Worship Weblog

Davis Book Group – Third Meeting

Posted by cicw

Friday, December 4th, 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.
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Key Question: We are seeing things differently, now what?

One theme emerged quickly in our last book group meeting: all of us were noticing things in our own worship contexts we hadn’t necessarily noticed before. Rebecca noted, “It’s as if I just look at things differently now. I notice something in the service and I wonder how to make it more hospitable to people of all ages.” Shannon replied, “I agree. I’m seeing how much of the worship services I attend reflect an age group that is probably 25-50, and not much else.”

Similar to our first meeting, we found ourselves discussing how to incorporate some of our thinking into worship. Shelly echoed a widely agreed upon sentiment when she said, “I’m really torn with how to do this well. I love the idea of having my kids in the service for as much of it as possible. But the other part of me feels like this is the one time during the week, the one hour of adult time I get. That feels selfish, but I need it. I look forward to it.”

The group seemed to appreciate having the children in the service for much of it, while giving them some age-appropriate worship time as well. “I’m torn about that as well,” Shelly noted. “Children’s worship has been great for my kids, but they are never around when the service moves into taking communion together. I feel strongly that they should be partaking of communion with the rest of the body. But even in churches that don’t practice communion in that way, that is a huge teachable moment for my kids. They are intrigued, they pay attention, and they want to participate. We visited a church last week and they aren’t comfortable attending foreign youth programs, so they stayed with us and were asking all kinds of questions about why the pastor said what he did, and what communion means, and on and on.” Shelly’s 5 year old daughter even said, after the pastor had given the invitation to partake of the Lord’s Supper, “Wow, that man sure knows a lot about Jesus.”

Our group ended thankful for the opportunity and feeling challenged to think through some of what we read.

Tags: bgdavis, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational