Worship Weblog

Schenectady Book Group – Third 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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The question upon which we centered was, how can we best live into the image of the whole body of Christ together? As Paul taught, the body is at its best when we utilize and celebrate the gifts of all God’s people. We acknowledged the need to understand the purpose of worship in order to fully assimilate everyone. Lack of clarity of purpose leads to lack of integration. If worship is only a teaching service for adults, then participation by children or youth will be seen as negative disruption rather than a positive aim.

We spoke at length about the importance of story within the church’s life and worship. Although “gossiping” usually carries negative connotation, we saw the benefit of “good gossip,” telling stories of how God is working in both scriptural and contemporary lives. Living into the story becomes the embodiment of scripture in the lives of both adult and youth alike. Again, we explored ways to incorporate all ages in exploration of these stories, even providing the children in nursery with the same stories in age appropriate form that the adults are experiencing within the sanctuary worship moment.

We resonated well with the story of La Grave Christian Reformed Church, in part because it intentionally follows a structure similar to that which our eastern RCA congregations generally employ. This is articulated in their vision statement: “…maintaining a tradition of formal worship which integrates articulate and intelligent preaching of God’s Word with music that glorifies God and inspires worshipers…” These are some of the elements La Grave discovered as important to youth that we also could emphasize based on our congregations’ experience: passion for God (not just going through the motions); God-centered, “relaxed, joyful reverence,” as opposed to lazy, sloppy, casual or flippant (we agreed all three elements are necessary); spiritually formative; effective, genuine leadership; active participation by youth; a welcoming environment; and finally parental commitment.

It was this last that generated shared frustration. Living in a predominantly post-Christian and post-churched culture, how do we foster such parental commitment? We totally related to the statement, “When parents carry their own youthful negative reactions to traditional worship…it does not help their children to embrace the worship of their church.” We noted that perhaps we need to think of things in the opposite way: if we help the children and youth to become excited about worship, then we believe the parents will be led to a greater embracing of worship.

We again discussed ways to involve children and youth in the service, such as changing paraments, reading scripture, participating in the stories through a children-focused moment, and receiving the offerings. We also happily felt that our three churches are well on their way to incorporating many of the premises and practices the book suggested. Finally, we applauded the direction in which the RCA is currently headed, moving toward a greater emphasis upon worship as foundational for our life and witness.

Thank you for inviting us to participate in such a worthwhile study.

Tags: bgschenectady, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational