service changes

Our sweet worship services a couple weeks back when we experienced the Lord's Table and Baptism on the same Sunday when everything seemed a bit more relaxed and at ease . . .

AND

processing our conversation with the executive staff of Covenant Life Church at the Gospel Coalition Conference a month back. . . .

have together spurred a lengthy conversation among our Ministry Staff and Elders about the structure of Sunday mornings here at Grace and has led to some exciting decisions (which will be featured in this week's all-church email, but which you Life Together readers are privy to a few days early). . . .

1. Beginning June 14, when we are scheduled to fall back to 2 worship services for the summer, we will also change the worship start times to 9:00 and 10:45 AM. (This is the way it used to be 4 years ago!).
   
   
2. We will also lengthen the worship services to from the current 70 to 85 minutes to allow for more "body life" within the worship services. Currently, we squeeze things like communion, child dedications and Mexico send-offs into the current time frame, which forces us to trim both music and the message. A slightly longer worship service will provide a vehicle for these important dimensions of our life together, as well as others that we are not currently including, such as . . .
   
   

congregational testimonies & praise
vision casting for things like Serve Day
God @ work at Grace
more regular baptisms
financial updates
missionary reports
extended fellowship
and even more . . .

Currently we feel rushed most of the time and time management is our biggest challenge. Our vision is to relax, enjoy and create space for these vital aspects of our life together. There is so much happening at Grace that is not adequately represented in our worship services. It happens elsewhere outside the worship services. As a result, our worship services can appear and feel more scripted and professionalized than we intend. Our time constraints are stifling our creativity. We want to bring some of this vibrant "body life" into our very worship. We don't want to put on a program, but to facilitate real worship.

Children's Ministry Director, Dori Iunker, will be working with our amazing Sunday School Teachers, to help them creatively fill that time to make it a "win" for both teachers and kids. This is an issue and we're aware of it.

We'll use the summer to give it a go, evaluate along the way, and then decide what the fall will look like. Our leadership is very excited about these changes. We hope you are too, We understand, as with any change, not everyone will like the new direction, but our heart and desire is to lead the Lord's people at Grace toward the Lord God and a Gospel-centered life together.

Love your feedback either here in the comment section or via email at tim@graceslo.org

the 8:00

We let the cat out of the bag a couple Sundays back and announced that the 8:00 service will be moving to the Founder's Hall beginning on January 4. We didn't give really any explanation and, not surprisingly, a few questions have bubbled up.

So, first a bit about the decision-making process. . .

We began talking as a staff about a change-up in our early-October annual planning meeting. The staff was united in its affirmation that the 8:00 needs to exist. The 9:30 is packed. The 11:00 is growing this Fall. There are not enough seats in the 11:00 to accommodate all the 8:00 folks. We'd like to see the 8:00 grow, but if anything it's shrunk just a bit this year. It's not that the 8:00 dynamic is bad. We just think it might be improved. To be honest, it's just a a little subdued. People are spread out, often sitting by themselves. It feels like a pretty big room for a small crowd of 125 to 150. What to do?

We began to talk options and the idea of moving the 8:00 to the Founder's Hall was thrown on the table. We discussed the positives and negatives in making such a move, but affirmed our shared willingness to try new things. We recognized we could always change back next Fall. We liked the idea of a more intimate setting and how that might change the dynamics. We agreed it would be fun and might actually attract some who desire a more intimate setting. At this point, given our emphasis on united, inter-generational worship, we are together in our desire to not create an "alternative" service, but a service that is as "like" our other services as possible, taking into account the natural setting differences.

With a staff consensus, the next step was to take our recommendation to the elders for their input. They, too, liked the idea and the direction and gave us their blessing to "go for it!"

So what is this service going to look like? How will it be "like" and "unlike" the other two services?

It's a great question and, to be honest, we're not exactly sure. The smaller, more intimate setting will be the biggest difference. The order of service will be the same as the other services. The instrumentation will be stripped down and more "unplugged," though we will sing the same songs. The choir will likely not sing in the 8:00 service, but we'll see.

I will still preach the same Gospel-centered, biblical messages, but will be a bit more "up close and personal" with no raised, set-back platform.

