plunged into mystery

“The moment we find ourselves unexpectedly in the presence of the sacred, our first response is to stop in silence.  We do nothing.  We say nothing.  We fear to trespass inadvertently; we are afraid of saying something inappropriate.  Plunged into mystery we become still, we fall silent, all our senses alert.  This is the fear-of-the-Lord.”

 

~ Eugene Peterson

the Pitt 44 - ...and then there were Worship Arts

So finally, after what? - six posts on worship - we finally arrive at singing songs to and about God together.  So by now maybe some people think I've thrown 'gathered worship singing' out, but most certainly not!  What I think we have done thus far is seek the greater context - and that context is often the main point in scripture - because too often we limit 'worship' to the musical arts, when that actually happens in a context, interacting with other worship activities that are all a response to something.

For many people - especially in the Vineyard movement - this is actually where things begin when they hear the word "worship."  But, as our journey of discovery has borne out: Worship art (like gathering to singing together) happens in the greater context of worship and is a response to the God who loved us first.  I actually like the term 'worship arts'...and there is a very good article by Scott McElroy about the Role of Arts in the Vineyard.

So I wouldn't deny at all that God visited the early Vineyard gatherings as they worshiped and healed people and moved among them with gracious words and insights and Presence, but it happened in a context, and for the historian in me, that's what I've been reaching for so far. Thus, it seems to me that our early forebearers in the Vineyard movement were mindful of God-at-work in their everyday lives - exactly what we've been talking about up until now - and were responding to God by gathering to sing simple, intimate love songs to Him.  And this was new and exciting and radical for them and God blessed this whole thing and a movement of the Spirit was birthed.

Vineyard USA History from Vineyard USA on Vimeo.

But perhaps over time some significant perspective was lost, as Galadriel says in The Lord of the Rings: “…and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost”…

Singing together to God happens in a context, and I suspect if we actually talked to those early adopters in the Vineyard, we'd find the greater context we've been mapping for ourselves that permeated their lives.  I think it should permeate our on-going worship as well, and so instead of copying what I've previously written, I'll merely link to it, but Worship and Mission are responses to God loving us first...they are the consequences of God that we bear as we encounter Him. 

Speaking of worship as art, my friend, David Linhart, up at the Greater Boston Vineyard has some great thoughts on leading centered-set worship music, in which not only does he tackle our previous wrestling with living the questions, but equally moves toward this greater context for worship and authenticity impact your art: "People relate to authenticity over righteousness. It’s ironic when someone who loves Jesus and also Led Zeppelin decides to become the Christian Led Zeppelin. Meanwhile, the original isn’t trying to be the secular Led Zeppelin, they are just being themselves. They live out who they actually are through their music. People get into them for their authenticity more than their binge drinking and partying, and the authenticity is exactly what can make the latter attractive to someone who isn’t into those things in the first place.

That’s why it can be awkward when musicians clean themselves up for church and try to do the right thing by playing traditional worship, but then reserve the night clubs and listening rooms for letting their hair down and making the music that is most sincerely who they are. That disconnect can make for unconvincing worship leading. Even God might say “Wait a sec—show me your best, bring all of your passion and talent, live out your love for me through the music.”


OK, next time we'll wrap up our current missional-orientation of worship series moving toward music and spiritual formation...(you had to know I was going there, right!?!)

[to be continued...]

closer to God

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

NTRT: Of Lucky Charms and Super-Powers

Today I'm guest-blogging at the not-the-religious-type blog with Dave Schmelzer (Dave is also lead pastor of the Greater Boston Vineyard).

Feel free to check it out and join the conversation...my post today explores metaphors for spiritual power and gifts in a mostly secular conversation...also be sure to check our my friend Bill Sergott's post on his own struggles with "manliness" and recent comments by some "man"...the conversation for that has been really good, with Brent really getting things moving in the Jesus-centric, redemptive sort of direction.

the Pitt 43: Living the Questions

Last time we dug into our Quaker heritage in the Vineyard and the Friends practice in a worship meeting.  I want to pick up where I left off in terms of a life of faith being more like a guided inquiry than a settled issue.  Among the Society of Friends, in their life of worship, rather than writing creeds and statements of beliefs, they write queries, that is questions that they want to explore together.  This is definitely counter the church cultures I've been involved in, and it seems so good and right to me. 

