basic slides

Module number: TH4713 & 6713 Title: Leading Worship

Session: first/second week

Please find your group .

An expectant hush filled the room ...

Teacher God, open our minds: so may we build new knowing on former learning.

Creator of learning, open our hearts: may we embrace surprise and challenge, confident in your love.

God who Sees, open our spirits: let us discern your grace and presence in our class today.

Loving God, open our lives: may we learn from each other and serve each other in learning together.

What we're looking at in the module ... developing skills in -preparing,

-leading,

-reflecting upon the -leading of worship.

-Wider contexts for worship

-Perspectives to guide liturgical leadership

-Speech and presentation skills (NB separate sessions etc)

What we're looking at today ... experience of worship and being led in worship

Definitions & exploration: 'worship', 'liturgy'

Role and tasks of liturgical leadership: metaphors, images, tasks, contexts,.

How we're learning ... Reflection on experience

Discussion

Group tasks

Why we're learning this stuff

-Our leading is formed by our experience and (informal) evaluation of being led...

-Our (unspoken?) definitions can confine us or free us.

-Creativity emerges at the limits; so best learn them

Preliminary for group work.

To recognise different levels and kinds of prior experience, we'll cluster people in groups where there may be some commonality of level and prior experience.

Please go to groups as suggested.

Groups of 2 or 3:refering to scrapbooks

Identify times when you have found corporate worship good.

What made it good?What role did leadership play?

What makes for good leadership?

Only briefly; hopefully their preparation and scrapbooks can be used.

Let's collect some answers ...

Try to pull out things like:Confident leadership, responsiveness, engagement,

Good planning -yes; but what specific things make good planning 'good'? (probably thinking about the hows and briefing people well ....

Downside of good planning? -rigidity and no room to vary THEREFORE good leadership is able to be flexible. IN TURN this relies on a secure sense of what is happening and what is possible. Improvisation requires good grounding in the disciplines

Groups of 2 or 3,Referring to scrapbooks.

identify times when you have found corporate worship off-putting or difficult.

What marred it?What role did leadership play?What characterised the leadership?

Note that we may return to these at various points in the module

Let's collect some answers ...

Any things about less good experiences that help us to understand good leadership that we haven't already covered?

Suggest that some of this could be added as notes in scrapbook

Any insights relating to the Liturgical competance artice?.

'Worship'=? Or 'Liturgy' =?

Which definition are most helpful to you?

Which do you dis/agree with (in part or whole)?

How would you rank them? (1st, 2nd etc)

Any surprising or new definitions for you?

Some groups look at 'worship', some at 'liturgy'. Extra thinking for higher level groups: which of these definitions fit or jar against the definitions in the articles look at in the study session last time?

Higher levels and Prior experience: write their own definition using the resources at hand. If more task is needed; how would you use the definition to plan a curriculum to train lay people to be involved in public worship? (music, reading, prayers etc)

Harvest: 'Worship'/liturgy =?

Which definition are most helpful to you?

any you dis/agree with?

How would you rank them? (1st, 2nd etc)

surprising definitions?

New definitions?

Suggest also ask other groups to evaluate the new definitions from the adnvanced groups.

Probably mention that we'll look a bit more at the topic a bit later.

Text ....

Anyone know what this is?

Next slides for more info.

This is from the Sistine chapel, so it's Michaelangelo,

obviously,

But ....

What is it depicting?

Let's look closer [next slide]

What is it?What biblical story?

(next slide, bigger picture)

Next slide for more detail.

Creation of Eve.

Let class note things, details etc: who is who? What's happening? What is Eve doing?

Notes to underline/pick up (though we'll look more fully later at each relevant detail):Adam sleeping; Eve stepping out of his side; Eve seems to be adopting a prayer pose (bowing, hand gesture )God figure seems to be a bit 'confrontational'.

Barth, Boulton and 'fall into worship'

Boulton. God against Religion

More interest? Boulton book on book list.

Taking cue from Barth (esp commentary on Romans): 'fall into worship' = idea that worship and liturgy ['leiturgia'] is actually the problem between humanity and God. It represents the epitome of 'works righteousness'.

See first Quote on sheet.

Notice...

