the Pitt 49: Fast Worship

As I was reading a recent post from my new acquaintance, Matte Downey - from Montreal! - I couldn't help but think this was right in line with our own recent blog series on the missional-orientation of worship.  So, I thought I'd share her post on Fast Worship:

Yesterday Dean and I went to see a film called Senna, a documentary about the legendary race car driver from Brazil. Quite a fascinating and moving story. Of course, filmmakers choose what bits of someone's life to showcase and what parts to leave out, but the overall sense was that we were seeing the man not only as a great racer, but as a man who had one passion and a remarkable instinct for it.

He spoke freely about God, read his bible regularly, was referred to as a humble man by his colleagues, and obviously loved his family and his country. The racing world was not always kind to him, yet he showed great restraint in how he dealt with those in his profession.

After he won one of his first Grand prix races, he recounted that near the finish line, he went into a kind of otherworldly zone. He felt the presence of God, a sense of peace. Dean leaned over to me halfway through the movie and said, "This was worship for him." And yes, in some ways it reminded me of Olympic runner Eric Liddell who said that he felt the pleasure of God when he ran.

The intersection of doing something we love, something we have a talent for, something that requires us to give all we are capable of and then some more, and the humble acknowledgment of our need for God in that very place - this is where the presence of God can often be found.

It made me look at my own life and wonder, what is that place for me? Where I have a desire to do well, a genuine instinct for something, where I bring everything I have to the table because nothing less will do. And most importantly, where I feel God's nearness and his pleasure. In this place, I am offering myself to him, I am receiving and giving a gift at the same time. I am a worshipper.

[to be continued...]

NTRT: Faith Beyond Social Marginalization

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 the newsest research presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting, which explored the trends of those with less education trending out of church and those with more education into church...

the Pitt 48: History Belongs to the Intercessors

So in our on-going conversation about the missional-orientation of prayer, a few friends have asked about intercessory prayer, that's missional, right?  Yes, definitely, I say...but possibly not in the way you're thinking of it.  My take on this perhaps comes at this from a different angle vis-a-vis what we typically envision when we say "intercessory prayer..," which among many friends means gathering for worship and prayer in a private room and beseeching God for others.  Nothing particularly against that, but what exactly do we mean when we say "intercessor"?  The dictionary says this: the act of interceding (intervening or mediating) between two parties.  Thus, to me, intercessors (aka advocates) represent two parties to one another and facilitates the two parties coming together.  It's active, it's patient, it's intervention.  OK so far, but what's my angle?  My angle is posture matters, positioning matters and place matters.  So, maybe in terms of intercession, the church in our worship/prayer represents God to the world and the world to God, seeking to be about the reconciliation of the two?  That sounds a lot like the Mission of God, huh?  

But how exactly are we doing this if we think of intercession as only gathering with other Christians and "praying together"?  To me, we posture ourselves via humility before both parties...and of course, we've positioned ourselves between the two parties we are seeking to intercede with to bring together, right?  Yet we cannot forget Moses and his type of intercession with YHWH for the Hebrew people: a took the side of the people who had less power while at-the-same-time seeking to uphold the reputation of God, didn't he? 

So positioning can be an interesting endeavour, but that affects our placement, because if we aren't in a place to intercede if we aren't actually between them, right?  What I mean is what Walter Wink works toward in the quote below, but this quotes comes from the humble placement Wink took in actual situations in the Apartheid-era of South Africa, where - in an utterly Jewish-way - he is lamenting and complaining to God about the situation at-hand and seeking God intervention between people and the powers-that-be and all of them and God.  This is where I'd see our basics of Worship and Prayer overlap in something we might call creative, 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 and how we imagine the future of it.  Yet we as priests aren't separate, it's not an "us/them" dichotomy, it's a "we".  Thus, here is Walter Wink speaking for himself: 

Walter Wink: History belongs to the Intercessors.

(An excerpt from “The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium” by Walter Wink.)

“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces.  Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being. This is not simply a religious statement. It is also true of Communists or capitalists or anarchists. The future belongs to whoever can envision a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable. This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs. The future is not closed. There are fields of forces whose actions are somewhat predictable. But how they will interact is not. Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. 

These shapers of the future are the intercessors, who call out of the future the longed-for new present. In the New Testament, the name and texture and aura of that future is God’s domination-free order, the reign of God.

No doubt our intercessions sometimes change us as we open ourselves to new possibilities we had not guessed. No doubt our prayers to God reflect back upon us as a divine command to become the answer to our prayer.  But if we are to take the biblical understanding seriously, intercession is more than that. It changes the world and it changes what is possible to God. It creates an island of relative freedom in a world gripped by unholy necessity. A new force field appears that hitherto was only potential. The entire configuration changes as the result of the change of a single part. A space opens in the praying person, permitting God to act without violating human freedom. The change in one person thus changes what God can thereby do in that world.

All of Jesus’ teachings on prayer feature imperatives. (See for example, Luke 11:9 “Ask…..search…..knock.”) In prayer we are ordering God to bring the Kingdom near. It will not do to implore. We have been commanded to command. We are required by God to haggle with God for the sake of the sick, the obsessed, the weak, and to conform our lives to our intercessions. This is a God who invents history in interaction with those “who hunger and thirst to see right prevail” (Matt. 5:6, REB). How different this is from the static god of Greek philosophy that all these years has lulled so many into adoration without intercession !

Praying is rattling God’s cage and waking God up and setting God free and giving this famished God water and this starved God food and cutting the ropes off God’s hands and the manacles off God’s feet and washing the caked sweat from God’s eyes and then watching God swell with life and vitality and energy and following God wherever God goes. 

When we pray we are not sending a letter to a celestial White House, where it is sorted among piles of others. We are engaged, rather, in an act of co-creation, in which one little sector of the universe rises up and becomes translucent, incandescent, a vibratory centre of power that radiates the power of the universe.

History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being. If this is so, then intercession, far from being an escape from action, is a means of focusing for action and of creating action. By means of our intercessions we veritably cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being.”

[to be continued...]

alive with the love of God

Often we are preoccupied with the question "How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus? What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?" These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love. Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses. He was so full of God's love, so connected with God's will, so burning with zeal for God's Kingdom, that he couldn't do other than witness. Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him. (See Luke 6:19.)  If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was.

~ Henri Nouwen

the Pitt 47: People of the Presence

As I seek to go deeper with my own 'practicing the Presence of God' ala Brother Lawrence/Frank Laubach, I have been reminded of something Robby Dawkins said recently, that we want to be People of the Presence.  At the Vineyard National Leaders Conference in Phoenix back in May, they showed a video of Casey Corum talking about how we seek God to meet us and be among His People when we gather and sing together.  The thing is, we are not about to jettison this rich heritage, but we do see that it cannot remain stagnant...our expectations grow and mature and we seek to experience and share His Presence in worship times, in prayer, on the streets as we seek to practice the Presence of God in this Missio Dei-oriented way.  Can you see how what the Father began grows and expands into all aspects of our lives, without removing the special beginning, the honored and treasured remembrance of a place that God initially met us.  Thus we want to be a People of the Presence of God, for His Presence is His Power and its His Renown, as we act as humble, faithful stewards of the mysteries of God in the here-and-now of the now-and-not-yet of His Agenda.

You see, I think we get our humility and faithfulness from Him; He is that way and we are seeking to be like Him.  Too often my own default and disappointment is that this must be some sort of super amazing demonstrative event.  But perhaps that is mostly borne of my own arrogant ways.  Most of scripture and our own heritage in the Vineyard (from the Quakers) is that God mostly acts in a naturally supernatural way, and so we should expect that as well.  In Isaiah 25, it tells how 'the ruthless' are like a biting winter rain storm driving against a wall, like a sirocco or just the beat of the sun down upon the weary in the desert wilderness.  But what does it say that YHWH is like?  A super-storm coming against that?  No, His action is like a cloud, quietly interposing itself between us and the beat-down of the heat of the sun.  Like a quiet, smooth, seamless action of a cloud providing relief.  Quiet, subtle, yet powerful. 

I love how Richard Rohlheiser talks about the Presence of God being like a season.  In an analogy that comes from Jesus - "take the fig tree as a parable; as soon as its twigs grow supple and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near."  Bearing the Presence of God can be like a tree undergoing the presence of summer.  A tree is brought to bloom and fruit in season.  The tree doesn't understand summer, nor is it able to project what will happen next moment-by-moment in summer; but it simply acts under its presence.  Like the tree, we want to undergo the Presence of God and live in openness to the mystery of His Presence without having to totally understand or figure out too much.  Like the fig tree, we just want to act under the presence, in a way that doesn't try to overanalyze it, but celebrates it and simply moves under its influence upon us.  That's not to say we don't want to have our faithfulness seek understanding, but that process is in the afterglow, or like a photograph.  We live the moment, but we take pictures, and afterward, gazing at the pictures remember and reflect on it.  To me this is the interaction of what scholastics and theologians call Theology and Praxis.  To me, it seems really profound theology comes in the wake of faithful praxis...in deep authenticity.  To me, this also connects with the missional aspect of 'signs and wonders': we join Jesus on His Mission (and incarnationally gathering locally, whatever that looks like where you are planted), it's not about Power so we can get God to bless our stuff, but: if we spend ourselves on behalf of the lost and least, if we break the yoke of oppression, if we provide for the poor and clothe the naked...then our light will break forth like the dawn, and our healing will come quickly...then we will be like a well-watered garden...my heart yearns for these things.  This also moves toward a theology of prayer, presence and peace that Eldon Villafane outlines in his book Seek the Peace of the City: Reflections on Urban Ministry.

