Emerging Worship

Worshiping/Emerging

• What is Emerging Church and why that matters to Worship Design?

• Church is a verb.

• Forms: old or new, mundane or sacred

• Worship is the art of shaping time, space, and matter into narratives, rituals, and prayer.

• Getting started: first steps and two tricks

Why Emerging Worship

As Church goes... so goes worship. (Church should be a verb)

•Many act as if the work of the minister/community is getting people to join some invisible community (noun) and that worship is a program to help reach that goal.

•We want to suggest that to “church” (verb) is instead the practice of sharing stories, practices and intentions such that people are put into play within the dreams of God for the healing of the world.

when church is a noun...

•Worship programming is the “presenting problem” in the tension between attraction or institutional preservation.

Church as a Noun

Church as a Verb

“The new world is at the center of everything

Christianity is about...The hope for the future is not just for us… it is the hope for the whole world… God is going to do for the entire cosmos in the end what God

did for Jesus at Easter.” -N.T. Wright

If church is a verb,

then what are the nouns?

Nouns don’t move things... they just keep everything in neat categories.

(Duncker’s Candle Problem)

“Functional fixedness” occurs to life and worship when church is just a noun.

• time: when, and how long you gather.

• space: where you meet, how your space functions

• material: bibles, power point, chairs, robes, wine, juice, notebooks

But if church is a verb,

then what are the nouns?

• time: other days of the week, times of day.

• space: what are safe spaces in your neighborhood, what spaces do you discount or reject, what part of your church are underutilized.

• material: what other CDs, art, or fashion do you have at your disposal?

If church is a verb,

then what are the other nouns?

Q: How does your community

“demonstrate” Easter hope for the whole

world through its use of time, space, and

matter?

Form?Our task is not to construct a full alternative world, but rather to

fund-to provide the pieces, materials, and resources out of

which a new world can be imagined. The place of liturgy

and proclamation is "a place where people come to receive

new materials, or old materials freshly voiced, which will fund,

feed, nurture, nourish, legitimate, and authorize a counterimagination of the

world." - Walter Brueggemann

Emerging Worship is not...

• Out with old, in with the new

• Same straight/white/male/ evangelical words & ideas

• About music style, be it: Alternative Acoustic, Techno, Contemporary Christian, Taize, Iona, or rock cover bands.

• Youth Sunday until we’re big enough for “big church.”

elements of worship

•narrative•ritual •prayer

Narrative“Worship is the

gospel put to motion”

-Robert Webber

1. Narrative2. Ritual

The goal of ritualisation is ‘the creation of a ritualised agent, an actor with a form

of ritual mastery, who embodies flexible sets of

cultural schemes and can deploy them effectively in multiple situations so as to

restructure those situations in practical ways’

- Jonny Baker

Worship is ritual that changes

people into people who change their

world.

Narrative2. Ritual3. Prayer

In the spiritual life, the word discipline means "the effort to

create some space in which God can act." Discipline means to

prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline

means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not

preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can

happen that you hadn't planned or counted on.”

-Henri Nouwen

Prayer:Name your intention...

Emerging Worship is when congregations image a new

world through narratives and rituals, with prayerful intention

using any/all time, space and matter at their disposal.

Q: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your community’s

2.willingness to be changed in worship...

3. capacity to “see” the easter in the everyday, sacred, or secular.

Do What? How do I start that?

First steps for the worship designer (you)

1. What is your Intent? Train your own “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” through prayer.

2. Build Willingness: Get people who see with you on the bus, and believe that you are the people you have been waiting for.

3. Build Capacity: Use some of the following exercises to get people using imagination and taking risks in interpretation.

4. Start to collect Forms: like finishing another writers song, rebuild worship orders from your point of inspiration. Look at other forms (Flow, Made to Stick, Presence, Movies, Novels) and place your worship materials inside that set

Other steps1. Get books on prayer, body prayer, & poetry.

2. Recruit one or two artists to then recruit friends (pay guests, and leaders, not members).

3. Commission original works, and use the beauty as a teaching tool.

4. Bring the scripture, tradition, and rituals in as conversation partners in churching, not as sacred cows domesticating church.

5. Don’t be afraid to let musicians change hymns or praise music. Get them to write refrains/mantras that move into dreams of God, outside/in paradigms.

6. Look for laments and contradicting prophets and increase the tension

Trick 1:Seek and Show

1. In a large group, make an inventory of the songs, prayers, symbols, artifacts, postures, spaces you’ve used for worship.

2. Then go on a scavenger hunt looking for new songs, postures, places, artwork, stories, tools to use in worship.

3. How would you describe the dreams of God? Break your group into teams of three to draw the gospel story like a movie story board.

4. Now take the list of traditional and emerging items and use them to tell the gospel story

Trick 2: Ignation Design

1. Using lectio-divina and/or Ignation prayer, have participants engage the text with imagination.

2. Have them list images that come to mind

3. Then give those images to set designers, painters, and poets to build a series or liturgical season.

Upcoming Events

September 17, 9-12 amPost Conference, $50Dunwoody United Methodist Church1548 Mt. Vernon Rd. Dunwoody, GA 30338

August 13, 10:45-12:00Worship Design Workshop

visit www.churchasart.com/blog/consulting to download a PDF describing what we could offer ranging from coaching with group of smaller churches to a weekend event for a regional denomination group

josh@churchasart.com troy@churchasart.com

narrativestory2. ritualpractice3. prayerintention

Q: What is your community’s intention

for worship?

Starting Worship Design: Whom do you have to work with

low willingnesshigh capacity

courageous willcapable designers

low willingnesslow capacity

high willingnesslow capacity

Time Boxing

1. Get you and your

2. Have them lest images that come to mind and

3. Now take the list of traditional and emerging items and use them to tell the gospel story