[THO] Worship V

In the classic, Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss tells the story of Sam, apparently a market research analyst for the pork and poultry industry. It tells of his exploits in finding taste testers for a new product, coloured ham and eggs. This book was written long before government regulations prohibiting testing new products on folks by sheer coercion. Ah the good old days.

You might have guessed that this is one of the stories I love reading my kids. But I think there are a few interesting observations that this book makes about our tastes. This is important for worship leaders who are concerned with seeing the worship of their community enriched. The first observation is quite obvious; we all see that there are types of worship that we just outright reject because of taste.

In most of the traditions I have been a part of there is an anti-Roman undercurrent. I admit that this was my view as well until God mercifully kicked my arse*. But still I notice it in many of my friends who jokingly ask when I’m going to convert to Roman Catholicism, but I know it is a nervous joke and actually an unintentional slam against my Roman brothers and sisters. So in my world I know that tastes are informed by what we trust and what we distrust, and so anything that looks too Roman is distrusted. I found this truth painful last year when a very dear friend told me he could no longer continue hanging out with me as long as I was polluting the gospel with this “sacramental” stuff. Ouch.

I bring this up to underscore how deep tastes go within us. When we don’t like something, it can appear quite irrational, but it is anchored deep within us. As worship leaders folks are pretty forgiving, but they will tell you what they don’t like and it is important that we listen. Because if we just hammer the same thing the same way week after week our worship will degrade into personality warfare.

Does that mean we pander to every whim of taste? No, this is where listening is so important. We need to know who is finding the ‘in question’ aspect of the liturgy troubling, and we need to find out why. Often tastes vary and it takes some work to find a liturgical form that everyone has enough ownship and trust in so that they can simply give themselves over to worship. I’ve argued before that this trust is essential to deeping the worship and having the ability to take people beyond their comfort zones.

Ok I’ve introduced a few new ideas I should cover off before we hit the second point of our Dr. Seuss lesson.

At the beginning of these articles I talked about developing a liturgy that is specific to the community. This gives you two advantages: ownership and trust. I think trust is the most important commodity for a worship leader, but ownership should not be overlooked. A worshipper has ownership when they feel all or part of the liturgy is specifically there for them. Now we know that it is not doable to cobble together a liturgy made up of everyone’s suggestions, but when a worshipper feels they can express their preferences regarding your worship, and that these things are acknowledged and considered they will feel, rightfully, part of the process of crafting the liturgy of the community. Liturgy is after all the work of the people. So this is essential.

This same transparency builds strongly into the trust aspect. But there is more to trust that should be noted here. I think that we’ve polluted our ideas of trust with business metaphors, some of those ideas work great in managing the organization of church (if you are the CEO leadership type that is, for me they always just fall flat), but leading worship is a whole other story. It is all about relationship, both vertical and horizontal. If you aren’t willing to go where you want to lead others, your worship will be forced, even contrived. I see this a lot actually, worship that is about evoking an emotional state to prepare, I guess, the folks for whatever comes next in the liturgy. That form of manipulation will sadly work for a while, but the broken people coming out of that have a hard time learning to trust in worship (I know I’ve had many of them come to my church). But when you begin to worship, to literally offer yourself to God, then this builds a foundational trust.

But this trust isn’t just something you can expect will draw others into worship. The worship leader must also work on the horizontal aspect of calling others into that place. So things that help here are making sure worship is free of roadblocks. You can make a lot of mistakes in private worship, but if you are always fumbling over lyrics or chord or readings then you make it harder for your congregation to follow because they are not sure if you aren’t going to make a mistake. (It is worth noting that mistakes will happen, and it is better to acknowledge them and re-establish trust in the process, this is what really marks a seasoned worship leader*). Add in a healthy rapport with the worshipping community and you will have the trust needed to see worship soar in your community. Now let’s turn back to the story of Sam and see how in an environment of trust you can enrich the liturgical experience of your community.

Sam was quite insistent on selling the goodness of green eggs and ham. He was sold on the product! Heck he even thought it would be still good soaking wet! There are aspects of liturgy that when they grab our hearts completely win us over. And this can be a problem if we don’t learn how to isolate the heart of these practices so that they can be integrated into our community to enrich the worship of all. When something looks too Catholic or too Baptist, the congregation might have a knee jerk reaction when you bring it into the liturgy. If you have trust then they will simply let you know. We wanted to integrate scripture readings into one of our kinships, but to stop everything and throw a reading in just didn’t feel natural. So I tried using CDs with ambient techno and reading over that, still a little too clunky. Until we finally found integrating the readings into the set of songs and having the musicians play, even if it is just djembe, during the readings really worked for our community. Unlike Sam, we didn’t have to try tonnes of things, but we did have to recognize when the things we tried fell flat. Now that we’ve been doing readings in our service, it is quite natural for our worship to include readings without musical accompaniment. In fact, our worshippers don’t even bat an eye at being asked to stand for the gospel (which we do on occasion). Like Sam we kept at it until we had the heart value, having a community that hears the scriptures read aloud, packaged in a way that our congregation could enjoy, until it was no longer a road block but rather an enrichment of the experience of worship.

The last lesson from Sam is tenacity. As a worship leader our own personal worship should stretch us, it should take us beyond our comfort areas (remember you cannot expect to lead where you are not willing to go). Occasionally we stumble on something that so moves our hearts that we want to share it with others. I have discovered that with liturgical actions, crossings and blessings, laying on of hands, sprinklings and anointings, these things have profoundly move me in worship. Some of them are quite natural in the settings I am used to; every tradition has some actions that are normative. But what I fell in love with was how obedience in actions becomes a powerful mediator of meaning. Especially when we resist the evangelical impulse to explain everything with words. Ash Wednesday was a perfect example of this, after our service several people began explaining what God was doing in them when they received the mark of the cross in ashes. I was blown away because there were several different takes and all of them profound. For me I wrestle with actions and have a real desire to be in step with the Spirit, so I don’t assume an action is appropriate, but when it is there is the potential for a deeper meaning to be conveyed. Like Sam we have to really be gripped by the goodness of an element if we are going to be able to bring it into a community in a way that will profoundly move others.

The worship we grow into often looks nothing like what we expected. This is good; worship should cause us to leave our comfort zones, even just a little. After all our desire is to come before God, something you can never do on your own terms. This is the work of a worship leader, to help the community see that there are always greater riches to be found in worship. So be tenacious, discern the heart of where God wants your worship to go and don’t be afraid to change the packaging until the heart grips your congregation. Until they all cry in unison, “I do so like them, Sam I am!”

Next, let's get technical.

*Sorry Chris, but I thought arse fit the tone of my article.
*I really want to insist that everyone who takes part in any aspect of the liturgy is a worship leader.