That song (again)
This site/facebook page is so interesting: You're my healer
Seems Kari Jobe has recorded the song
Given the controversy of the worship song's origins, fake cancer etc. (story here), this is a brave and potentially controversial move.
Interesting!

The challenge of ethnodoxology
Been thinking about worship in a multicultural city such as London, a bit this week. Partly prompted by stuff from my dissertation a couple of months back, partly by some colleagues and partly by some input from Muyiwa at our worship training day last week.

I think the answer may partly lie in encouraging home-grown worship, both in music and beyond.
To encourage communities to express worship in songs that are birthed from within the community rather than simply buy the latest "Now that's what I call worship" type CD. Or at least take existing songs and use them as tools rather than recreating the "album version" like a dodgy covers band.

Confession: I'm actually a big consumer of worship music, I own lots of albums (it helps to have a producer friend), and hunt for free stuff online. But I know at the same time I have gotten lazy and have not written any music for a long while. Pete Ward charts the rise and place of the worship music industry well in Selling Worship, which I shall add to my re-read list!

Rambling thoughts I fear, but helping people authentically express worship is a huge thing. I think music and singing do still (and always will) be a key part of that, if only we can be willing to move beyond our own narrow expectations.

Worship Training Day
Unashamed plug if any London Baptists (or any other local Christians) stumble across here for our worship training day on Saturday. Booking from from here

Teaching
I had a fun session yesterday afternoon at Oasis College, doing a session for 2nd year youth ministry students on "alternative and emerging worship". Was an interesting time. Always good to try to encourage people to see outside their pre-existing ways of working.

I think many of the stylistic elements pioneered by alt. worship over the years have become part of the landscape for many youth workers (tactile responses, candles, ambiance etc.), but maybe without much reflection on how or why, or how it fits with the wider worship life of the church. It was also good yesterday to try and put things in a missional framework, rather than a "worship that suits me" framework. Not sure if I succeeded, but the journey was good!

One for musicians
It's over an hour long, but Bob Kauflin's "band on the run" seminar about arrangements for worship musicians is well worth a look. Great refreshment of the basics for bands playing together in worship.

All Age?
Good day down in Balham today looking at All Age: Family Services and Beyond.
As well as theory and some practical ideas and experiences shared, this afternoon we did a service as a kind of "worked example" and then debriefed. I think it worked and my fear that it would be some kind of strange role play rather than a real expression of worship was misplaced as people entered into it.
I think that some inclusive act of worship that brings all ages together can be done and be powerful, it's just that when it's done badly and becomes "stunt at the front" it puts people off.

And it was nice to dust off the guitar - realise I haven't played it for a while!

Christmas is coming
It's getting to that time of year when I get to go and play piano for carol services!
But for those who play guitar or do band - led worship, carols can be a struggle (I know I've heard a few killed and probably mutilated a few myself!).
I'm pleased to see that Dan Wilt is one again plugging his "Simple Carols", from the " Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship" over in Canada. 10 carols arranged in singable keys (seems to be me that most trad. arrangements of carols plump for "F" even if goes way too high!).
Check it out here!

Worship: Balance
There have been lots of critiques of "contemporary" worship, many of which have been insightful, especially around the tendency to be triumphalist and unrealistic. Much of this has been helpful (although with the exception of the ever popular "Blessed be your name", has it made much difference "in the pews"?).

This is an interesting video from John Eldridge at The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies in Canada, looking at the need for the major and the minor in worship. A helpful call for balance I think.

Youth, Worship, Church
Just doing some thinking around young people, worship, church etc. I found a pile of papers I've collected or downloaded over the last few years around these issues. I found a phrase that was helpful "peparing young people for participation in worship" (I think it was from a Quaker site!). I like that, there seems to be a notion that we can't force or rush, we need to prepare.

One of the things I found is "The Last Waltz" by Steve Collins. It's a great piece on the church's failure around cultural change since the 60's. He suggests (and rightly I think) that youth ministry and a focus on "youth" is part of the problem, as youthwork became the only ground for the church's engagemnet with cultural change. He observes:
"But as those young people enter their 20s and move beyond this space they find their freedoms abruptly curtailed. It is not expected that innovations or new practices be brought forward with them into adult church"
"Graduation" (for want of a better word) from youth ministry into "adult" church is still a huge issue. And authentic expression of worship is a key part of it.

Retro Worship Music
While preparing for a service for Sunday morning on Jesus feeding 5000 I remembered an old song:
"Who took fish and bread, hungry people fed?"
Eventually I tracked it down in an old book (Youth Praise, Orange cover!), and realised it's by Betty Lou Mills.
Quality.
We had some of her records when I was a kid, and they went with stuff like "Come Together". Great 70's Christian music.

The fish and bread song has some great lyrics:
"Who walked dusty road? Cared for young and old?
Who sat children on his knee?"

Fair to say they don't write them like that these days!
(and check out Bizarre Records for other random record sleeves)

Singing
Having posted on worship a couple of weeks back, and I know others have been talking about the whole singing/no singing worship stuff, I was struck by some words from Eugene Peterson:
"Song is one of the two ways (silence is the other) of giving witness to the transcendent.
And so biblically formed people do a lot of singing as they worship... Because God and therefore the worship of God, cannot be reduced to the rational, song has always been the basic act of worship"
("Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p176-177).

So can we ever ignore singing if we are to be true to being the people of God?

Thoughts on Worship

I don’t want this to end up a rant – but there are a couple of themes around worship that seem to come up on blogs and in conversation that have been on my mind, and today I ended up discussing them and promised to put something on here!

Both the things I’m going to look at are inter-related, but both are in danger of becoming caricature band wagons for people to jump on to be “cool”.

“We don’t do singing”
The first popular cry is about not singing. I’ve heard Stuart Murray and others make some great well thought out points about singing too much, taking a break from it etc., rooted in good hard thinking about post-Christendom and emerging culture.

But others seem to have jumped on board this no-singing thing.
Yes many churches seem to equate all worship with singing, which can be a problem.
And I have wondered myself whether several prominent worship leaders even have a speaking voice – as the meetings seem to be exclusively a set of songs.
But I do get nervous when Christians say they don’t “get” singing or they wish we didn’t do it. I know that we all express ourselves differently, but there is something about “singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord” which seems to be unique. It’s been a while since I read and thought about this to argue a water-tight case here, but even psychologists will tell you singing is good for you – it lifts you.
And I also don’t buy that whole “men don’t sing” thing either – and even if it were true in wider culture (which it isn’t) that would be no reason to stop singing in church.
I totally agree it should not be all we do, it’s not the only way to worship, but it has a place in the gathering of God’s people I’d be worried if we lost

“But all the songs are naff, Jesus is my girlfriend songs”
Again whoever first said this was probably making a well thought out valid point – but it’s another thing that is becoming a bandwagon.
I agree that we need reality in our songs. I agree we need to learn to express lament and grief, and pain and hardship. I agree we need to learn the song of exile (Michael Frost has some interesting stuff on songs in Exiles which I need to re-read).
But expressing intimacy and love for God in Jesus and by the Spirit is also important. Of course it should not be all we do. But I think it has a place.
For many of us the charismatic thing and latterly the Toronto blessing stuff, and worship that has come out of those movements, were refreshing, Instead of emotion being separate to faith it could now play a part. “Religious affections” as Edwards would call them were back on the agenda.
Sure the pendulum probably swung too far, and too many songs became about me and my love rather than about God and his mighty power, but this critique is in danger of becoming a cynical dismissal of something which has been helpful to people.

I wonder sometimes in all this if there isn’t a danger of a kind of cultural snobbishness. Or a theological snobbishness. A dismissal of popular forms of church and Christian expression, in the name of being “cutting edge”.

More on Worship
As I've probably said here before, one of the joys of a role like mine is experiencing lots of different churches approaches.
Last Sunday was a charismatic African congregation.
Yesterday morning I was the piano player for a local church's baptism service - we got through 13 hymns (and they mostly were hymns)! But it was genuine, authentic and moving.
In the evening I was speaking at another church - it was band led, enthusiastic and loud. The band were mainly Brazillian, the congregation mainly Afro-Carribean!

William Willimon has written more on worship here.
Couple of quotes:
'Who are the actors in this drama of worship? The minister, the choir, the organist or pianist, and the ushers? This makes the congregation the audience. Is that the way it ought to be? No. The congregation are actors in this divine-human drama'

'Why do we do it? We do it because we are in love. The modern world teaches us to ask, of every event and relationship, “Now what good will this do me?"... Christian worship is counter-cultural to all this. We do it, not primarily to “get something out of it,” but to give something to it. We do it because we are in love.'
Click for more

Willimon on Worship.
"If someone asked a Christian, “What’s the purpose of your worship? Why do you gather on Sunday and sing songs, dress up, kneel, march in processions, clap your hands, shed tears, speak, eat, and listen?” We could only say, “Because we are in love.”"
(from this post)

William Willimon's blog is always thought provoking!

Worship...at Tesco?
I was in one of our local Tesco supermarkets today when I was struck by the music they were playing.
The usual mix of carols and Christmas songs is strange in itself - jumping from blatantly Christ-focused carols (and the dodgy ones about Jesus "no crying he makes"!) to Jingle Bells etc. But today in that mix was a full on gospel choir version of Oh Happy Day! Just struck me as wierd that some offices are banning tinsel and trees, but Tesco pumps out a song about Jesus washing our sins away!
And in a multicutural part of West London, where no-one seemed to bat an eyelid!