I think it's going to be great and a refreshing change. I expect that some 8:00 folks will not like these changes and will choose to move to one of the other services, but I also suspect that others may find the new 8:00 to be just what they are looking for.

Not everyone likes change, but change is good and change is inevitable and necessary. At the same time, I don't thing this change is irreversible. We're going to give it a try and see what happens.

Whatever your personal preferences, I hope you'll consider checking out the new 8:00 sometime in January or February. You just might love it.

Any thoughts?

Survey #2 Results : frequency of readership

Since when I change the survey, the results disappear, I've included this screen shot. Last week's survey saw half as many respondents as the week before, which may simply be in line with the results of the survey. . . that many read life together on a more infrequent basis. With that reality in mind, I will extend each survey from 1 week to 2.

So this week's survey sprung forth from yesterday's post about greeting in church. Some have been brave enough to leave comments, but the survey is intended for those of you who are not so brave and yet have an opinion on this matter and would prefer to leave it quick and anonymously. Its intended to broaden our sample size and give me a snapshot of how we experience this regular practice in our worship services.

I appreciate your participation.

more thoughts on our worship together . . .

Wait till I tell you about my crumby weekend, but for now I'm trying to turn my thoughts to higher and more excellent things. . .

Pastor Al pointed me toward this thought-provoking CT interview with Keith and Kristyn Getty, the authors of In Christ Alone and other modern hymns. The whole article is worth the read, but here were a couple of paragraphs that jumped out at me. . .

The radical thing is that in the Old Testament, everybody came together and sang. And in the New Testament, the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the Roman, the young and the old all came together and sang together. That's the witness of church history. It's not some kind of food court where everyone chooses their favorite music and goes that direction.

I agree with this. . . that when we chop up our worship and give everybody exactly what they want in consumeristic "worship venues", much is lost. We're trying to do it different at Grace. I've said if often, "Learning to worship together is learning to live the Gospel together." (Philippians 2). In our consumeristic day, its not necessarily the quickest way to grow the biggest church, but it will continue to be our way.

Paul told persecuted churches to get together and teach and admonish one another and sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. There's no intellectual reason to do that; there's no church- growth reason to do that. It's a command, because that is the radical thing.

Worship is a radical thing! I'm convinced we come at it wrongly so much of the time, wanting what we want, thinking about what's in it for me instead of what's in it for God, we think too much about the people up front instead of our own hidden person inside and the Person above and all around, the Real Audience of One.

When we gather, do you ever have that sense of awe that this is an incredibly diverse group who are worshiping together? Its a beautiful thing. Its a challenging thing. No one gets everything they want. Every week, some walk out upset and others dissatisfied because worship didn't look and feel like they think it should. Regularly people come to me and express their dissatisfaction with our worship. But hopefully God is glorified and honored by our attempts at unity and Gospel living.

I am weekly aware that what we are trying to do is counter-cultural and swimming up stream. I often ask what our worship at Grace will look like 10 years from now. I'm not sure I know, but I know it will look different, because our congregation will look different in 10 years.

BTW, do you like the "Thoughts on our Worship Together. . . " section of our worship folder. Do you read it? Did you even know it was there?

And while you're at it, if you have any thoughts on the "Pastor Tim's questions for Young People" stuff I included last Sunday, let me have them.

The "Moving Toward Worship" quote in this morning's worship folder was from this article from World Mag. . .

I think we've got a long way to go in our interactive worship. What are your thoughts?

'Amen!' 'Preach it!'

Don't lose Christ in the Christian traditions Andrée Seu

When I was in seminary in the late '70s, there was precisely one black student, named Carl Ellis, and he pretty much saved my seminary experience. Here we were folded into rows in the auditorium, a sea of unrelieved whiteness and looking for all the world like Pop minus the pitchfork in "American Gothic." There was the professor at the front, telling us interesting things about Parmenides and God. Then from the dimly lit bleachers came the husky African-American voice—unabashed, uncorkable: "Amen!" "Uh-huh!" "Preach it!"

Brothers, in those spontaneous emissions was redemption. Remove them and you had . . . a lecture. Retain them and you had connectivity, relevance—almost worship. The Godward praises of my neighbor are contagious.

