Acting Worship: About Imagining Honestly (Pt. 1)

Inspired by this post on the Church and PoMo blog, I'm gonna post (in installments) an essay I wrote a year or so ago about "worship." Many of you have probably already seen this, but I read it again tonight and I'm pretty happy with how it frames (and dismantles) the debate, over-simplifications and all.

Acting Worship: About Imagining Honestly
by Jonathan Heaps

The summer before I went off to college, the church where I grew up hired me as a Worship and Arts intern. I had already been volunteering during the week and on Sunday mornings, mostly creating and projecting song lyrics for our Worship services. My duties were gently expanded and I now had to attend the weekly worship planning meeting on Wednesday mornings. Very early on Wednesday mornings, as far as my teenage self was concerned.

In these meetings we would sit around a table and construct our weekly worship service. The format is, I imagine, fairly standard for evangelical churches in mostly-white, middle class America: A “Welcome” song or two while folks trickle in, a greeting, some announcements, a few more songs, the children are dismissed to Sunday school, the offering, the sermon, communion on the first Sunday of the month, another song and a benediction. Our non-liturgical liturgy, you might call it. We’d stray a little creatively here and there. There would be a skit sometimes. Occasionally we’d incorporate some sort of participatory, hands on artsy-ness now and then. But for the most part, things were done the way things were done.

And yet, even with all those week-to-week consistencies and shared expectation, those meetings would take on the character of a hardened negotiation. I always found that strange, given that we usually entered the room in a spirit of collaboration. Further, I imagined that strangeness was not lost on the others. But there we were, bartering a hymn against a praise song or debating the merits of a skit over a special music. Could an instrumental piece really be considered “worship” music? Is the choir going to get its agreed upon quota of Sundays this year? Are we giving the youth something that will keep them interested? Are we giving the seniors something that will keep them satisfied?

It seemed like there were always two parties advocating for righteous but contradictory agendas. And, if I may speak candidly, it resulted in some disjointed and rather directionless worship services. Worship services that, no doubt, the Holy Spirit used to move and change souls, despite our pulling and tugging every which way. Still, I grew tired and discouraged by this combativeness we seemed so easily to slip into. I also have a feeling I’m not the only one.

(to be continued...)