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” - Hebrews 11:1

It also reminds me of when I was in 4th grade (Miss Logan’s class! Go locomotives!!), I volunteered to be one of several students to be ‘blind-for-a-day’. We were blind-folded as soon as we got to school and paired with a classmate with sight, who would be our guide. This experience left quite a lasting mark on me. I vividly remember having to ask my guide for everything and about everything, and through our interaction, I learned that I could trust my guide. I learned it through asking and then living the questions I was asking, like:   

·       where is my pencil (like I could actually write anything, seriously, I was blind-folded?!)

·       where exactly were we in the hallways? (and where was the restroom…?)

·       what was for lunch? (I trusted them to help me sit down in a seat at lunch time and that the seat was there…and that it was my lunch in front of me.)

…but probably my most vivid memory is of my other senses coming alive in Miss Howell’s music class as I experienced music without eyes and only with my auditory and feeling senses…I could feel the music!  It made me realize that something that I could not see even with my eyes open had substance and verve and delved deeper inside me than merely my ear-drums.  And while I was utterly dependent for almost everything from my guide to live this one day in a disoriented fashion without sight, I discovered something: there was substance to things I could not see, like music and fresh air and even closed air inside the building felt different than outside at recess; I could live by faith (trust) only as I allowed myself to risk trusting my guide and then actually step into the experience that hobbled some of my senses but activated others.

“…for we walk by faith, not by sight…” - 2 Corinthains 5:7

The eternity in that teachable moment in my life has had a formational effect that echoes in my journey of faith.  As I have reflected on it since that time, quite possibly because of that profound experience, I am comfortable with mystery and living out questions that I may not fully answer completely. I love this quote from Henri Nouwen:

“…we need to live the questions of our lives, both alone and in community, as we seek our mission in the world…frequently, we are restlessly looking for answers, going from door to door, from book to book, or from church to church, without having really listened carefully and attentively to the questions within…Without a question, an answer is experienced as manipulation or control. Without a struggle, the help offered is considered interference. And without the desire to learn, direction is easily felt as oppression.”

Pat answers are seen for what they are: unreal and unloving.  Instead, as we interact with people who are truly struggling, I find this piece of advice from the prophet Jeremiah– as translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message at Jeremiah 23:25 – to be essential: “Instead of claiming to know what God says, ask questions of one another, such as ‘How do we understand God in this?’ But don’t go around pretending to know it all…”

My intuition tells me this is going to be significant for us in urban Pittsburgh.  I'm going to begin looking into a thought I had: Faith as Guided Inquiry.

So having studied and practiced spiritual direction for a few years, I have come to realize not only how important being non-manipulative is, but also how important the questions are – and following those questions by living in them, toward them in a centered-set kind-of-way; this means I need to trust Jesus.  I think we need to trust God in our endeavours to live the questions.  The advice the poet Rainer Rilke once wrote to a younger poet seems to ring true for us today:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

[to be continued...]

the friend of silence

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

~ Mother Teresa

the Pitt 42: In a Quaker State of Mind...again

I have talk about my own endeavours to exegete my community - or what will be our community: Pittsburgh! – as we felt lead by the father into joining with His Agenda in the city.  This has led our team to re-connect with the Quaker roots and heritage in our tribe.  In a recent article, Carol Wimber reflects back on the emergence of the Vineyard movement,

" I believe our foundation, how the Vineyard was formed was by Quakerism. Most people don’t realize that; in fact they believe the Vineyard came from Calvary, when in fact, we’re Quakers.  When we look back and see Gods presence moving on us; forming us; worship had such an intricate part through all this. Over the years we’ve seen things change-shift, but from the very beginning we understood that worship wasn’t “for” anything, except for the Lord. Sometimes I get the feeling that we’ve shifted a bit too, “We worship in order for this to happen.” Whatever “this” is —a great move of the Spirit perhaps. But that truthfully is the opposite of what we’re doing in those early days. We were worshipping simply because God is worthy of worship. The wonderful things that happened were as a result of his presence. But we didn’t worship so that his presence would come; we just worshipped!  In the Quaker worship, they have what they call “communion”. It’s a time of silence, where they just wait and soak in God, unless someone felt like they had a song from the Lord, or a word, or even a teaching. If they felt like they had received something, they were supposed to speak it out. Every once in awhile someone would sing out some beautiful song or have a short teaching or some sort of revelation—though they wouldn’t have called it that.” 

