Chris Howlett

Toward a Theology of Worship

I'm on vacation with my family in Panama City Beach, Florida. It's really, really nice to get away and relax and have some time to reflect. On Sunday morning, we attended worship at Woodlawn United Methodist Church. Later, I discovered that this is the church my aunt and uncle, Sue & Butch Kitterman, attend when they're staying here in the winter. It's a great church with a tremendous outreach mentality that is infectious. We attended "9 Forty," their contemporary worship service held at the Arnold High School  Auditorium (theater) across the street from the church. They hold worship at the school because this service has outgrown their Christian Life Center. This past Sunday there were over 300 people in attendance and one of their associates was preaching. The praise band did a very good job, though their worship leader was gone on a mission trip with their young adult ministry.

So, whenever I am on vacation, I enjoy worship at other churches. It does a couple of things: 

1. It's Sunday, the Lord's Day. When it's Sunday I want to be in worship because it's one of the basic purposes of my life, to give glory to God. 

2. It's nice to worship in an atmosphere where I am only responsible for my own personal worship in a community that is led by another shepherd/pastor. I can relax much more than on Sundays when I am the pastor, leading our community in worship. Although I certainly worship every Sunday, when I am not involved in the planning and the message, it is a much simpler experience.

Being in this environment, I usually am a little more able to step back and examine what is the theology of worship evident in this experience? I usually learn something. I am able to reflect on what we do at Christ Church more because I'm not in that Sunday to Sunday cycle. So, this time, I really was drawn to reflect on worship and the meaning of worship. I came up with a few thoughts I want to share.

Worship is Christ-Centered.

The audience is not the congregation. The audience is God. When a community of faith gathers to worship, the focus is on bringing glory to the Lord. This is simple, but often overlooked.

Worship Order Matters

The design of the worship service itself matters because the order of the service says something about what you believe about God and about yourself. Where is the offering? Is there a time of greeting other members of the community? Where does the sermon or message come? How is the reading of the Scripture presented? The ordering of the different elements of worship is important.

Worship is Seeker-Sensitive

Paul's instructions to the Corinthians, ancient Jewish practices, and the testimony of the early church all confirm the reality that it is incumbent on a community of faith to take into account the presence of spiritual seekers in worship. This is undeniable. It has much less to do with music style than it does with other aspects of keeping the uninformed informed about what is happening and why it is happening.

Worship and Communion Go Together

I have been reflecting on this for a long time. Word & Sacrament go together. The only reason we don't celebrate Communion every Sunday in the UM tradition is because of a lack of Elders (priests) in early American Methodism. There were so few to go around, churches usually celebrated Communion only quarterly. It certainly was not a result of any theological reflection on frequent communion. The founder of the Methodist Revival, John Wesley encouraged frequent communion. Monthly communion has become the norm, but is this norm in alignment with the Scripture and historical Christian practice? Not really. This is something to think about.

These thoughts are simply a beginning. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. What do you think is important? Why? How can Christ Church's worship be more God-glorifying and people-inspiring?

QT Combo: lectio divina

This past two weeks I have been talking about two high-impact disciple-making activities: Bible Reading for Growth and Prayer. In my personal Quiet Time (QT), I combine these two activities into one using an ancient bible reading and prayer method called lectio divina, or 'Holy Reading." There are tons of resources out there on this method. A good one is: http://www.upperroom.org/methodx/thelife/prayermethods/lectio.asp

Another is found in a book, Praying the Word: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, by Enzo Bianchi.

The method is simple. Like many worthwhile endeavors, lectio divina takes a few moments to learn, a lifetime to master.

The basic method is:

1. Pray.

Pray a simple prayer asking for God's guidance and direction and for yourself to be open to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in your reading.

2. Read

Read the selected verse or verses. This needs to be fairly short, no longer than a chapter.

3. Meditate

Don't let that word scare you. To meditate is similar to ruminate, chew on God's word. Focus in on a single verse, phrase, word, or concept from the Scripture reading in which you sensed God's voice. Spend some time quietly, in your mind and heart, repeating it over and over until it flows into prayer, the next step.

4. Pray

Let your meditation flow into prayer. Whatever that concept, word, or phrase was communicating, turn it into prayer. Simply talk to God about what you sensed him saying and how you might live that out in your life that day.

5. Contemplate

Again, don't let this word scare you. While praying, your prayer can turn into a kind of wordless prayer, where your reading, meditation, and prayer merge into an experience of God's presence and love. Indeed, this is wordless prayer. At first, this will not come naturally or easily. That's okay. Contemplative prayer is not meant to be easy or natural, but once you've been practicing it, it becomes more natural, more a part of the natural flow of your being being in touch with the Being of God.

6. Obey

Obey God's voice to you. Trust me, if you give yourself to this process, God will speak to you. You simply need to obey. Remind yourself throughout the day. Turn to God in prayer throughout the day. Ask for the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to change your attitude and actions to reflect the love and beauty of Jesus Christ in your life.

So, lectio divina is not such a mystery. It's easy to learn. Takes time and effort to master. Like many things in life, Just Do It.

Reading the Bible for Growth

I wanted to share the links, plus some others, to resources for reading the Bible for spiritual growth. You can go here to listen to the message “Follow Me I.” In the message I spoke about the necessity of approaching the Bible from the perspective of vulnerability, opening oneself up to the movement of the Spirit instead of using the text for our own purposes. God wants to speak to you through the Word to encourage you to grow into maturity in Christ.

Here are some links and info to help you read your Bible for growth:

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/devotions/bcp/

This site offers the daily readings from the Book of Common Prayer Daily Office Lectionary. It offers daily Psalm, Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospel readings. If you follow this pattern you will cover the Bible in two years.

1979 Book of Common Prayer, Economy Green Leather

You can order a physical copy of The Book of Common Prayer.

http://biblestudy.crosswalk.com/readingplan/

This is a great website. You can register and it keeps your place in the Bible where you are reading, you can store notes on the site, set up your own reading plan, and use several different translations.

http://biblegateway.com

Another really nice website with lots of different functions and translations.

http://ginghamsburg.org/tj

This online resource is called the Transformation Journal and is very focused on growing into spiritual maturity. It is put together by a team from Ginghamsburg Church (UMC) and follows a year-long plan. It is a very good resource.

Liberated for Sanctification

One can only do so much in a sermon! Each week there are illustrations, scriptures, and stories that are left on the proverbial editing room floor. This week, with a baptism, receiving new members, and communion, there was not much time for sermonizing. So, here is a Scripture on which I wanted to comment during the message this past Sunday.

“But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.” Romans 6:21-22 (NRSV)

This verse comes in a lengthy section of Paul's letter to the Romans about sin and salvation, grace and sanctification. First off, what is "sanctification"? Certainly we don't use this word very often in everyday speech. When's the last time you had a conversation like this at the water cooler?

"Hey Bob, how's that sanctification project coming along?"

"Oh, pretty good. God is really blessing me!"

No, I didn't think so.

Sanctification is one of those theological words that gets lost in the shuffle in most churches, particularly following the confusion about this word surrounding what was called the Holiness Movement in the 19th century. Since then, it's all but dropped out of the vocabulary of mainline churches.

Sanctification. What is it? Why does Paul call it an "advantage we get"? Is it a one time deal or is it a process? What is the relationship between sanctification and eternal life?

These are big questions. I won't even attempt to answer them all here, but I would like to share about the basics to at least whet our appetite for the fact that what most Christ-followers experience is only a small part of the blessing that God has made available to us in this life.

Notice, first, that sanctification is something we receive. It is a work that God does in us. We definitely must cooperate with this work, just as we do with justification. To be justified is to be "saved" or "redeemed." Most of us are aware this is a gift of God. Jesus laid down his life to reconcile the whole world to himself, including us. We receive this gift of salvation by faith, but trusting in the goodness and grace of God. For most folks, trusting God for salvation is a big deal. It's not automatic, it takes effort and can be a process of turning away from trusting in your own good works and learning to trust in the work of Christ.

Sanctification is the process of being sanctified, being made holy. To be holy is to be set apart for service to God. You see, when God redeems our lives, he doesn't simply want to leave us in the same state of confusion and wrong choices and sin. He wants to change us. His goal is that we would become like his Son, Jesus. Jesus loved people with a pure love, not holding their faults and sins against them. Most of us do not love the way God loves. We love with strings attached, with conditions. We love people who are good to us. Jesus said that even the worst of sinners love those who love them. If you want to be like Jesus you have to love God with your whole life and love your neighbor as yourself. Sanctification is really about love. It's about fully receiving the love God has for you and then living a life of loving service to others. To be sanctified is to accept yourself the way God accepts you, as you are, and to be free to accept others the way God accepts them.

Sin flows from a lack of love. We don't love God, we don't love others, we don't love ourselves. But to be made holy is God's plan for us. It is God's gift for us. He created us to reflect his image to the rest of creation. Jesus came and lived and died and lives again, so we can understand who God is and how much God loves us. When we give ourselves fully to this process of sanctification, we overcome temptation to sin more and more as the Holy Spirit opens our hearts to the immensity of the love of our loving Father in heaven. We sin less and less and we make loving choices more and more.

Sanctification is about freedom. God sets us free from the penalty of sin, that's justification, but he wants us to develop as Christ-followers, growing closer and closer in relationship to him, learning more and more of his love and offering more and more of his love to others. That's sanctification: the freedom to love fully even as I have been fully loved.