clayton faulkner

From Everyday Liturgy:

“There has been a huge surge in liturgical interest among young people like myself that Christian media has really picked up on.

The Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers see this as a “trend.” It’s something that young people are into, like Arcade Fire, Invisible Children, social justice or Tom’s Shoes. In part, it’s seen as “cool” or “hip.” They see a return to liturgy as a turning over of traditional evangelical or low-church Protestant tables. It’s a way to stick it to the man or not be part of the status quo.

I do agree that this liturgical, ancient-future worship movement is a turning over of traditional tables. But, this turning over of tables is not a spilling over of a century’s worth of low-church Protestantism as the table is flipped over. Instead, this movement is a return to the center. It’s a journey back home. It’s a realization that almost 2,000 years of vibrant Christian worship had been totally eclipsed and stuck in closets or the histories found in dusty theological books.

This movement of my generation is a turning over of traditional tables: but we’re not flipping them over and sticking it to our parent’s and grandparent’s generation. We’re righting the tables. We’re dusting them off and putting the chairs back under it.”

You are sent out into the world.
Each of us carry God’s love, Christ’s light, and the Spirit’s breath.
Go in peace, and live the church.
Amen.

This is a benediction I composed that we have been using at Theophilus the last few weeks. I like it for several reasons. It captures the “sending” component of the benediction, which is important because every service ends with the final “sending” fold of the fourfold order. The Gospel and Meal propel us outward into the world. I also like it because it’s Trinitarian. As we exit a service we are stewards of the Father’s love (1 John 3:1 “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”), the Son’s light (Philippians 2:15 “Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.”), and the Holy Spirit’s breath (John 20:22 “Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”).

On Sunday at Theophilus, I improvised some words as we prepared to celebrate God’s meal together. Someone asked me to re-share what I said, so I wrote it down in an email. I’m reposting it here, just in case anyone else would like to reflect on it more:

Now is the time in the service when we celebrate God’s meal together. I want to share 4 stories from the Bible that included meals:

• In the story of God’s people in the Old Testament, there was an event called Passover. It was the time when God freed his people from bondage and slavery in Egypt and gave them a new home. It included a meal. And in the meal God’s people were supposed to eat unleavened bread, which is bread that didn’t sit and rise. After God’s people were rescued from slavery, they were to re-commemorate the event every year by eating this meal. And when they ate the unleavened bread it was a reminder that God’s mercy and redemption were going to come quickly, and there wasn’t time to wait for the bread to rise.
• Jesus, the night before he was handed over to his death, ate a meal with his closest followers, his disciples. And that night he got on the floor and washed his disciples feet. And he told them that he was giving them a new commandment – that they were to love one another. Jesus was teaching his disciples that power and leadership doesn’t come from beating people down with violence or intimidation, but it comes from humility and service. Jesus’ followers were going to be known by their love, not their hatred or violence toward others.
• After Jesus’ death and resurrection, a couple of his followers were on the road walking. They were discouraged and confused about what had happen to their teacher. A stranger came alongside them, and began explaining to them what had happen to Jesus and why it was necessary. Jesus’ followers stopped and invited the stranger to eat a meal together. When they sat down, the stranger took bread, broke it, and gave thanks for it. And suddenly the disciples recognized something they had heard before. And then it clicked – and they realized it was Jesus with them, risen from the dead! And instantly he was gone.
• The final meal that Jesus eats with his friends is yet to happen. It will be the meal that we celebrate with Jesus for eternity in the new heaven and the new earth. This meal is the feast that every tribe, tongue, and nation are invited to. And Jesus will be there with us, face to face.

This meal that we celebrate today is a reminder and a foretaste of all these stories that include meals. Everyone is welcome – come to the feast at God’s table!

I recently read Reggie Kidd’s With One Voice. So much good stuff in it about Christ as our singing Savior – our Chief Liturgist. As we sing our songs of corporate praise and adoration here on the earth, we’re merely echoing and pointing to the greater song that Christ is already singing to the Father as He leads all the saints in song.

The challenging stuff is about the different voices of Christ and His body (Bach, Bubba, and the Blues Brothers). Congregations develop their own nuances and styles of corporate worship appropriate to the people they’re made up of and the surrounding culture. That’s the part of Christology we call “incarnational.”

“But we say something profound about the gospel itself when we stay a family and refuse to allow ourselves to become insular, a closed-in group. By God’s grace, we can nurture the good we’ve inherited from our family tree, further its contribution to the larger body of Christ, and at the same time appreciate – and perhaps learn from – folks who sing Christ’s song differently.” (p. 156-157)

Keeping a congregation opened-out to the variation of Christ’s song is tough. It’s too easy to just go to the top 25 songs from CCLI and create a set list every week. It’s too easy to just stick with what the denomination prints. It’s too easy to just keep doing what the Pastor or Worship Leader likes and prefers.