If you have attended an unprogrammed Friends (Quaker) worship gathering, you’ll recognize what Carol’s talking about here.  Unprogrammed worship meetings!  This seems to me so intriguingly counter-cultural, as in our culture we tend to pre-program almost everything!  But we have been asking ourselves, what would this be like if we took up this part of our heritage and let it emerge within our gatherings?  To just gather in silence, and wait for God’s leadings, the guidance and direction of the Spirit, for the power of Christ to just be in us and among us together; because as He said, “where two or three are gathered, there I am with you.”

There is something of submitting ourselves to live towards the mosaic of the Imago Dei in this practice.  To let the Spirit of God, the Inner Teacher, move us and shape us and guide us.  According to Douglas Steere, there are two common understandings and guidelines for this kind of unprogrammed worship circle:

1.       Come with heart and mind prepared.  This time that we set apart will be more significant if we seek to enter with a relaxed and calm frame-of-mind rather than racing off the exit ramp of the frenzied rat-race.  Preparation is merely a life lived through-and-through with prayer, contemplation, reading and other interconnectivity woven into the fabric of our ordinary lives.

2.       Determine neither to speak nor to always remain silent.  A radical middle if there ever was one.  If you offer and spoken message or testimony or sing a joyful or mournful song, it should arise from the Spirit’s prompting that happens during worship time and possibly flows from previous practice and experience.

What is so down-to-earth and filled with authenticity in this practice, is that while audibility is appreciated, rhetorical polish is not expected.  If our words are awkward or halting, they will simply be accepted as authentically coming from you.  Come as you are, and be with us as you are.  And when inspiration of the Spirit ends, simply stop.  Not all messages run smoothly to a perfect 3-points and a conclusion, and some of the most meaningful ones may seem to break off in the middle or lack a nice-and-neat closure…and that’s OK!

This unprogrammed practice seems so simple, but I am convinced that simplicity requires integrity.  It requires truth-telling, honesty, where faith is practiced as communal guided inquiry.  In fact, inquiry is where we’ll pick up next time!

[to be continued…]

Vineyard Urban Underground

As most of you who've been follwoing this journey for a while realize, we are in the midst of following the Father into what He is calling us in urban Pittsburgh.  To that end, we've been praying a lot, and researching a lot regarding urban studies and urban ministry and urban communities.  I've been thinking about starting a blog for city/urban churches and ministries that posts resources and articles and stories from our contexts and encouragement, etc.  Thus, with the help of a few friends, the first few posts are up:

 

Vineyard Urban Underground seeks to be a place to connect and resource urban churches, communities and ministries.  We hope you'll find encouragement in the stories, wisdom and psalms from the street.  We also hope to resource those working in this area, so don't forget to check out our Resources Tab.  If you have stories or wisdom or art from your own streets, please share it and e-mail me.

 

I think it might also be a good online connection point for those of us to connect with each other and encourage and get to know one another.  Hope to see you over there!

recalling the vocation of worship

“The categories of popularity or progress or effectiveness or success are impertinent to the gospel. . . . ‘Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them’ (Rom 12:14).  As has been mentioned, this is no adage prompted by sentimentality. It is a statement  of the extraordinary relationship between Christians and the ruling principalities radically constituted in the discernment of the imminence of the judgment of the Word of God in history by which Christians are authorized to recall political authority to the vocation of worship and reclaim dominion over creation for humanity. It is a statement about the implication of the Lordship of Jesus Christ for the rulers of this age. To bless the powers that be, in the midst of persecution, exposes and confounds their blasphemous status  more cogently and more fearlessly than a curse.”

~ William Stringfellow, Conscience and Obedience, 110.

the Pitt 41: We Are the World/Priesthood of Believers

One of the intriguing things about the missional-orientation of worship for me is the impulse to re-discover the public dimension of our faith.  But what does that mean beyond getting good Christian ideas and music in the "marketplace"?  It seems to me that the discussion of the missional aspect of worship has to take us beyond the discussions of differences in our preferences for the style of music we use and a marketplace/herd-mentality. 