See quotes sheet. Second excerpt:"Humankind's fall, we might say, is a fall to our knees, a "terrible and presumptuous" fall - into prayer. -Kindle location 526

Note further: No temple in the Garden -'worship'/'liturgy' is not portrayed as the 'chief end of man'. Underlined by Revelation of John: no temple in New Jerusalem. See Quotes 3 & 5a

Basic idea is that religion/worship/liturgy does represent the highest peak of human endeavour but it is flawed and misconceived and amplifies the difficulties with the human condition. -Note how God is looking a bit 'confrontational'.Boulton develops an extended exposition and argument, drawing on Barth and Luther, to show how human 'liturgicality' is implicated in the heart of the Fall and is a full expression of human fallen-ness. Cf common Evangelical cry about 'religion': religion is dead works, what is wanted is relationship with God; religion is avoiding relationship SEE Quotes 4 and 5b .

Notice...

But there is a perspective that has to be held in tension with the negative view of 'liturgy' and religion. And the painting seems to depict it:[Quote 8c]the picture simultaneously depicts the second Adam, Jesus Christ, lying dead at the foot of his cross. Indeed, one of the chief indications that Michelangelo intended the picture to be seen in this way is the stark, apparently dead, cruciform tree against which the man's body leans, a tree that is surely out of place in the lush Garden of Eden,

Notice...

So the further interpretation runs on;

[Quote 8d]According to this way of typologically viewing the fresco, Mary, who is often understood as a type of the church, emerges from Christ's wounded side. The first Eve may intone the fatal first prayer, but the last Eve - Mary, or the church - intones the saving last prayer, the prayer born of Christ's own body, and therefore, we may add, taken up and transformed by the Holy Spirit in divine conspiracy.

" .... adopting us into "fellowship with his praying." We pray, then, by taking up with Christ his standing, aligning ourselves with his stance, his position, his responsibility, and thus his "access to the Father."

Boulton Quote 6

Icon of Christ and his friend (Abba Menas). Coptic 5th Cent.

Boulton Quote 7:"God enters into religion, into leitourgia, the work of people against and apart from their Creator, precisely in order to return and reconcile them with God. God is against religion, but for humanity. Indeed, building up from Barth's case, we may say that the Incarnation, God's life in history as a human being, does not take place in order for God to assume and redeem history or humanity as such, for these have already been created and deemed "very good" (Gen. 1:31). Rather, the Incarnation takes place in order for God to assume and redeem a particular, ubiquitous, disastrous form of human life, what Barth calls "the last and most inevitable human possibility," what we might call "the form of a slave" (Phil. 2:7), the form of leitourgia, the work of people unto death.

Iow. God assumes human 'liturgy' in Christ in order to transform it from alienation (after all 'religion' was part of what got Christ crucified) to a point of contact; to make it possible to 'do religion' in conjunction with God instead of apart from God.

If worship is about giving ourselves, our whole lives, into God's purposes, then liturgy is surely about enabling us Corporately to build one another up, comfort and encourage, find God's resourcing and generally be better able to worship in life when we leave.

-Andii Bowsher

This is based on Rom 12:1-2 -but as such you can see in the light of Boulton etc that this sits well with the kind of theological reading of Genesis and Romans we've just outlined.. That reading affects what we think we should be doing...

What does liturgy involve?

'Liturgy'' is more than words to recite in chorus with other people. This question is to alert us to the range of things that are involved many of which we habitually miss because we take many things for granted, dont think of them as liturgy and lor focus on particular things like music, texts or art.

liturgy

God

This is one of those areas which is obvious but actually a bit more needs to be said as the next slide shows ....

liturgy

God's nature God's mission God

personal5 marks...lovingGod's nature: this affects the nature of liturgy in a number of ways. A couple are mentioned here...

God is personal. God is also more than personal but the triune God is a God in whom something analogous to our person-hood is found -in fact grounded and rooted. Person-hood implies, among other things, relationality. An impersonal god would not be interested in our liturgies; they'd be mainly about our own interests and perhaps attempts to manipulate 'the Force'.

Similarly, a loving God doesn''t need placating. Ctr some pagan deities -needing bribes to stay onside ..

Missonal God affects liturgy -see next slide

5 marks of missionTo proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

To respond to human need by loving service

To seek to transform unjust structures of society

To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth