Worship Weblog

Brights Grove Book Group – Third Meeting

Posted by cicw

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Book Groups

We invited 34 book groups across the U.S. and Canada to meet and discuss The Church of All Ages and its implications for their worship, and to share their notes here.
Learn more

Is it our job to attract new people? We have the people that are here: what are the ways that we can enable more of them to offer their gifts in worship, thus engaging them in worship?

Discussion began on the topic of story-telling.
Nancy: This was one of the best chapters. It was moving how Arlene told her
story and how it empowered the community.
Christine: We all grew up in the era of the flannel board Bible stories and that
meant a certain theology: a theology of love, because God cannot look angry on a flannel board.
Kay: I believe stories are intergenerational. They are mental images.
Irvine: I remember all the Bible stories being read to me at home from a Bible
and from a Bible storybook. Today it seems kids don’t remember stories.
Christine: But they do have good memories and good recall. For example, they
Can recall all the names, abilities and characteristics of the Pokemon
characters at a very young age.
Marie: They don’t memorize the Bible verses and passages the way we used to.
Nancy: Memory work is part of our past. We need to engage kids where they are
at.
Christine: How do we make bible story telling as engaging as Pokemon?
Nancy: In school it is no longer about memorizing but about where you can find
the information.
Christine: Memorizing is important: in Alzheimer’s patients it is what we memorized in our younger life that we remember, like The Lord’s Prayer or Abide With Me.
Kay: If kids only played their video game once they would not be as good at it.
Maybe we need to repeat the stories as often as they repeat their video games?
Gloria: How can we be story telling people today when we don’t talk about our
faith today?
Marie: At school announcement time we give messages that we are praying for
people.
Ruby: Our daughter cannot even sing Christmas carols at concerts.
Kay: None of the kids in the class today know Away in a Manger.
Marie: We have a “Moms-in-Touch” group at the school: a group that prays for
the school. We also have a separate room set a side during Ramedan so
that prayer can take place and these children are not in rooms where others are eating.
Susan: Do we ask questions of each other such as those on page 110: Where
were you baptized? How have you experienced God’s call in your life
Have you ever seen a miracle?
Marie & Kay: We have had a witness speak of his healing.
We then moved onto discussing different preaching styles necessary to engage all people, new and those in the pews already.
Christine: Newer preachers might preach the ways described in chapter 7
(chatting, gossiping).
Marie: Do you think we would respond to “chatting?”
Ruby: We went to two services this summer where the minister used this style.
We didn’t respond, we kept quiet.
Nancy: We need to let go of the formal and make room for extemporaneous.
Christine: What you can lose is a depth of theology unless there is preparation.
Nancy: Maybe we’re not trusting in the Spirit.
Susan: I have a fear the sermon would end up like the children’s story where it
could be very unpredictable and go in directions not planned for.
Marie: There are different styles and people have to seek their own comfort
zones. When we’re comfortable we’ll share our stories.
Gloria: People in the pews are not comfortable.
Marie: Change requires commitment and there is a general lack of commitment
these days, not just in church.
Gloria: The children and adults speak of needing to “want” to come to church. We
Marie: Other adults are choosing not to go to church.

Do we need to make changes to try and attract people?
Susan: Recently it was suggested that we need to make bulletins more “user” friendly by changing the language, for example, using “song” rather than “hymn.” Do we need to be doing this?
Christine: A woman that I know attends a Book of Common Prayer service
because the language is different from anything she hears anywhere
else. I see no problem with a need to change and meeting people
where they are at, however, people’s needs are always changing. We need to stop talking about attracting people and appealing to them. That is not our job, it is the Spirit’s job. Our responsibility is to be a welcoming, authentic community.
Nancy: What does “welcoming” mean? Changing the language is a good idea.
Susan: I sort of see it like learning a new sport: if you are taking up curling you
learn the language of the sport, the curlers already there teach this to
you, they don’t change the language for you. It’s part of the culture of
the sport. Same with church.
Nancy: St. Paul says he needed to be all things to all people in order to get the
gospel message across.
Marie: I think we need to keep inviting people. People are not into commitment.
Nancy: On the other hand, I sense things changing: couples who were living
together are getting married. Church and marriage seems to go hand-in-hand.
Joanne: It’s difficult to give a sermon to relate to all ages and stages of faith.
Kay: I sometimes hear one word and my mind goes off. It’s unreasonable to
expect to engage all of the people. At some point they listen. Just
being at church with your church family is important.
Susan: It’s like cooking dinner for 30 and trying to pick dishes they all like.
Cindy: Not everyone comes for the sermo
n either. There are many ways to
welcome people.
Christine: What are the ways we can enable more people to offer their gifts in
worship. They are then enabled to worship. It’s not about attracting
and appealing. These people are here: how do we engage them?
Irvine: We have the world to fight, some would say Satan.
Cindy: Sometimes we are too focused on a goal. We can glory in ourselves, glow
in our own.
Marie: There are some wonderful ideas but this must be a big congregation They example survey would guilt people into doing things. We can’t
have more meetings and more planning people, we don’t have the bodies.
Cindy: I think that over the years we have made babysteps towards being
intergenerational (from small, rural congregation).
Gloria: We have gone back and forth (from larger urban congregation).
Cindy: We’ve made changes and this has not brought more people here, the
changes affected the people here.
Irvine: A long time ago when you went to church on Sunday you wore a jacket no
matter what the temperature. I was one of the first to take my jacket
off in the heat. That was a change.
Kay: The problem [of fewer people and less commitment] is not just in the church
but in the schools. We had a church structure change, people had
arguments and now some people don’t come anymore.
Marie: People look for a reason to stop coming.
Christine: People come [to church] for a variety of reasons and just because
someone leaves doesn’t mean that you’ve done anything wrong.
Gloria: But have we been supportive when they’ve left?
Nancy: I know a woman who quit coming and doesn’t know why.
Marie: There was a change when women began back in the workforce.
Susan: Looking at the five “p’s” on page 144: passion, participation, place,
parents and programmes, what are your comments?
Christine: In my experience Shiloh~Inwood [the small, rural church] has the
passion and there is a high degree of personal commitment, at least
70% of the congregation participate. At Central [the larger, urban
church] we are still functioning although 70% of the congregation do
not participate.
Joanne: At one stage in Christianity it was just the thing to go to church. Now the
church may need to go out to look for the people. The urban groups
use the facilities and this sometimes keeps the building open, but you always hope it will bring them into worship.
Nancy: Groups use the buildings but do they come to church?
Christine: People come and then they expect you to baptize their babies, marry
them, bury their parents just because you came for brownies, cubs,
scouts, etc. The church provides them religious services and they
have no inkling that something needs to happen to keep the building
there.

So, what are the pros/cons to intergenerational worship? What do we really think about all of this? What are the possibilities?
We began this portion of the discussion reiterating that we do intergenerational worship, just not all the time, but to a certain extent every week during worship.
Gloria: The more we do intergenerational worship services, the better we will do
them. Need to do them regularly, at least 4x/year. Need to have them be participatory.
Marie: We do try but we don’t get regular enough attendance to practice.
Gloria: We could have an intergenerational service and no kids would appear.
Marie: It is still important to invite.
Cindy: Inviting people to share their gifts, loosening some of the formalities and
switching up the order of worship would be good.
Gloria: In some churches the minister only does the sermon.
Nancy: That means we take ownership.
Joanne: Like the phrase “every member is a minister.”
Gloria: There’s a feeling that everything must be perfect therefore the minister
does it all.
Susan: We can educate the congregation to do prayers, liturgy, etc.
Kay: We can share gifts.
Cindy: What about making things more social, like having a coffee pot at the
back and people pick some up on the way in?
Christine: The “chatting” sermon style may be closer to the style of the earlier
church, more like the house churches where the letters of Paul
be read and talked about.
Ruth: Like an old-fashioned Sunday School.

It seemed at the end that we had come full-circle with comments that indicated that intergenerational is not such a new idea. The work involved still seems like a daunting task but there is a willingness to lessen formalities and try new things.

We all greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss this topic and thank Calvin for three engaging weeks of conversation! God’s blessings!

Tags: Book Group - Brights Grove, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational