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 Wednesday, October 28, 2009
How our Worship Leaders used to pray. . . .

Anyone want to give this one a try in worship this week?

Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil - only let me get to Jesus Christ! Not the wide bounds of earth nor the kingdoms of this world will avail me anything. I would rather die and get to Jesus Christ, than reign over the ends of the earth, That is whom I am looking for - the One who died for us. That is whom I want - the One who rose for us...What I want is God’s bread, which is the flesh of Christ, who came from David’s line; and for drink I want his blood: an immortal love feast indeed!

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Romans 5:3-6:2; 7:3

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posted by John David Walt | at 10/28/2009 10:44:00 AM | 3 comments

 

Sunday, September 27, 2009
Worship Quote of the Week: George Mueller

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the non-public worship life of the worship leader. It's so easy for anyone who leads in any dimension of public ministry to develop a highly functional approach to scripture and prayer. (i.e. I approach them with an immediate need to get something out of this for someone else, etc.) The challenge is to move from what I call an "extraction" to an "immersion" paradigm. How do we encounter Word and Spirit in a deeply immersive fashion? I like the way George Mueller gets at it in this quote.

“Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning. Now, I saw that the most important thing was to give myself to reading God’s Word, and to meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed….

This first thing I did, after having asked in a few words of the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public ministry, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.

The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less to prayer. When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it, but still continually keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is that…my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened…”

The Journal of George Mueller

Spring 1841, Bristol England

ht to worship frequency blog for the quote.

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posted by John David Walt | at 9/27/2009 12:30:00 AM | 4 comments

 

Monday, September 21, 2009
Worship Thinking Twitter Storm

Late last week in preparation for the conference I taught at in St. Louis (which was a very good time) I got into a Twitter Storm of ideas. Because I am still thinking those posts through, I want to post them below for any feedback, pushback or conversation they might generate.

what if worship is more about presencing the practices of God rather than practicing the presence of God?

people commonly think of worship as "filling up" and mission as "pouring out." what if it's just the opposite?

re: mission as filling up and worship as pouring out- c Jesus: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me."

What if worship is the practice of God presenced in people and mission is the presence of God practiced through people?

Have we reduced worship 2 evangelistic mission outreaches for seekers & mission 2 evangelistic worship services for believers?

interested in your thoughts. . . . .








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posted by John David Walt | at 9/21/2009 07:28:00 AM | 2 comments

 

Monday, July 27, 2009
Worship Quote of the Week: The Lewis Admonition
In the trajectory of that last post on novelty v. innovation in worship-- here's a quote I call "The Lewis Admonition." I share it with our worship design team every year in our training week (a.k.a. Levite Camp).

A worship service works best when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. . . . The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. but every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. . . . Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god. A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. . . . There is really some excuse for the man who said, ‘I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was’Feed my sheep’; not ‘Try experiments on my rats’, or even ‘Teach my performing dogs new tricks.’" C.S. Lewis.

HT to Chad Brooks, our Team Leader, who reminded me of this via a comment to the last post.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Lewis Admonition. And someone tell Clive those things will kill him!

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/27/2009 07:29:00 AM | 5 comments

 

Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Worship Quote of the Week
Blaise Pascal, born in 1623 in Clermont, France, lived a short life of profound significance. From an early age, his insatiable thirst to learn could not be quenched. He early achieved fame as a mathematician, a scientist, a physicist and a philosopher. Among his inventions were the calculator, the hydraulic press and the syringe. At the age of 31, he experienced a mystical encounter with the living God after which he left his studies behind to pursue theological wisdom and understanding. He died of stomach cancer before finishing his most famous and celebrated theological work, The Pensees. After his untimely death at the age of 39, his servant found a parchment sewn into the lining of his coat with an inscription describing his encounter with God. It follows:

In the year of grace, 1654, on Monday, 23rd of November, Feast of St Clement, Pope and Martyr, and others in the Martyrology. Vigil of St Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others.

From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve.

Fire!

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
"Thy God and my God."
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel.
Greatness of the Human Soul.

"Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee,
But I have known Thee."

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him.
"They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters."
"My God, wilt Thou leave me?"
Let me not be separated from Him eternally.

"This is eternal life, That they might know Thee, the only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.

I have separated myself from Him:
I have fled from Him,
denied Him,
crucified Him.
Let me never be separated from Him.
We keep hold of Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's training on earth.
"I will not forget thy words."

Amen.


