Worship Weblog

Denver Book Group – Second Meeting

Posted by cicw

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

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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How do we incorporate more stories into worship?

Joel started the discussion on the place of stories in worship by reflecting on the use of stories in sermons. He pointed to the comments of Darwin Glassford, “the sermon [has] become the major instrument for adult education rather than a proclamation of what God has done in Jesus Christ” (pg. 76) as an important starting point. He observed that, if a sermon’s chief purpose is understood to be teaching, then stories will fade into the background. However, if the primary goal of a sermon is understood to be proclamation and worship, stories will have a more natural place. They will not simply be a gimmick to capture a congregation’s attention or to clarify a point, but will instead be a natural way to answer the Psalmists’ call to “declare the works of the Lord.”

Tim responded to Joel’s comments by observing that stories ought to work well with the people of his generation (twenty-somethings) since they tend to deal in the “currency of experience.” The group then wondered why, if story and experience are so valued in a younger generation, churches that seem to rely more on a didactic style of preaching/teaching (a point by point exposition of the text, heavy on references to original languages and commentators) seem to be doing more to draw the younger crowd. Is this a direct result of the teaching style, or some other factor?

Mike eventually brought the conversation back to Joel’s original comments about the relationship between story and “declaring the works of the Lord.” He observed that stories are often used in their worship services as a response to the proclamation of what God has done—as a “way to encourage one another to love and good works.” Nancy then recalled ways in which she has used stories during a time of confession and assurance—for example, using a telling of the Parable of the Prodigal Sons to discover they ways they are lost and to experience the love of the Father. She then observed that, in a certain sense, the entire worship service ought to have the sense of telling a story—helping us through our meta-narrative of creation, fall, redemption, new creation each week and celebrating what God is doing along the way.

Tags: bgdenver, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational