Pratt
Read online here.
About the Author
Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored of a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Jim
This is a request for ideas on how to respond to an event scheduled for April, 2020, in our medium-sized city. The event is sure to attract bus-loads of people from around the tri-state region, as we live in a pocket of conservative theology and politics. The event will feature the grandson of the founder of an international evangelical association, which in the past has proliferated harsh denunciation of those with differing understandings, appearances, and approaches to life. This association is also strongly aligned with the current Presidential administration. I am certain that the event will generate demonstrations in opposition to the presence of the featured guest and his association, as our region includes two major universities, a college, and a minority of citizens who are more progressive in their thought and practice. The question is, how can we respond and encourage others to respond (not react) in ways that will exhibit respect for all persons and, at least, leave the many who will be ardent supporters of the Spring Rally with an image that cannot as easily be discredited?
A: By Joran Slane Oppelt
Dear Jim,
When facing the behemoth that is the conservative majority, it is tempting to believe they are a monolithic entity that is descending on your town, hell-bent on conversion. What is true, however, when we encounter them as individuals, is that they hold life (and their beliefs about it) very dearly. In most cases, they are afraid of the government stepping in and telling them what they can and can’t believe. In most cases, they are afraid of secret agendas (by politicians or the media) that would steer our country away from long-held ideals of liberty and freedom. And, in most cases they have made certain concessions about who they trust (and what they believe) because of this deep-seated and unspoken fear. What neither side of this encounter (left or right, liberal or conservative) will admit is that they are both experiencing this fear. They are sharing fabrications and untruths on social media. They have neglected to verify and triangulate their sources. They have spread propaganda. When this happens, we have entered the world of post-truth, and a post-truth America is a dangerous place for everyone. On the liberal side, this shadow of post-modernism rears its head as, “every voice (perspective) is equal and deserves to be included” and on the conservative side, this shadow sounds like, “every voice has the potential to be politicized.”
There is no retreating from a post-truth America. We live there now. Together. Thanks to the internet and Moore’s Law and the fact that we are cyborgs, blurring the lines between men and machines. It’s OK. We’ll survive.
I bring all of this up because what I want to remind you to do -- when you encounter those brothers and sisters in the streets of your town -- is to love them. They are passionate, just like you. They hold strong beliefs and values, just like you. And they are afraid of losing something, just like you.
Personally, I believe we would all be better served ignoring the rallies and protests, taking our focus off of what is happening in the stadiums and town squares, and putting our attention on our own neighborhoods. If our children played in the backyards of other children and adults gathered in parks and on front lawns to picnic and watch the sunset together, we would have the conversations necessary to build empathy and trust. If we broke more bread together as communities (actual neighbors, not friends from the greener neighborhoods), the separation between us would dissolve and respect would grow in its place.
So, how to respond? With love (a handshake or a hug).
What image to leave them with? One of open arms, readiness and understanding.
~ Joran Slane Oppelt
Read and share online here
About the Author
Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the founder of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay. Joran is the author of Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities, Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox) and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He currently serves on the board of Creation Spirituality Communities and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion.
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| Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the Bible, Part XX: I and II Zechariah, Primary Shapers of the Christian Story
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
February 5, 2009
If you were to search the Scriptures for a book called II Zechariah, you would not find it. There is only a single fourteen-chapter book called Zechariah, buried in the Bible between Haggai and Malachi. It is, however, not a single book by a single author, although that is the way it appears. Chapters 1–8 of Zechariah reflect a period of Jewish history about 100 years earlier than chapters 9-14. The name Zechariah is associated with the author of chapters 1-8 and it ought to be called I Zechariah. Chapters 9-14 were added to the scroll of this small work by an unknown writer and should be designated II Zechariah. Scripture scholars when dealing with the better known book of Isaiah have followed that practice widely. Isaiah 1-39 is regularly called I Isaiah and is dated in the 8th century BCE. Chapters 40-55 of this book, which constitute the best known part of the Book of Isaiah because George Frederick Handel set it to music in his popular oratorio “The Messiah,” are generally called II Isaiah and are dated in the 6th century BCE. Chapters 56-66, representing a much later period in Jewish history, probably in the 5th or even the 4th century BCE, are called III Isaiah.
Zechariah, on the other hand, has been generally ignored by ordinary Christians and scholars alike. Its importance, therefore, has been minimized. Even those people who claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, if asked a question about the message of the book of Zechariah, respond with glassy-eyed stares. If they know anything about this book it tends to be a verse from Zechariah 9:9 that reads: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.” This verse might be recalled because it is read as the Old Testament Lesson on Palm Sunday in almost every church that follows a liturgical lectionary and was clearly the passage on which the Palm Sunday story was modeled. Beyond this, however, most people, biblical fundamentalists and traditional Christians alike, would tend to have no knowledge whatsoever about this book.
Yet the fact is that the Book of Zechariah is quoted overtly by New Testament writers at least eight times and is alluded to even more frequently than that in the shaping of the gospel tradition. With the exception of a few references in the Book of Revelation, almost every verse in Zechariah to which the New Testament points is from II Zechariah, that is, from chapters 9-14. This segment of Zechariah was a remarkably influential book in the formation of the thinking of the early Christians; indeed it was probably second only to the book of Isaiah.
