Creating Some Extraordinary Time During Ordinary Time
A few years ago, when Redeemer still had a building and a pastor to call our own, I commented at a worship meeting that Pentecost was way too long and Advent was way too short.
Advent, especially among Lutherans, is the sacred cow. Christmas and Easter customs will change with the times more easily than Advent. This is when we pull out all the do’s and don’ts of Christianity.
Knowing that—and being accustomed to being ignored by clergy, the guardians of all things liturgical—I expected absolutely nothing to result from my comment.
I was surprised when our pastor enthusiastically agreed.
Energized, the worship committee added a couple of weeks to Advent. Pentecost didn’t even notice.
This gave us more time to teach the important things that belong only to Advent and get lost in the hustle and bustle of Christmas.
For the first time, we could actually learn some of the beautiful but eerily unique tunes that go with the pre-Christmas season and are never sung during any other season. They get short-changed in modern society when many Christians will only be attending worship once or twice during the four weeks of Advent. They tend to be known only by people who sing in choirs. Now the whole church could be the Advent Choir.
We were also able to add some of the cross-over Christmas hymns (heaven forbid) before Christmas, when all the world (except Christians) are singing our songs.
It gave us an opportunity to delve into the rich and poetic texts of the prophets as opposed to concentrating on the Gospel.
We got to visit with all the personalities of the Advent story, giving more attention to Elizabeth and Zacharias, Joseph, Isaiah, Hosea and all the prophets—some of whom are silent in certain lectionary years. John the Baptist and Mary might feel a little jealous, but they’ll get over it.
This custom, somewhat unique to Redeemer, led us to begin offering our Adult Object Lessons for Advent last week, nearly a month in advance. Two were offered last week. Look for two more this week.
There’s plenty to talk about. Now we have more time!
It doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the season of preparation!
Is the weekly Sunday sermon reaching anyone anymore?
When my son was little, he created a little ritual. He’d pick out a stack of storybooks for bedtime reading. Ten or so was the usual number and we usually went through all of them. But I did not dare start a story without saying certain words.
“Say it, Mom. You have to say the words.”
The first time he demanded this, I had no idea what he was expecting.
He patiently prompted me.
And so I took orders from my tot.
I opened the book to the title page and said. “And now it is time for our featured presentation.”
He was, obviously, influenced by his video and movie experience. A story just wasn’t a story without this little bit of fanfare.
Beyond “Once Upon A Time”
Modern culture does influence us. It affects our point of view, our attention span, and are ability to process information that we hear. When we set about listening, we have different expectations than our ancestors may have had. We recognized this when we moved from the two-hour sermon to the one-hour sermon to today’s 20-minute expectation. But today, things are still changing.
I have written many times about the futility of paying a pastor a salary with one of the primary objectives having a 20-minute sermon written for just fifty people once a week.
That’s a lot of resources invested in something that half of the listeners are likely day-dreaming through. At the end of the service, we never really know whether or not we have reached anyone with the Word. But we keep at it because that’s the way the Word was delivered for hundreds of years—since farmers and tradespeople took a break from the isolation of their fields and shops and gathered with the whole village to spend the day.
I know that I may be beating a dying horse with my arguments. Dying is probably the right word. Just look at the statistics. We are watching the steady decline in attendance in most mainline churches. If you think the 30 to 50% drop of the last 15 years is alarming, be prepared. The biggest decline is in people under 40. The next 20 years are going to be really bad for a lot of congregations. There is no one to fill the roles of today’s 50-, 60-, and 70-year olds. It is unlikely that the younger generations will ever adapt to the traditional delivery of a sermon.
Understand I’m not against preaching. It’s been our family business for generations. I’m questioning whether the ritual format of worship, including the sermon as the weekly featured presentation, is achieving its purpose—any purpose.
Consider the Lowly Podcast
Podcasts are voice only online presentations. They can be easily promoted on a blog or web site and delivered to listeners through itunes. One of their major benefits is longevity. They can be accessed long, long after they are posted and certainly long after the Sunday morning church service ends. They can be shared. Your audience can grow!
Podcasts are the fastest growing platform for social media.
Why?
People can listen to them when and where they want. It doesn’t have to be at 10:20 on Sunday morning in the sanctuary on Main Street in every zip code. They can listen while they ride the bus, do the dishes, or mow the yard. They can return to a section they liked or questioned. They can listen to their favorite podcaster (preacher) or follow any links he or she might give to other inspirational or insightful resources.
They fit into our modern way of life as Christians and seekers.
At Redeemer, without a sanctuary for our people to attend and since our pastors headed for the hills long ago, I connected our members to an online teacher. (We are determined to stay true to our mission despite our unjust expulsion from the ELCA.)
Every day our members receive a short email Bible lesson. Only recently have I started to get feedback. They like it. At our last Redeemer gathering they started talking about the week’s lesson, which happened to be the book of Philippians — the foundational scripture for 2×2’s publication, Undercover Bishop.
My next experiment may be to expand this feature and develop podcast commentaries. Or maybe we can record chapters of Undercover Bishop!
It may begin as early as this week. Watch for it!
Podcasts may be the wave of the future for preaching. Who knows? We don’t have to give up the Sunday morning sermon, but after a while, we may want to!
I’ve had the opportunity to attend many youth concerts in the last few years. I’ve noticed a remarkable difference from my school experiences.
Today’s young people have the ability to excel in skills beyond what was possible for all but the most motivated among those of us who were schooled 40-50 years ago.
They have constant exposure to the professional talent. We had the Mickey Mouse Club and the Ed Sullivan Show.
They have teaching tools that were unavailable to us as we learned to play our instruments. Online teachers are plentiful. There is a device that can play recorded music slowly without changing the pitch. How I remember replacing the needle on the high-fi, guessing that it was falling at the phrase I wanted to learn and trying to keep up with the pros as I practiced!
Suffice to say . . . the coming generations are better at many skills at an earlier age than we dreamed of being. The contestant age requirement on some TV singing competitions has dropped to 12. Twelve! The 12-year-olds are holding their own. The quality is there. Sometimes their lack of maturity causes them to falter, but several have made it through to the final rounds. The recent winner of The Voice is just 16.
Most of our talented young community members are not in church.
Could our style of worship be influencing apathy?
As much as we like to think of the worship experience as corporate and engaging, it really isn’t — not when measured against the potential.
Those who grew up in the church and have an understanding of what is going on in a worship service may take comfort in knowing the rationale behind the various sections of the liturgy and understand how it intends to engage them.
But these are fewer and fewer. As a result, worship becomes more and more passive. We exist in a world where our ability to express ourselves is exploding with potential. Yet in worship we are asked to behave as spectators. Today’s spectators have higher expectations!
For the last three years, Redeemer worshipers have been forced into a spectator role, denied access to our own sanctuary. In our own worship, we would all be involved. But that happens only on the first Sundays of the month now. Nevertheless, we take seriously our role as spectators, participating in the limited ways allowed as guests in worship.
We notice that the worshiping body is more and more passive. The larger the congregation, the more passive. Some even pay select choir members!
Congregations often seem to be content to be overpowered by an organ. The roles of worshipers are orchestrated. One will read scripture. Another will take the offering. Tradition.
Spontaneous expression is almost non-existent with the occasional exception of prayer— notably in the churches with more of an African or African-American membership.
In 65 visits, we have seen no dance (common in Redeemer worship). Choirs are fairly rare.
There was always something interesting and spontaneous happening in Redeemer’s worship. A nod from a worship leader was enough to let a worshiper know that they would be leading the next part of worship.
It was not unusual for a member to climb the sanctuary stairs on Sunday morning and say, “I’d like to sing a solo this morning.”
Sometimes it was embarrassing, but human. One week, (has to be six years ago) someone stepped forward to sing a solo as prelude. Her choice ended up to be the opening hymn. What are the odds of that! So she sang. And then we sang. It was memorable. The hymn was “We Have Come Into His House.” Do you remember what the opening hymn was in your worship last week?
As an observer, I wonder if the structure of the worship service might need an overhaul to allow for the growing talents and expectations of our community members. We inherited our worship from a time when one or two educated members of the community led mostly illiterate worshipers. The abilities and skill levels of the modern worshiper make us much less likely to be content as spectators. The modern worshiper may not understand that when they are asked to stand, sit or read the words that are printed in the bulletin in boldface — well, that’s involvement!
We have a tendency to substitute ritual and call it engagement. Are we really engaged when we all file to front of the church and hold hands out for communion?
There is a huge challenge in wondering about all this. We are not expected to ask such questions.
Every afternoon, shortly after 4 pm, I get a series of phone calls. I know the callers well.
There are Matt and Brian. They are cheerful fellows who represent home security companies. There are Rachel from Verizon and Debbie who is sure my carpets need cleaning.
I’ve tried simply explaining that I have no interest in what they are offering.
I’ve tried asking them to not call again.
Now I just hang up.
They’ve given themselves permission to annoy me with their message which is about their needs — not mine. They do this because they can. Technology makes it possible.
A few minutes ago, my computer started talking to me. Someone had found another way to intrude.
I will never buy a home security system from Matt or Brian. I try to remember the advertisers who abuse their relationships with me.
So how does this relate to life in the church? How do our worship services intrude on worshipers and their relationship with God?
We tend to make assumptions. After all, the congregation is a captive audience. Our presence at worship can be seen as permission for anything church leaders wish to do with us.
I’ve heard pastors force agreement from their congregation. “Let all the people say …” They wait for an “Amen.” It’s just a like a pep rally. If the response isn’t strong enough, they try again. “Let all the people say . . ” “AMEN.”
I’ve seen pastors approach people who have chosen to not participate in communion and try to force a blessing on them.
I’ve attended worship to hear five minutes of ads from the lectern or pulpit before prayer.
I’ve been invited to prayer by pastors who came to our congregation with clear intent to do harm.
I’ve been passed the Peace of God from people who brought enmity to our doors.
I was in church. I was expected to Make Nice.
It’s part of modern society to assume that what we want from people is so important that we have a right to pursue it in any setting. All we need is the ability to force our way into their thinking.
Church has one major goal: to bring people into relationship with God and his people. The relationship with God is most important. If we put the needs of the community first, with all our pet agendas, we risk intruding on relationships that we should be fostering, not milking.
We should not treat worshipers as if they are part of a captive audience. We don’t know what brought them to our door. We should make an effort to find out! Recognize that they are individuals at varying places in their faith journeys. They may not be ready to agree or support our ideas. They may not be ready to pray with us. They may be truly questioning what they hear. They may be angry or hurting and looking to make sense of things with God. Their presence is not an invitation to sell them on the next Potluck Dinner.
It’s church. We are supposed to accept whatever comes down the road and make nice—no matter what. Compliance spreads throughout church life.
One pastor once said to one of our Ambassadors, “Why don’t you people just move on?” In other words, “Hand over everything you own to us, allow us to lock you out of your faith community, don’t care, don’t stand up for what you believe, and do as you are told.”
Faith actually requires independent thinking—not group think. When we foster group think we are not fostering faith.
NO is often the right answer.
It’s hard for the worshiper to hang up on someone making an unreasonable request in the Church. It’s easier to stay home.
How do we foster independent thinking in the corporate community?
Blogging may be good and it may reach all over the world. But the word of God says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another . . . . ” (Hebrews 10 :25) and to my understanding I am going to church.
We have never advocated blogging as a replacement for Christian community. We see it as enhancing Christian community.
There is value in assembling as a people of God. Most of the people who read and correspond with us through our blog are active in such assemblies and send us many photos of their congregations.
Assembling as a congregation is not in itself an evangelism tool. The sizes of these assemblies are shrinking—big churches and small churches alike. Most are experiencing sizable decline. As they shrink, they are becoming protective of who they are. In a sense they forsake who they might become, if they actually had a way of reaching out.
The value of blogging is that you reach beyond the four walls of your congregation and start to learn about the people who are not part of your assembly—yet.
As for the people of 2×2 and Redeemer? We have been locked out our place of assembly by all the other Lutheran congregations in our region. This was an unnecessary cruelty and was designed to make taking our property, our offerings and possessions easier.
And still we attend church — sitting several times a month with the very people who condone this action—some actively, most passively. We worship, we pass the peace and sometimes commune with them. We listen to words read from the Bible that point to the wrongs of these actions. We have visited 60 happy and contented congregations who would rather not be bothered. We live the Good Samaritan story every day. The Levite and Pharisee pass us by.
We worship with others even when it is difficult to do, even when we are treated with only minimal hospitality and no recognition of what their communities have put our community through. We have abided condescending platitudes. We have also met some really nice people!
Congregations seem to find justification in their communal acceptance of wrong.
We still believe in local assembly and gather in our own “upper room” in a theater that has loaned us the space for three years while our church has persisted in vilifying our members to justify their leaders’ actions. We pass our locked church, a symbol of atrocity, every day.
We still get together once a week for worship and often during the week to work on projects or just enjoy one another’s company. We still help one another through tough times and celebrate good times. We still pray for one another and for the rest of the church that treats us so badly.
We agree with you! Go to church.
But beware! Just being there is not enough. The gospel—including the book of Hebrews—makes other demands on us.
Don’t forget the teachings of love, forgiveness and reconciliation. Don’t forget the admonition to go into the world and make believers of all.
Blogging has made this possible for every Christian.
My father, a retired Lutheran pastor, loves to tell this story—often through tears. I am proud to repeat it.
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved and the great gospel writer and visionary, didn’t have an easy life, but he lived to be quite old. In his later years, he was the sole survivor of the original Twelve.
He was treated with great respect as he grew infirm. The early Christians would carry him into worship and seat him in a position of honor. The Christian community hung on every word he could share with them. After all, he actually knew Christ. He had stood at the foot of the cross.
One day, as a very feeble John was brought into the gathering of early Christians, the people asked him for advice and guidance.
“What would Jesus say?” they asked him.
John answered, “Little children, love one another.”
The people pressed on. “Really, most respected John, what would Jesus say? Tell us more. Please.”
They asked over and over and John had only one answer.
“Little children, love one another.”
That’s all folks. The Gospel in a nutshell.
John had spent some 50 years writing and preaching. In the end, the gospel message is five little words.
The story of Peter’s dream addresses the concept of boundaries and rules in the Church. No wonder it is not one of the more prominent Bible stories.
I like to point out that as described in the preceding chapter of Acts (Acts 10) this message came to Peter at an inattentive moment. Peter was waiting for his host to put dinner on the table. Peter’s best intention was to spend some time on the rooftop “patio” in deep prayer. His intentions were derailed by his human shortcoming. He fell asleep.
No worries! God can use our shortcomings. He came to Peter in a dream. A rather bizarre dream . . . the kind you don’t forget when you open your eyes.
Blankets fell from the sky with all kinds of disgusting animals emptying from them. And God told Peter to kill them and eat, despite the fact that Jewish law forbids it.
God challenged Peter to open his mind and expand his thinking.
We have a way of creating boundaries. Boundaries usually begin as a way of defining who we are. They help us sort out what we believe and the kind of people we want to have around us. We often have no trouble justifying the boundaries we create even in the face of absurdity.
“All Welcome,” as we’ve pointed out before, is a common notation on church signage, but it often comes with unspoken caveats. Those who don’t fit in will know it and disappear. No need to dwell on it.
That many churches are nearly empty might be a sign that we need to expand our thinking.
We create rituals with rules that can change only with divisive confrontation. These rules create boundaries that often blind us to possibility and mission opportunity. Wine or grape juice? Cups or chalices? Contemporary or traditional music? Pastor’s job, women’s job, or men’s job—who is responsible? Should we waste our money reaching people who cannot contribute or should we court families with two incomes?
The big rule on Peter’s mind (perhaps in his subconscious and hence God’s use of a dream) was “Jew or Gentile?”. To open the community to Gentiles meant accepting ways that violated Jewish law and custom. Food was an obvious symbol of the differences but circumcision was among others. It was a problem to sit at the same table!
As you talk about this Bible story, pause now and then in puff into your balloon. Your congregation will watch it expand as you talk about how Peter’s dream led him to greater acceptance and expanded the community of believers.
Discuss God’s message.
“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
As your balloon is about to pop, end with the thought: We will still create boundaries. It’s human nature. We will still argue about what God considers clean.
This could lead to many discussions on many topics (the age for communion, the role of women, the inclusion of modern customs, accepting diversity, the ordination of homosexuals).
Address what might be on your congregation’s mind.
You can let your balloon pop to make the message a bit more memorable. Or you can ask someone to come up and stick a pin in it.
The message of this lesson can be tied to the gospel message for today. Love one another. Period
The Easter play we published last year has been downloaded about 3000 times this year. We are grateful for your interests in the content we are providing aimed to enrich the worship experience of even the smallest churches.
As Holy Week approaches, we point you to three other ideas that we tested in our small congregation. Two of them work best in small churches with as few as a dozen in attendance.
Maundy Thursday
This Maundy Thursday service combines the Passover Tradition with the Christian tradition drawn from the Pennsylvania Dutch observance of Green Thursday — a term drawn from the English pronunciation of the German word for grief. It involves the serving of a ceremonial and symbolic meal (like the Seder) but with the symbolism pointing to the Resurrection. It can be used with larger groups, but it is quite easy to do with small groups.
Palm Sunday
Florists supply dried out palm fronds but small churches must purchase far more than they need of these token palms. Actual palm plants are usually available at this time of year for about $10. Have your congregation cut their own fully branched palm to wave during your Palm Sunday celebration. One large palm plant will easily provide for a congregation of 20 or 30. (We often had a nice palm plant left over even after we “pruned” it pretty well.
After Easter (Pentecost or Ascension Sunday)
The Roman Catholic tradition celebrates the Stations of the Cross. The stations chronicle the scenes of Jesus as he heads toward Calvary.
The same idea can apply to the interactions of Jesus post-Resurrection. This service (easily adapted to your liking) celebrates the 14 Stations of the Risen Christ. It follows the sightings of Jesus between the Resurrection and the Ascension with scripture, prayer, commentary (supplied by your worship leader) and hymns.
This service can be used in one setting. It fills an hour easily. It can also be broken up over the long Pentecost season with each scene acted out.
Next Sunday’s gospel features a moving image that has never quite caught the imagination of artists. He starts his discourse sniping at Herod, calling him a fox. But he quickly moves on. Jesus compares his feelings for Jerusalem to a hen protecting her brood — but the brood is unwilling.
The headline art simply depicts Jesus contemplating the city which housed God’s earthly temple.
Today, in modern Jerusalem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there is a mosaic with the words of scripture surrounding the image. “But you are unwilling” drips in red at the feet of little chicks.
Artists seem to be much more comfortable with other biblical metaphors. There are numerous images of rushing streams, stars, bread, the lion and the lamb—even the rooster crowing, but this poignant image of a mother hen never grabs us.
Perhaps this is because the metaphor was first delivered by a disillusioned Jesus. Do we feel guilty?
Perhaps it is because it is a feminine image in a religion long-dominated by men
It is less likely to be taken on by today’s artists. There was a day when most homes had a few chickens pecking the ground in the back yard — a living refrigerator. But the sight is uncommon today.
We celebrated Epiphany last week. The season of revelation of Christ as Messiah is short this year.
Just four weeks from now we will embark upon the season of Lent.
In our analytics of our website, we noticed that beginning on Christmas Day, our readers were searching for resources for Easter. So we are going to try to provide some resources to help with Easter’s prelude—that mixed-up season of Lent.
Lent is confusing. It is the season of repentance. Didn’t we just go through this a few weeks ago in Advent?
It is also a season of mixed messages. Centuries of tradition have become muddled with modern sensibilities.
Ash Wednesday has always been a puzzle. We routinely read the passage from Matthew which tells us repeatedly to NOT make a show of our repentance and NOT distort our appearance. Then we defy the gospel we have just read and make a show of our repentance and distort our appearance.
Then some well-intentioned theologian came up with the concept of “burying or sealing the Alleluias”—banning the utterance of the traditional word of praise during the season of Lent. This flies in the face of the fact that Lent is structured to observe 40 days of repentance (modeled from Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness) and those 40 days EXCLUDE Sundays. There are NO Sundays in Lent. Every Sunday is reserved for a celebration of Easter. Alleluia!
We never sealed the Alleluias at Redeemer. The custom was unknown to us until we shared a pastor with a neighboring congregation. Their pastor surprised us when he announced during the service that the Alleluias were now sealed.
Our worship service for the next Sunday had already been planned and it was to feature an adaptation of Leonard Cohen’s mournful song Hallelujah—which repeats the Hebrew version of Alleluia countless times in a way entirely appropriate for Lent. (Rules tend to hamper creativity!)
Except for the fact that this was preplanned it would have given the impression that we were defying our pastor, which was in no way our intent. We tabled our plans for a year.
The pastor apologized for making the assumption that this was our custom. No conflict resulted.
But every year since, we have used this song, which retells the story of Christ’s temptation. Here’s a link.
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Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
