August 12, 2008
The Basics
It’s sort of fun to watch a start-up church begin their worship services in humble circumstances. We don’t have hymnals, but we do have a small wicker basket for tithes and offerings. When we first began meeting a few months ago the worship sing-a-longs were made possible with slides shown on the wall and accompaniment came from a key board with no extra amplification. We’ve now gone high tech and a computer is connected to a flat screen TV to display songs, Scripture and quotes. Things have been going along nicely until the computer had a technical glitch on Sunday. Making a quick recovery the worship leaders picked out a few older familiar hymns that many, but not all of us, knew from memory. For the message the preacher had us to open our Bibles and read along. At the end of the message the preacher wanted to announce our closing song but the worship leader said, “Oh, you’ll all know this one.” Leading the congregation she began, “Jesus loves me this I know…
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think the purpose of the gathering gets rather lost in the organization of the worship service. The start-up church then gets a better chance to more adequately fulfill that purpose by lacking all the technology and assets that enable diversion from it. The program format that has become the theme of the Western worship service draws the focus of the masses to the few “onstage”. I Corinthians 14:26-40 is the most descriptive peek at the early church worship service we have. Although it is just a very narrow peek, the basics of what we see in it are entirely different from our Western program-on-a-stage format. The songs we sing were selected beforehand by the few onstage. The songs they sang were brought by whoever came with a song. The messages we hear were prepared by one beforehand, generally the same one every week. The messages they heard were presented by those who came with messages. I am sure some extemporaneousness of their meetings can be found in the idea of verse 30, “ If a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first be silent.” But certainly the whole fluidity and Spirit involvement of it has been washed away by doctrinal objections, doubts about the Holy Spirit’s activities, and doubts about each other’s faithfulness to edifying others rather than themselves.
-----So we go onstage fearing the mayhem that might come with an attempt to do the I Corinthians 14 thing. But fortunately, the start-up church does not yet have all the assets to keep everything up front and in “good control”. Maybe then, your services are done just a bit more decently and in order, just a bit more extemporaneous, just a bit more involving everyone.
Love,
Steve Corey
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