To all those who have felt restless and dared to think differently about the emerging church and emerging worship. You are not crazy and you are not alone. Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations Copyright 2004 by emergentys emergentys Books, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020, are published by Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version (North American Edition). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Web site addresses listed in this book were current at the time of publication. Please contact Youth Specialties via e-mail (YS@YouthSpecialties.com) to report URLs that are no longer operational and replacement URLs if available. Edited by David Sanford Cover design by Mark Arnold Interior design by Jon Arnold Printed in the United States of America 04 05 06 07 08 09 / DC / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents A Foreword by David Crowder A Foreword by Sally Morgenthaler Acknowledgments Introduction: The Emerging Restlessness That Cannot Be Ignored iv vi viii ix Part 1 1. What Is an Emerging Worship Service Gathering? 1 2. The Paradox of Creating Alternative Worship Gatherings 13 3. Why This Is a Dangerous Book to Read 25 4. Reasons to Create a New Worship Gathering 39 5. Critical Questions to Ask Before Starting a New Worship Gathering 49 6. First Steps Toward Starting a New Worship Gathering 63 7. Common Values in Emerging Worship Gatherings 73 8. Planning and Creating Multisensory Worship Gatherings 99 Part 2 9. Approaches Churches Use to Start New Worship Gatherings 115 10. Starting a Life-Stage Outreach Gathering 127 11. Creating Life-Stage Worship Gatherings 141 12. Creating Multi-Congregational Worship Gatherings 155 13. Starting a New Kind of Church 167 14. Starting House Church Worship Gatherings 195 15. Alternative Worship Gatherings in England 209 16. Is Emerging Worship Simply Creating a New Generation of Christian Consumers? 225 Cover Image Descriptions & Photo Credits 232 Appendix of Worship Resources 233 Additional Chapters Online Visit www.vintagefaith.com to read two additional chapters to this book: A Personal Plea to Senior Pastors A Personal Plea to Emerging Leaders Starting New Worship Gatherings
CHAPTER 1 What is an emerging worship service gathering? Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. Psalm 95:6 Worship is certainly a popular word these days. There are now several major worship conferences every year. Now that it is easier to locally record and duplicate CDs, many churches and youth groups are putting out their own worship CDs. Stacks of Best of Worship compilation CDs are promoted on late night television stations. Many popular Christian musicians who normally never recorded worship songs now have come out with worship CDs of their own. Even John Tesh, former co-host of Entertainment Tonight, has put out his own worship CDs. Worship has been quite the rage lately. But what is worship and what is a worship gathering? These are critical questions to ask before we even think of discussing What is an Emerging Worship Service Gathering? 1
creating emerging worship gatherings. Emerging Worship Is Not Just Singing This book is titled Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations. It is all about creating worship gatherings where new generations come to worship. But what does worship look like? I believe to the average person, and even to most pastors, music is what primarily comes to mind. In fact, in many churches worship pastors lead the singing portion of the worship service. Like me, you ve probably heard individuals say with great passion, I love to worship! Almost every time, they are talking about singing. As you read this book, you will find it has little to do with singing and music. Like many others, I desire to see worship and worship gatherings change from primarily singing to something a lot more holistic and a lot more biblical. Emerging Worship Is Not a Worship Service We usually call the weekend time when a church family gets together a worship service. Ironically, this term used to mean a time when the saints of God all meet to offer their service to God through worship and their service to others in the church. Over time, however, the title has slowly reversed. The weekend worship service has become the time of the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station. Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by getting our tanks filled up at the service station. It s a place where someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance. In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up. We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leading us in singing songs. All so we can feel good when we emotionally 2 Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations
connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did worship. We go to the weekend worship service and drop off our kids that way they too can get served by having their weekly fill-ups. We are especially glad that our weekend service station now serves coffee in the church lobby it s as convenient as our automobile service station s little mini-mart. Not a Local Automotive Station I admit that I m being somewhat sarcastic with the service station analogy. But I m not joking when I say we need to recognize that going to a worship service is not about us, the worshipers. It is not about God s service to us. It is purely our offering of service and worship to God offering our lives, offering our prayers, offering our praise, offering our confessions, offering our finances, offering our service to others in the church body. The description of a church gathering in 1 Corinthians 14: 26-27 says: What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. This was not come together to sit and receive like at a gas station. This was everyone gathering to offer service to God and others in worship. The gathering was not primarily about meeting the needs of the individual, but centered on the worship of God and the strengthening of the whole church. In the New Testament, the English word service (as translated in the New International Version) is used to speak of an act of giving, not receiving. Paul spoke of his ministry by saying, Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God (Romans 15:17). Paul talked quite frequently about his service to the saints, which meant Paul was serving them. Nevertheless, the worship service, where the focus is supposed to be us bringing our services to God by worshiping him, has been subtly changed to focus more on us getting served by going to the meeting. What is an Emerging Worship Service Gathering? 3
Because of the subtle misuse of the phrase worship service, I don t use it anymore. I try to always say worship gathering instead. Theologically, this communicates what we are doing much better. Once again we can be the church gathering to worship God and bring our service and offerings to him and others, not individuals who come to a service to receive something. There is a big, big difference in people s expectations between the two ways of looking at what we do when we meet together for worship. So, the more we in leadership can communicate that this is a worship gathering (not a worship service), the more it will shift people s expectations of what the goal is when we meet together. Emphasizing worship gatherings is vital for the emerging church. Emerging Worship as a Lifestyle Jesus was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died on the cross and rose from the dead to make worshipers out of rebels! A. W. Tozer Worship is the act of adoring and praising God, that is, ascribing worth to God as the one who deserves homage and service. The most frequent Greek New Testament word for worship is proskuneo which stems from pros ( toward ) and kuneo ( to kiss ). This is an act of reverence and devotion, and in biblical times often involved bowing, kneeling, and lying prostrate in reverence before a great and holy God. Worship is the way to express our love and praise to Jesus, who first loved us and gave himself up for us (Ephesians 5:25). In a worship gathering, we create a place where we can express love, devotion, adoration, and praise to God. This should shape our planning and design. But worship is not something we do only once a week on Sunday morning or evening. Worship is a lifestyle of being in love with God and in awe of him all week long (Romans 12:1-2). It is offering our love, our adoration, and our praise to him through all of our lives. We are to adore the Lord all week, not just at worship gatherings. Our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our marriages, our families, our jobs everything should be offered to him in worship. This includes what we think about, what we do, what we say, what we eat, and what we spend time doing they are all acts of worship. It is so important to make sure we know worship is a lifestyle and those in our 4 Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations
churches also know it! How extremely sad that we have trained people to think that worship primarily happens when they come to church and sing. It is my hope that the emerging church will be extremely careful to embrace and teach a biblical view of true worship. Reclaiming a Holistic Form of Worship This book is specifically about emerging worship gatherings. Our focus will be on exploring different ways that emerging generations are now coming together to adore, praise, and ascribe worth to God.. A refreshing thing is that virtually across the board we are moving away from a flat, two-dimensional form of worship in our gatherings. There is a definite move away from worship services simply composed of preaching and a few songs. We are now moving toward a much more multisensory approach comprised of many dimensions and expressions of worship. We now see art being brought into worship, the use of visuals, the practice of ancient disciplines, the design of the gathering being more participatory than passivespectator. Instead of the pulpit and sermon being the central focus of worship gatherings (at least in most evangelical churches), we now see Jesus as the central focus through a variety of creative worship expressions. True, every preacher says that Jesus is the center of their preaching! What I mean here is that teaching and learning in the emerging church happen in various ways; it s no longer only one person standing on a stage preaching to everyone else. I realize some people s blood pressure may begin to rise as soon as I mention moving away from a preaching-and-singing-a-few-songs worship service model to a multisensory approach to worshiping God. Someone actually told me that younger people only need preaching verse-by-verse through the Bible. He insisted that anything else is distracting and useless. Some individuals have warned me that emerging churches are going all experiential and throwing out God s Word. Other individuals have leveled the criticism that emerging churches are wrongly changing the historical way the Church has worshiped. You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship You. Nehemiah 9:6 What is an Emerging Worship Service Gathering? 5