Ever think of sowing something like this in the lining of one of your jackets? I'm considering it. ;0)

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/21/2009 10:19:00 AM | 4 comments

 

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Worship Quote of the Week: Marinating in the Story

I recently watched, Painting with Words, a short documentary on the celebrated historian and pulitzer prize winning author, David McCullough.  When he writes the stories of famous historical figures (i.e. Andrew Jackson) you get the strong sense he actually knew them. The documentary explores his writing process.  He said the first thing he does is to marinate his mind in the life of the person he's writing about through immersive reading. Interesting choice of words. Now consider this exhortation from Robert Weber along the same lines with respect to our work.

As pastors of the Word, there is a strong need to soak ourselves in the Triune story of God with its detailed exposition of the central role of Christ in the greatest drama of human history—the drama of God who becomes one of us to rescue the world. This theme of God's rescue of us all—not inspirational topics, motivational speakers, or massive therapy sermons—needs to be recovered as the central message of our church.  Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God's Narrative. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 121.

I'd be interested to hear how you all go about this kind of marinating or soaking in the Story.

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posted by John David Walt | at 3/19/2009 03:01:00 AM | 8 comments

 

Friday, January 02, 2009
Worship Quote of the Week: Jesus is our worship.

The biblical teaching that Jesus is our worship dispels all notions of self-generated worship. . . . Worship discloses the work of Jesus Christ. He himself is the eternal leiturgia (liturgy) of God. . . . Jesus Christ does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. As God incarnate, he is our obedience, he is our faith, he is our new life, and he is our eternal intercession before the Father. . . . So what then is the worship that the people of God do? We remember God’s saving deeds and anticipate his vision, his final rule over all creation.

Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 108-109.

That's a good word for January 2-- "Jesus is our worship." Note the way this sentence makes Jesus the subject rather than a mere object. If Jesus is the object-- "we" the people tend to get the verbs. Think about the last worship service you attended or designed or led. Who got the action words in the songs, prayers, sermons and so forth? It may sound like a subtle distinction I am making. It is, in fact, huge. Anyone see what I mean?

More to come on the Worship and Mission Series soon.

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posted by John David Walt | at 1/02/2009 05:12:00 PM | 9 comments

 

Thursday, November 13, 2008
Worship and MIssion: Part 2
More on what the "inside-out" idea of worship is about.  

Getting back to the relationship between worship and mission, and continuing to track with Schattauer's essay referenced in the prior post, I want us to consider this word from Pannenberg writing some 25 years ago. 

There is no reason for the existence of the church except to symbolize the future of the divine kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim. This explains in what specific sense worship is in the center of the life of the church:  The worship of the Christian community anticipates and symbolically celebrates the praise of God's glory that shall be consummated in the eschatological renewal of all creation in the new Jerusalem.  Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1983)

I like what he is saying.  It is emphatic but it seems a bit incomplete.  It seems all anticipatory and missing the crucial formative element of memory.  Consider Rodney Clapp's analysis here:

Liturgy also implies and enacts mission... All liturgy is related to mission. . . . The church exists for the sake of the world. . . . Worship teaches and forms us to live by the Jesus story so that others--the entire world, the church prays--will learn to live according to reality and wholeness.  The people, the culture, that is now the church is joyful that God has already drawn it together, but it lives in hope of a greater joy, a joy that achieves fullness only in the kingdom's fullness.  (Rodney  Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian  Society)

One more from Darrell Guder that puts an exclamation point on these ideas:  

Our postmodern society has come to regard worship as the private, internal, and often arcane activity of religionists who retreat from the world to practice their mystical rites. By definition, however, the ekklesia is a public assembly, and its worship is its first form of mission. . . . . The reality of  God that is proclaimed in worship is to be announced to and for the entire world.  (Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church:  A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America)

Do these thoughts provoke any stirring in you or are they mere statements of what is already obvious to you?  

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posted by John David Walt | at 11/13/2008 08:15:00 AM | 0 comments

 

Monday, October 27, 2008
Worship Quote of the Week

Consider this word below from the late Bob Webber.  Think particularly about the implications it has for worship and mission.  

God’s vision for the world is remembered and anticipated in worship. Worship is all about how God, [who] with his own two hands—the incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit—has rescued the
world. . . . The centerpiece of his saving action is the incarnation, death, and resurrection, where sin and death have been defeated and where the deliverance of creatures and creation, which will be consummated at the end of history, will begin. In the meantime, worship is the witness to this vision.

Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 66.

I'm curious as to what you make of this notion of the Son and the Spirit being the two hands of the Father.  

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posted by John David Walt | at 10/27/2008 07:21:00 AM | 6 comments

 

Monday, July 14, 2008
Worship Quote of the Week

The underlying conviction of Christian worship is that we are all in a state of dislocation. We are dislocated from God, from self, from neighbor, and from nature. But God has entered into our history in Jesus Christ to bring relocation.
Robert Webber

That's Sam (2) trying to get his putt-putt ball back on our short Lake Junaluska, NC family get-away. ;-)

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/14/2008 10:18:00 PM | 2 comments

 

Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Worship and World-Making
I will always remember our family vacation to Disney World when I was a child. Entering the park literally immerses one into a magical kingdom, a completely new and totalizing reality. Old has gone, albeit temporarily.  New has come.  I remember most everything about the trip.
 

On one of the hotter afternoons I remember our family escaping into an air conditioned theatre for some respite. I had never been in a theatre like this. It was completely round and there were no seats. Curtains covered all the walls. The lights dimmed, the curtains raised and screens illumined all the way around us. I can’t recall the images that were on the screen that day, but I can’t forget the way it impacted me. To look in any direction was to see a different horizon of the film. It was like we had been dropped in the center of the world of the movie and every inch of the circumference was a different angle on the story. I was in a movie that was depicting the world as it really was in the seamlessness of its horizons. Regular movies now seemed flat in comparison.

In retrospect, the 360 degree theatre was a microcosm of the larger experience we were having as a family at Disney World. Everywhere we turned was another imaginative facet of this world. 

In a sense, this is what going to church (gathering for worship) should be like.  (not Disney World-- but entry into the World of God's Story)  This is how worship narrates us into the Christian story. The best worship practices orient us to the center (i.e. Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in such ways that bring the circumference of the Story into panoramic vision.  (Think about how stained glass storytelling works)

Why is Story-Centric worship so important? Consider this word from Robert Jensen in his essay entitled, "How the World Lost its Story."

"Throughout modernity, the church has presumed that its mission was directed to persons who already understood themselves as inhabitants of a narratable world. . . . . In effect, the church could say to her hearers: 'You know that story that you think you must be living out in the real world? We are here to tell you about its turning point and outcome.'

But this is precisely what the postmodern church cannot presume. What then? The obvious answer is that if the church does not find her hearers antecedently inhabiting a narratable world, then the church must herself be that world."
Do  you connect with this idea?   How does worship do this?  (i.e.  shape an inhabitable, narratable world).  If worship is not doing this, then what is it doing?



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posted by John David Walt | at 7/02/2008 09:00:00 PM | 3 comments

 

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
worship quote of the week

“Do not suppose that this is the kind of drama one can view from a grandstand seat. We are not to be spectators of something that happened once upon a time. The Bible is not a book of ancient history. It is more like the commedia dell’arte, a dramatic form which flourished in sixteenth-century Italy. In this kind of drama, the players were asked to improvise, to put themselves into the story. To be sure, it was not a free improvisation, for there were some given elements: there was the director, there was a company of actors, and there was a story plot which was given to them in broad outline. With these given elements they were told to improvise—that is, to fill in the gaps on their own.


We too, are “called upon to improvise—that is, to put ourselves into the story and to fill in the gaps with our own experience. We must be ready to get onto the biblical stage and participate personally—along with the ‘company,’ the community of faith—in the dramatic movement of the plot, act by act. 

Bernhard W. Anderson, The Unfolding Drama of the Bible, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. pp.16-17.)

When the Story is immersively remembered and reenacted in the sanctuary, imaginative improvisation readily unfolds in the streets.  In this way worship makes a constant connection, bridging between memory and mission.  

So what implications does this have for worship design and leadership?

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/01/2008 08:59:00 PM | 4 comments

 

Saturday, February 02, 2008
Kentucky Poet Maurice Manning

I've lately been introduced to another Kentucky Poet. Maurice Manning's latest collection, Bucolics, captures tremendous images of God through the dusty vernacular of a farmhand. I saw a quote from Thomas Merton this morning that I liked and that captures the way I am reading Manning's poems. "Cover less ground. More slowly." Here's a good example of the collection:

LXIII

my hay day Boss is every day
the wonder of it never ends
never goes away I never fail
to breathe the sun the summer season
even in the winter even
if the horse's breath is blowing blue
as smoke each time I turn the fork
each time I hear the ring of tines
each time they turn more silver Boss
I taste a long day on my tongue
it's always sweet it's always more
than just a chore I've learned a thing
or two from pitching hay one thing
about the hay it's more than kindling
in the belly of the horse's stove
the second thing beyond the hay
this time about the fork I've made
it's handle shiny from my hands
around its throat so shiny now
it's like a mirror Boss it's like
a glass in which I see your face
your burning eye about to wink

photo: Sam in one of his favorite hiding places.

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posted by John David Walt | at 2/02/2008 07:32:00 PM | 1 comments

 

Saturday, June 09, 2007
Holy Spirit Reading


In this season of Pentecost, I am reading Father Raniero Cantalamessa's "Come Creator Spirit: Meditations on the Veni Creator." It is his commentary on the ancient hymn by the same title. This is a brilliant, masterful and very accessible work. What I love about Father C. is that he is simultaneously theological and poetic and thoroughly immersed in the Word of God. I'll try to flow out some quotes and thoughts in the coming weeks. For starters-- here' the hymn. It would be a good prayer to get lost in.

Come, Creator Spirit,
visit the minds of those who are yours;
fill with heavenly grace
the hearts that you have made.

You who are named the Paraclete,
gift of God most high,
living fountain, fire, love
and anointing for the soul.

You are sevenfold in your gifts,
you are finger of God's right hand,
you, the Father's solemn promise
putting words upon our lips.

Kindle a light in our senses,
pour love into our hearts,
infirmities of this body of ours
overcoming with strength secure.

The enemy drive from us away,
peace then give without delay;
with you as guide to lead the way
we avoid all cause of harm.

Grant we may know the Father through you,
and come to know the Son as well,
and may we always cling in faith
to you, the Spirit of them both.

Amen.

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posted by John David Walt | at 6/09/2007 12:54:00 PM | 3 comments

 

Wednesday, June 06, 2007
In case you were looking for a shorter post.
My friend, Josh, sent me this quote enclosed in a letter yesterday. It's fantastic.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly. That war is our wilderness. If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side.

Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude.

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posted by John David Walt | at 6/06/2007 04:30:00 PM | 0 comments

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007
EasterTide Quote
"Because Jesus lives to triumph,
there will be the real Community,
with its real Banquet
in its real City
amid its real Splendor,
as no penultimate community
or banquet
or city
or splendor is
really just and loving or tasty or civilized or golden.

The church has to rehearse that sentence in all her assemblings,
explicitly and in detail."



Robert Jensen, How the World Lost its Story
Photo: This is the first newspaper advertisement I have ever seen highlighting the celebration of the 50 days of Easter. It was in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the week prior to Easter, when everyone else was advertising their Easter Sunday extravaganzas. This Pentecostal Church has the vision don't they?

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posted by John David Walt | at 4/24/2007 08:47:00 PM | 1 comments

 

Wednesday, August 17, 2005
From Form to Fire
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts; now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?

(Desert Fathers LXXII)

Isn't that great?

I came across this one last night and it reminded me of my friend Jason Upton

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posted by John David Walt | at 8/17/2005 09:19:00 PM | 2 comments

 

Friday, July 29, 2005
Madame Guyon on loving the cross

You must learn to love the cross. He who does not love the cross does not love the things of God (matthew 16:23) It is impossible for you to truly love the Lord without loving the cross. The believer who loves the cross finds that even the bitterest things that come his way are sweet. The Scripture says, "to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." (Prov. 27"7)

How much do you desire to hunger after God? You will hunger after God, and find Him, in the same proportion that you hunger after the cross.

Here is a true spiritual principle that the Lord will not deny: God gives us the cross, and then the cross gives us God.

Photo: one of the stations of the cross captured at the Abbey of Subiaco in Subiaco, Arkansas.

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/29/2005 10:27:00 PM | 1 comments

 

Thursday, July 21, 2005
a fable

Set: In the car with David (5) Mary Kathryn (3) and Lily (15 mos.) enroute to home from supper at McDonalds.

David: Daddy, tell us the story of the rabbit and the turtle again. Remember that one you told us before?

Daddy: (proceeds to tell the story in as animated a fashion as possible.)

David: Where did you learn that story?

Daddy: It's a fable David.

David: What's a fable?

Daddy: A fable is a short story designed to teach you a lesson about something. Do you know what the lesson is of the rabbit and the turtle?

David: What is it?

Daddy: That the winner is the one who never stops moving no matter how slowly.

David: No. It's that the fastest is the slowest and the slowest is the fastest.

Daddy: YEAH!

David: THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!

Daddy: WOW DAVID! THAT'S AWESOME! You're so right!

It made me realize afresh how stories work and why Jesus was so keen on telling stories. Propositional insight, no matter how insightful, most often remains flat and unconvincing. Insight discovered in the world of the story provides explosive epiphany. . . . . . that changes everything! Any thoughts about this?

btw-- photo is of David's 5 yr old birthday party-- 7.18.05-- superfriends motif.

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/21/2005 08:20:00 AM | 3 comments

 

Thursday, July 14, 2005
great quote i saw today
"There are many who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is
curiosity. There are others who desire to know in order that they may be
known: that is vanity. Others seek knowledge in order to sell it: that is
dishonorable. But there are some who seek knowledge in order to edify
others: that is love." -St. Bernard of Clairvaux

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posted by John David Walt | at 7/14/2005 11:38:00 AM | 4 comments

 

Today...