  

First, it's interesting to me that the earliest Christians used public-oriented, non-religious terms regarding their identity and relationship with the world. 'Gospel' was not a religious term in the 1st century. They could have found plenty of religious terms with an insider-orientation to name what it is they were to be to the world. But they chose a socio-political term, a word that was expansive and in the culture of the day: "good news", from the Priene Calendar inscription. As you might know, the way they used 'good news' was actually really, really subversive.  Of course, the same is true for ecclesia, "church." Ecclesia is not a private affair, but a public gathering of the wise and good on behalf of their city. So maybe we can say the earliest Christians imagined their life as public and open to all and they lived their everyday lives and their everyday faith experiences "out loud" and in public and on behalf of the public.

What I like about the perspective of seeing "church" as a gathering on behalf of the city, is the resonance with the biblical image of a priesthood of believers. The priesthood of believers also goes beyond Christians serving as priests for one another. In fact, the term is consistently used in Scripture to define the relationship between the people of God and the world.

So, let's ask the obvious question: What does the priesthood do? It represents two parties to one another as it is also facilitating the two parties coming together.  So, maybe the church in our worship represents God to the world and the world to God?   This is where our basics of Worship and Prayer overlap in something we might call active intercession.  Perhaps we might even go so far as to say that the church offers on behalf of all the world what is due God. The church, in this sense, worships as representing (or "in proxy" for you lawyers out there) the people of our city/community/nation.  Yet the priests aren't separate, it's not an "us/them" dichotomy, it's a "we". 

Also, Priestly worship - as witnessed in the Psalms - includes lament and complaint, supplication and confession. As a worshiping priesthood, we represent the cries of all creation to God.  But we cannot do that with any authenticity if we are not experiencing the problems and solutions, the joy's and sorrows of the world.  We cannot stand apart, but as Jesus in the incarnation, we have to go get into life and live in it in order to represent its cries and shouts of joy to God.  This has to do with the integrity of worship that we talked about previously.

The church's worship is public because the relationship between God and the world is the primary concern of a "priesthood of believers." Worship was not first for the benefit of the priest, but for the sake of others, again as I said, a "we". It is not simply for the sake of its own priestly membership either, but for the sake of the stranger and the sojourner as well.  Did worship benefit the priesthood?  Of course, but that was a built-in consequence and secondary.  Thus maybe Michael Jackson was right: We Are the World!

Benefits abound though, right?  It surely benefits us to gather and hear that our sins are forgiven, to seek the healing and comforting Presence of God, to have a share in the goodness of community, to be inspired by words of blessing and challenge, and to sing songs together.  We enact these realities, however, in the presence of and for the sake of the world. 

Since we've noticed Worship and Prayer overlapping here, it also seems to me this priesthood of believers overlaps with our other basic category: Stewardship (which we will talk much more about in a few months) as well as Hospitality, which we talked about previously also.  When it comes right down to it, worship feasts in the Hebrew scriptures are described like big, sacred BBQ's.  Seriously.  You gather your family and those of your household, and you go to partake in a joy-filled sacred meal together in the Presence of God.  The priests there welcome you, cook your food in a prescribed manner, have a bit for themselves, and then serve you and your family and your household.  Can we not imagine serving/mediating sacred meals that seek to connect God and sojourners and the poor and the marginalized and any 'others'?  This is where the connection of all three take place, the deeply missional, communal and theological character of shared meals.   

But a missional-orientation regarding worship, and the imagery of a priesthood of believers takes us toward new horizons, doesn't it? 

So more questions for us: What would it mean to be the church in this humble position of representing the world to God and God to the world? How do we as the people of God connect with and serve our neighborhoods? How do we get the church into the world? What does it mean to follow Jesus' example of emptying Himself and living among the people?  Or more specifically, if God is calling us to incarnate in Pittsburgh and "seek the shalom of the city He sends us, for in it's shalom, we will find our own shalom," how do we create public spaces in our neighborhoods that are invitational without being privatized and exclusive without it breaking down and being compromised by commodification and consumerism?

[to be continued...]

their songs never cease

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

~ John Muir