For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.
So if you’ve spent anytime with a shovel in your hand, there’s this initial moment of deciding where to dig. Now once you made your choice, you then throw all your energy into driving the shovel into the ground, and removing the dirt to make your hole. After some time you get a bit tired and eventually start contemplating when it’s a good time to take a break.
I’m having a cup of tea.
The digging we’ve done so far is great and the content is mostly quite familiar in my neck of the woods. However I do wonder quite what’s going on with the undercurrent of the term ‘worship’. In making use of a variety of phrases like ‘artisan’, ‘creative influencer’, ’spiritual influencer’, I’m interested to see how these thing will be fleshed out a bit.
Using language that helps the process of a working definition is fantastic. Wright discusses the idea of sacraments (see video clip on Dan Wilt’s blog) suggesting we remember to explain the act to prevent the meaning being lost. I wonder if we should be expanding on what we mean by the term ‘worship’.
My observation so far is we’re predominantly all talking about music. So these new descriptions are being used, but it seems like they haven’t as of yet taken on any meat (become incarnate) until they become more than just a new phrase. If we’re discussing a route based on influencing creativity, then perhaps let’s talk about what forms of creativity exist and how they play a role in the life of a worship community.
In one of the resource video clips Brenton Brown (Theology And The Worship Leader) suggests that music is the strongest influence in how we learn our theology. But why is that?
Of course the songs we sing should contain deep, profound lyrics which align closely with the narrative (as Don Williams suggests from the video clip ‘Why Theology’). I mean it’s fair to say some things are so true that if you try and talk about them in very factual language it just doesn’t seem to work. It ruins it.
It’s like some things are so true only poetry can capture them. However it’s worth bearing in mind Davids point that we should be mindful the imagery is not ‘misleading’ (Davids, The Importance Of Scripture Study For Modern Worship Leaders, IW Master All, p.65)
But the idea that songs are the dominant learning tool is perhaps more to do with cultural or style issues. For us the question should be: Are we ok with that, or should we make some changes?
How we gather as a church and the format we choose will, to a great extent, influence how we learn. If teaching is focused, learning is no longer a byproduct, but an intentional outcome. If the style of sermons has largely been influenced by a monologue or didactic approach, then perhaps it’s time for the creatives to step up and retell the story of God in enganging and profound ways to ignite a movement of people.
Making use of Wright’s book Simply Christian is such a help in begining to open up this can of worms. Yet rather than simply take the “echos of a voice” Wright speaks about as as yet one more filter to gauge whether this song or that one ‘works’ for us right now, it seems more appropraite to let them influence who we are. Then in all humilty and in honset response to the echos of Justice, Spiritual Quest, Delight in Beauty and the Hunger for relationship perhaps we wouldn’t be able to sing anything but that which reflected back to God who he already is – the triune person who calls us to identify with the forgoten, the weak, the poor and lay our lives down in true worship, regardless of song choice or music style.
Maybe that’s a story in which we can live.
Love your statement that: ’some things are so true that if you try and talk about them in very factual language it just doesn’t seem to work. It ruins it. It’s like some things are so true only poetry can capture them.’
I think the nature of God, though empathetic to all our human experiences and earthliness, is also ethereal in its divine qualilties and so ungraspable for us to limit to ‘factual language’. Its not a matter of God being so out of reach or spiritual that we couldnt get him right, but rather that He is so substantial that we cant fit Him all into plain linear language. Creatively praising God in a spectrum of forms will surely hint towards a truer expression of who God is.