Another professor punctuated erudite exposition on Revelation with a cappella eruptions of "Worthy is the Lamb." There was a twinge of awkwardness in the student body (mine) that was not accustomed to mixing academics with praise songs. Sisters, why would a person be embarrassed to mix academics with praise songs?

This is a paean to all the folks who praise at inappropriate times. They know no compartments between praise and lectures, between praise and chatting afterwards at the café. They waste scads of time at their carrels in the library stopping over every other sentence of Van Til to praise their glorious God.

And when it comes to that, I have noticed that nothing I ever do non-interactively ever sticks. At any given moment that my religious activities become mere doctrine and not communion with Jesus, I have, for that moment at least, stepped out of truly biblical Christian living into some other mode of being—judge, spectator, player at religion. Francis Schaeffer said true spirituality "is a moment-by-moment, increasing, experiential relationship to Christ" (True Spirituality). Where have you gone, brother?

I'm not a Skinnerian, but I'll share a new habit that has changed my life. No more do I listen to the Sunday sermon in passive entertainment mode, one cylinder firing. I have taken to muttering through the sermon. When the preacher says Jesus died for my sins, I find myself whispering, "Praise you, Jesus!"—and it's OK if someone overhears me. When he says Jesus has been exalted to the Father's side and handed authority for the church, I may let escape something greedy like, "Lord, open the floodgates!" Interactive listening just feels right, completing the circle from God's mouth to my heart and back to God's ears.

The hymns are no longer a warm-up act for the sermon. Nor time for taking mental inventory of what's in the freezer. It was when I finally set my mind to focus on every word of the worship songs that I realized how much I wasn't doing it before. I am learning to sing like my Lover is near. I send up thank-yous in the half-note rests to make the words my own. Today I caught myself raising my hands at a lyric that said, "I lift up my hands to you." Pardon my moment of rapturous abandon.

When the benediction is pronounced, it doesn't sound like the closing protocol of Robert's Rules of Order anymore. I claim it and am still thinking about the words hours later. They were prayed over me by an ordained man, so I expect them to have gone out with power. The parson says, "Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling," and I echo in my spirit, "Lord, You will keep me from falling." The parson says, "to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy," and I take it to the bank. I insist on what's mine. Christ won it; I want it.

It's bad enough our psyches have those rigid rows of pews to contend with, a long way from the Corinthian house church where young Eutychus slouched on the window sill, and I'll bet there was a fair amount of Carl Ellis holy rambunctiousness. I don't know what Frank Lloyd Wright says about the interplay of architecture and the soul, but I worry. And I find myself leaning hard against losing Christ in Christian traditions, which C.S. Lewis called "the subtlest of all the snares." I have no solutions but to pull like mad in the opposite direction, for a moment-by-moment faith, worship, and love.

Maybe one of you could shout "Amen!"

—Andrée Seu is the author of Normal Kingdom Business and Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, essay collections available at worldmag.com

building blocks of relationships

Did you happen to catch this meditation just above the Order of Service in yesterday's worship folder? We'll start using this space for some ideas and thoughts to help move us toward worship. I've been thinking much about worship, stimulated much by John D. Witvliet's book. “The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship." I'm considering a summer series on the Psalms. We'll see where the Lord leads.

I love you. . . . I’m sorry . . . Thank you . . . Help . . .
Words like these are the building blocks of healthy relationships.
Every close relationship depends on them.
When they are left unpracticed, marriages fail and friendships disintegrate.
Faithful speech is also central to the Christian life. . . The God of the Bible is not just interested in being contemplated or appeased. This God is interested in the give and take of faithful life together, with good communication right at the center of it . . . One of the ways we learn good communication habits with God is by participating in public worship. When we gather for worship, the church invites us to join together to say to God, “We love you. We’re sorry. Come again—we’re listening. Help. Thank you. I will serve you.”

--John D. Witvliet, “The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship”

Do you think about the words you speak and sing when you worship or do you just mindlessly recite them?

How focused or distracted are you when you worship? Do you feel like you're present or somewhere else?

Is worship a consumer experience for you? Where you're coming to get what you need? Or are you coming to communicate with God and give who you are?

Do you find yourself critical of what's happening up front or of others around you? Do you see those up front as facilitators of worship or performers?

What is your experience of worship? How much do you prepare for it and work on your worship?