I think in most cases, a pleasing variety of Christ’s songs are present in any given congregation. Just from the people that are already there, the music of their hearts and backgrounds. The tough work is mining it. It means building relationships and learning about people. “What does it sound like for your heart to be engaged by God in worship?” That should be a frequent question from servant-leaders.

And then comes the skill of creating a collage representative of what God has already knit together in the congregation. And on top of that, the task of patiently explaining and teaching everyone that “It’s OK if you didn’t like, or get, or enjoy the musical offering/palette today. Rest assured that it was beneficial to someone else in this Body. And rest assured that it’s not about you.”

This may or may not be a valuable revelation for anyone, but it struck me one day in Ethiopia as I was playing with Masamo…

The Fourfold worship pattern is a lot like a Mr. Potato Head.

The Fourfold model is the oldest, most Biblical pattern we have for how God meets people in worship. We see it played out Sunday to Sunday like this:  Gathering -> Word -> Meal -> Sending. You can go all the way back to Moses and see the pattern emerge in how God met him in the burning bush in Exodus 3-4: Moses was gathered to Horeb, God spoke to Moses from the bush, Moses responds in obedience to God’s mission, Moses is sent back to Egypt.

So the structure of the Fourfold model is like the body of a Mr. Potato Head. When you begin to play with it, all you have is a brown body with lots of little holes in it. That body is the skeletal structure of Fourfold worship (Gathering – Word – Meal – Sending). It’s what you start with.

The different elements of worship (prayer, song, Scripture reading, offering, sermon, benediction, etc.) are like the different parts you plug into the body: the eyes, ears, nose, feet, hat, arms, etc. You can get pretty creative with a Mr. Potato Head when you start plugging the body parts into different places. No matter how unusual it looks, it’s still a Mr. Potato Head. The order of the body parts doesn’t change the fact that it is still a Mr. Potato Head.

The same goes for Fourfold worship. The elements of worship can be moved around and placed in creative patterns, but the skeletal structure of four folds always remains the same.

Reformation Day is October 25. Here is an order of worship from Reformed Worship that contains a lot of Reformation-era texts:

This order of service was prepared for Reformation Sunday 2003 at First Presbyterian Church, Royal Oak, Michigan. It includes several liturgical elements from the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, including contributions from Luther in Germany, Bucer in Strassbourg, Calvin in Geneva, Zwingli in Zurich, Knox in Scotland, and from the English Reformation. The songs include a psalm, canticle, and hymns from these traditions; they can be found in the Presbyterian Hymnal as well as in many other hymnals.

Mistake # 2: Putting a long section of announcements at the beginning of the worship service.  It’s like tuning into the beginning of a sitcom only to find all of the commercials loaded up front before anything else happens. Instead, begin worship with a rousing piece of music that says “Something great is going to happen here today.” If you have to do announcements, don’t lead off with them. Please.

Read the top 6 tactical mistakes that churches make by Bill Easum.

This weekend I taught a workshop for the Fall Leadership Summit of the TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod of the ELCA. The session was titled “Worship – All Things Alternative.”

Here is a brief overview of what I talked about:

1. Definition of worship
2. Attempt to define differences between worship styles
3. Problems with trying to define worship styles
4. Questions for reflection
5. The alternative perspective of Convergent Worship
6. Some alternative elements to use in worship
7. Resources

Dowload the handout-notes here: “Worship – All Things Alternative”

Don Saliers (in Music in Christian Worship) presented the idea of three levels of participation in worship. The first level of participation is the actual doing of the liturgy (singing, praying, reading, etc.). The second level of participation is the same actions of the first level, but doing them as the church. This level implies that worshipers are performing the functions of the liturgy not for their own fulfillment, but looking to the interests and preferences of others. Worship is done in community with those in the local Body of Christ, with the Body of Christ through the ages past and yet to come, and with the Body of Christ that is marginalized. Finally, the third level of participation in worship includes entering into the mystical communion of the Triune God. Here our lives join the divine life of the three-in-one God.

Most pastoral musicians spend the majority of their time and energy at the first level: the design and logistics of actually doing the liturgy. The second level is where I struggle. How do you nicely communicate to someone (or everyone) they are being selfish and narcissistic in worship, and not lose your job? How do you model worship that places the preferences of others over the preferences of self? We are lucky to observe glimpses of the third level. Often times joining our lives with the dance of the Trinity sounds like something only possible in the world to come. Perhaps it is also helpful to think of these levels of worship participation in reverse. Consider that every believer has unity and communion with the Trinity that is established through a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Because we each have unity with God, in Jesus, we can share unity and communion with each other as brothers and sisters, fellow heirs of Christ’s kingdom. Finally, it is out of our unity with God and communion with each other (saints gone-by, yet to come, and forgotten) that the liturgy finds its voice and actions. The first level of actually doing the liturgy should only be approached in the knowledge that our faith is a gift of grace, and that faith is to be lived out in community.

From Jordan at Northwood Church