To understand the impact of this statement, it is quite important that we get out of a literal biblical mindset. Jesus does not fulfill the prophets in the sense that he somehow said and did things that the prophets had predicted the messiah would do. That is patent nonsense, the product of overt biblical ignorance. Biblical prophets were not the predictors of the future. The gospels are rather interpretative works written two to three generations after the life of Jesus and written in the service of their claim that he was messiah. To underscore this claim, these early Christians searched the scriptures for the content of Israel’s messianic hope and expectancy, and then they wrote the story of Jesus to be in accord with these expectations. In the various resurrection narratives, the command to do this kind of interpreting was written into the words and actions attributed to Jesus himself. Listen to Luke where he has Jesus say, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken…and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself (24:25-27).” Later Luke has Jesus repeat this theme just for emphasis, “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures (24:44, 45).” Luke was suggesting that it was the resurrected Christ who had directed the early disciples to find references to the scriptures of the Hebrew people by which they could properly interpret the experience they had with the life of Jesus of Nazareth. By the time the gospels were written this practice had become their primary interpretive tool. The Book of Zechariah, and specifically II Zechariah, was in that process one of the most influential books in the Hebrew Bible and they drew on it heavily to interpret the life of Jesus.
II Zechariah begins by introducing his readers to a figure who is, in all probability, intended to be a mythical figure not unlike the suffering servant of II Isaiah. II Zechariah’s mythical character is called the shepherd king of Israel. It is this king, he says, who will come to Jerusalem not in pomp and splendor, but in humility and lowliness riding upon a donkey to lay claim to his kingdom. Mark is the first gospel author to write the Palm Sunday story and he did so by incorporating Jesus into that text, quoting it almost verbatim. Matthew and Luke copied Mark with little editorial change. John treats it very differently, as he does so many things. Jesus was not making a triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he was already there, and John makes the Palm Sunday story be an aftermath of the raising of Lazarus, a story none of the other gospels relate. John also adds enigmatically that the disciples did not know what Jesus was doing, but that after Jesus was glorified, they “remembered” that these things had been written about him in the prophets (see John, Chapter 12).
When Jesus was arrested, the earliest gospel writer notes that “all of the disciples forsook him and fled (Mark 14:52).” By the time the gospels came to be written (roughly 70 to 100), the twelve had, however, become heroes among the followers of Jesus, so that this apostolic abandonment, which was clearly an indelible memory, had to be transformed. That was done by Mark saying that the prophets had predicted this abandonment so the disciples were merely fulfilling the scriptures and thus were guiltless, and consequently not blameworthy. The text they quoted for this apostolic whitewashing was from II Zechariah, “Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered (13:7).” Matthew repeats and expands this connection. Luke assumes it.
The shepherd king of II Zechariah was said to be doomed by those who “trafficked in sheep,” which brings to mind the gospel story of the people who bought and sold animals, primarily sheep, for sacrifice in the temple. This connection with the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is made overt and clear in the last verse of Zechariah, where the prophet writes that when the day of the Lord comes, “There shall no longer be a trader in the House of the Lord (14-21).” Was the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple not history, but an attempt to interpret Jesus as messiah inspired by II Zechariah? I think it is fair to suggest that it was.
The work of the shepherd king was then annulled, says II Zechariah, by these “traffickers in sheep,” who paid him off to rid themselves of him. The price of his riddance was “thirty pieces of silver.” The shepherd king then hurled this money back into the temple (Zech 11:8, 12-14). Matthew is the gospel writer who introduces the thirty pieces of silver in the story of Judas Iscariot and Matthew has Judas hurl the money into the Temple. Clearly, Zechariah was his source for this part of his story line (Matt. 26:14-16, 27:3-7).
Later II Zechariah states that God will pour out compassion on the people of Jerusalem “so that when they look upon him whom they have pierced, they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps over a first born (Zech. 12:10, 11).” John used this passage and gave credit to Zechariah when he developed the story of the soldier who pierced Jesus’ side with his spear (see John 7:31-37).
Finally, Zechariah portrays the day of the Lord that will come at the end of time. All of the nations of the world will be gathered in Jerusalem in warfare and the Lord will defeat them. The Lord will stand on the Mount of Olives and split the mountain in two. There will be no darkness and finally on that day, living water will flow out of Jerusalem, embracing all of the nations to the East and those to the West and the Lord will become King over all the earth. On that day all will worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and “there will be no traders in the House of the Lord.” It was an incredible mythical portrait of the dawning of the Kingdom of God for which the Jews had been taught to yearn.
Living water for the Jews is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit. This is thus a Pentecost portrait on which Luke clearly drew when he wrote the Pentecost story in the book of Acts. The Spirit was poured out on the gathered world, said Luke, and oneness was created in that they could all speak the language of their hearers (see Acts 2).
Once we put all of these pieces together, II Zechariah describes in precise order the pattern that was written into the final week of Jesus’ life: the Palm Sunday procession on the donkey, the betrayal, the apostolic abandonment, the crucifixion and the day of Pentecost. It is clear that the little book of II Zechariah exercised vast influence on the way the Jesus story was developed, remembered and told.
One conclusion is obvious. The gospels are neither history nor biography. They are interpretive portraits written by Jews, probably in the synagogues, to portray the Jesus who empowered them and who raised them to a new level of consciousness about God’s living presence in Jesus and now in them. Messiah had opened them to enter the presence of God. That is how Jesus was identified with the messianic hopes of Israel and that is the basis upon which they made the Christ claim for him as well as the God claim that would develop over the centuries in the creeds. With newly informed eyes the Bible is fun to read and even more fun to understand.
~ John Shelby Spong
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Announcements
John Shelby Spong’s final book “Unbelievable”
Why Christianity Is No Longer Believable – And How We Can Change That
Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future.
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