That is how important worship is. It s a sacred space. When we get in God s presence we are in a sacred place.

Transcription

1 Excerpt from: Creativity in Worship Workshop With Rev. Dottie Escobedo-Frank WORSHIP CONNECTION WORKSHOP SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2004 GRACE COMMUNITY UMC, SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA That is how important worship is. It s a sacred space. When we get in God s presence we are in a sacred place. God And Creativity: The Temple and The Tabernacle God is the creator God and why is it that we have been a part of worship services that don t seem very creative when we are worshipping a creative God. The thing I love about this event in Shreveport is that this church uses all of its creativity in worship. I hope that when you leave Shreveport you will not only hear the words but also take these images back home with you. You can see how a lot of these images are not hard to take back it s not hard to be creative in your worship space. It s not hard to move things around a little bit. You might think its hard because there are some people who don t like it when you get creative but all you have to do is remind them of the God we serve who is the creator God. Talk about creative worship over time. Did you know that in the Old Testament, and in the old, old part of the Old Testament, we began worship in a very creative and moving venue called tabernacle? The tabernacle was the tent of worship that we moved from place to place it was never the same. It was a portable shrine that followed the flame/cloud. And in that shrine was the Arc of the Covenant and in the Arc were the sacred objects that brought back to memory the times that God had done miracles in their midst. And so they would pack up their tent of worship and follow this cloud/flame and they would sing and dance. They had the best musicians and they had people assigned to care for the objects and to carry the tents. They made a big deal about the tabernacle because it was their form of worship and sacred space. And then we went to Temple worship. We decided to locate our worship in one place and we are still in that place in history today where we have located worship into a space, and in located worship, we built this building with beautiful white blocks and set up a prayer wall for anyone to come and pray. Inside we remembered what had happened with Isaac and Abraham and inside we brought our sacrifices and our offerings of praise to God. King Solomon hired the best music and the best artisans to create the sacred space and the best dancers and when they came together it was a celebrative moment in which they gave God their best through song and dance and visual aids so that they could remember together what God had done in their midst.

2 I d like to say today that perhaps we are in a time of transition. Because of what s happening to the church and culture perhaps we are going to a place where we are once again going to be like Tabernacle worshipers. Where once again the church will be a church on the move. Where instead of asking people to always come into our space we will ask our people to go out to the other spaces and to be church in the community. I don t know how we re going to do that but I know that some Sunday mornings there are more people in the Starbuck s next to the church than there are in the church. Maybe what we need to do is take our people out and say that today church is at Starbuck's or today church is Friday night at the mall ministering to those kids who need a place to hang. Today, church, we are going here we are taking the church on the road. We haven t formulated what that is going to look like in culture. Sometimes we, like Whoopi Goldburg, just want to get some butts in the seats. And I think that is well and good and we need to keep working on that, keep being invitational, keep being friendly, keep being open. Keep helping our people remembering that it is not about us but about people who are outside of us becoming a part of us that s what its about. So if we can find ways to be creative in our space so that when people come they actual experience what you and I experienced here last night and if those people have never known God before can experience the story perhaps whatever was dead inside of them can rise again. So it s important for us to tap into that creative God who made us in his image, to tap into the creative forms that you have seen face to face here, and then take that creativity on the road. Have Stability In Some Things Now what I d like to say to you is that in order for there to be safe spaces for creativity we must first have stable forces for our people, things they can rely on, things they know won t change. As we have the foundation, then we can go beyond and be more creative because they have something in place that is reliable to them. The problem is that sometimes we forget what it is that needs to be reliable. We thing that the placement of the cross, the placement of the communion bread, the candles we use are the reliable things. They aren t - they are forms alone. When I started working at Community Church Of Joy, I decided to find out what the reliable forces were in worship. What wouldn t change among us is that we gather to remember who God is, to remember who we are together, to remember God s Word, respond to God and re-send ourselves into God s World. That every worship service we would be about doing those things. Those were our stability.

3 You have to figure out what those are. For some it s the Apostle s Creed or Lord s Prayer. It may be the Passing of the Peace or it may be, for your congregation, you mention the birthdays every Sunday or once a month. Different groups of people have different needs for what is stable in their midst. For us, we developed a different kind of stability so that once we formulated it, we could go on to the moveable spaces in our lives. Places to Be Creative After you find the places of foundation in your worship, you need to find the places of movement where you are free to be creative. The times that you can take your situation into a different place or level. For me, I found that there are several moveable forces. First, the Order of Worship. We are so used to having the Order of Worship being the same every week. What we do on our computers every week is just delete that page or hymn # and put another one in there. But what I would like to enc you to do is to play with your Order of Worship. For example, on World Communion Sunday, what if you start out with Communion. What if you celebrate that way up top. That is the event that gathers you together as the Body of Christ instead of the end. What if you start out one Sunday with the Call to the Offering. Come on in and let s give our gifts to God as we celebrate who God is. What if you switched everything upside down just to see what if feels like. What if the message started you out and the singing sends you out. Play with your order of worship. Now you have to prepare your people tell them, I m going to be playing with the Order of Worship and allow them feedback time and just do it. You ll get some feedback. The other thing I d love for you to think about in your worship services is the design of your space. Now if you have pews it s really hard to do this although you could even remove your pews and put chairs out. One of the reasons this space works so well is that it is moveable space. Have chairs that move. It has ways that you can recreate the space for different venues. If you don t have that, I would encourage you to talk to your trustees or whoever is helping and start planting the idea that at times, we ll want to worship different. Sometimes set altar in middle of space, we want to sing and sit so we see each other. We feel that experience of loving God and loving each other because we are face to face not face to back. I learned in social work and I had 15 years of experience in social work, I learned that space matters. You could make some judgments about people about where they sat in your office and how their body was placed. And like the most obvious is that if couple comes in and you have a couch and a chair and

4 one sits on the chair and the other across the room on the couch, you know they are in trouble. Or if they sit together and hold hands, that tells you something about them. Or if the husband and wife are together and the problem child is on the other side of the room that will tell you something. It s important for us to know that how we create our space tells God something about us and we can creative space in such a way that we re community driven, more connected. Did you know that if you go to Wesley Chapel in England, you can see these pews that Wesley actually made in his church, his only church. He built these pews - they are wooden benches with a back to them but the back was moveable from here to here, you could face this way or this way. He d preach to them and have them getup and move so they could face other and talk. We have this tradition of being face to face but we have created this space to the only time we see each other face to face is Passing the Peace or going to Communion. But how you design your space matters. If you can start playing with your space, you ll be better off. Make it intimate, look in each other s eyes. The wonderful things they ve done here (in Grace Community UMC) are the ways they have played with color through the lighting, the way there is a newness when you come in and check out the altar and the altar is different every time, and it takes your brain to a place where you wonder what is God going to speak to today. It just gives you a hyper sense. Your senses are starting to incorporate the message before a word is spoken and the way you design your space will give you that hyper sense. On Maundy Thursday one time, they (our congregataion) came and we had set the tables exactly like this (in the room at Grace). They had never had the rows moved at that time. I had a group of ladies come in and set the tables with their best china and tea sets and in the middle was bread and juice and they each got to decorate their table differently and the only ones who knew about it were the ladies who did the tables. And when the congregation walked in, I stood in the back. They were so horrified. They wanted to know what was going on in the church it was Maundy Thursday and they were to have a worship service. And I invited them in and said this IS the worship service. And in this worship moment, we shared communion together around the table and we talked about the story and the last supper and in a quiet moment they left. And the next day, I heard the congregation talking and what I heard was those that didn t come said Dottie, I can t believe you did that and I wasn t there. I m not going to miss another Maundy Thursday. What are you planning next year? The neatest thing about going outside the expectation is that you get people thinking and your idea becomes their idea and captures their imagination and pretty soon they are going to come back to you and say have you thought about doing this and that is when it gets really fun.

5 For more of Dottie s presentation, see Worship Connection s Creative Worship DVD, featuring five segments from fall 2004 worship conferences. Dottie Escobedo-Frank s upcoming book, Igniting Worship: Advent and Christmas, coming June 2005 and Sermon Seeds, November