Yet issues remain, and my friend Chris Marshall - reflecting upon Psalm 18 - moves in a great direction to expand our horizon about being people of the Presence: "If you are prone to believe in and listen for the voice of One who is the creator and sustainer of all things, sometimes it is just flat out hard to hear it.  Our preoccupations, our anxieties, our muchness, our manyness, our unbelief, our rebellion. . . we are a people who tend to stray.  And when the darkness comes, when it seems all hope has passed, when it feels as if the walls are closing, when light has left the room of your heart; you perceive that you are alone in that darkness. Reading this Psalm today raises a new question for me:  What if darkness is his covering?  What if he is cloaked in that dusk?  What if that lonely place is actually the canopy of his  presence?  Often when we least expect it, often when we think all hope is gone, often when we come to the end of our rope . . . we find there is more.  Look to the clouds of your heart, your mind, your soul;  see if there is not a radiant light waiting to break through, see that you were never alone.  Listen for that voice in the thunder, for darkness is often his covering."

I can say that this has been much of my experience of the missional-orientation of Practicing the Presence of God and seeking to be part of the People of His Presence. 

[to be continued...]

to be interrupted by God

‎"We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.....We must not.....assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God." 

~  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

the Pitt 46: the Missional-orientation of Prayer

So after our sojourn together considering the missional-orientation of worship, we now turn to prayer.  To my thinking, I suppose the most missionally-oriented prayer practice is the practice of the Presence of God.  Our emerging Pittsburgh core have taken up re-reading some chapters from a Practicing His Presence book that has both Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach's journal entries on their own movement along these trajectories in how to start practicing and what to do when we encounter difficulty. You can actually check our the book complied in Lawrence's name here for free.

For myself, our endeavour in this conversation has helped me re-discovered one of my favorite habits.  I just have to shake my head sometimes that I get off track on what I consider the basics...but no condemnation, I change my mind and return back to it.  If you aren't familiar with them, Brother Lawrence was a 17th Century monk in France. He lived a very godly life by walking in what he called "The Practice of the Presence of God." Part of his walk was connection to Christ in the midst of all circumstances and activities.  Frank Laubach was a missionary in the Philippines in the 1930s and 40s and took up the same endeavour.  

Now, as I have sought to practice this myself, I have a few admissions. 

• Admission #1: I feel like a fail a lot in this. 
• Admission #2: It can be difficult! 
• Admission #3: I have done it and given up and taken it up several times, yet conviction remains that practicing the Presence is quite possibly the most foundational discipline a follower of Jesus can engage in. 
• Admission #4: My perspective is that God has changed me/shaped me and continues to form me and my life with His very Presence.  

Both Laubach and Brother Lawrence is very forthright that 'practicing His Presence' is hard, at times clumsy, yet so enriching.  Also, Lawrence was so humble and really it wasn't until he was 55 that he began practicing the Presence.  So, it's never too late to devote yourself to Him, to relate to our Living God with your whole being, your whole life, every detail.  I love how this connects a kind of mindful-prayerfulness and even if it is at-times difficult, it's actually pretty simple, targeting a refreshingly simple awareness and attentiveness outside of our self which can enable us to notice and act for others in the mundane, everyday way that's not flashy.

 

I've been reading a book this summer from the Jesuit priest William Barry called Seek My Face.  Barry makes the point that increasingly intimate conversation is only a manifestation of something else that underlies it - prayer as relationship; which moves toward something we've wrestled with recently: the relational-orientation of God.  So, obviously, I think this is worth exploring and embracing.

OK, some questions: How do you connect/relate with God? What do you do that makes you feel most connected to God?  If prayer is relating you God or the activity of a relationship with God, and conversation is only one manifestation or consequence of that, can we imagine what other manifestations of our relationship with God might be that would connect and be understood as "prayer?"    What does God being intimately present with us mean for us?  Can it mean that "mere conversations" that we have between 2 or more of us are infused with or manifestations of a greater prayer, i.e., can our conversations with each other be "prayerful/prayer-filled" without reverting to a now-we're-praying and now-we-aren't-praying queues?  Have you ever practiced Frank Laubach's "flash prayers"?  Brother Lawrence notes that he was more at home and at one with God in the every day things of life, than even when he was doing “religious things”. Have you ever felt that way?  If that is true, then what is the role of “religious things/times” in our lives?  What kind of hope comes from seeing God as always being present with us?

[to be continued...]

what God gets out of me

“What God gets out of me isn’t what I do, it’s the person I become.”

~ Dallas Willard

the Pitt 45: Worship Forms Us!

I think it's next to impossible to wrap up this exploration of worship, so maybe I won't try to do that.  Today, I just want to dig a little deeper into what happens when we gather to sing songs to God together.  To say it simply: Worship Forms Us. 

Why does worship form us?  I'll let Jamie Smith - author of Desiring the Kingdom - say it much, as he says it better than I:  "Because our hearts are oriented primarily by desire, by what we love, and because those desires are shaped and molded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate, it is the rituals and practices of the mall – the liturgies of mall and market – that shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world.”

Therefore, there are all kinds of  liturgies in our lives - from liturgies of the Nation-State, to cultural liturgies (the topic of Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom) to liturgies that announce, embrace and demonstrate the Kingdom of God, and all of these life-forming habits are vying for the hearts of humanity.   This moves toward the mysterious, transformative power of gathering together to sing songs to and about God or as in ancient monastic orders, chanting the Psalms.

But take heart parents!  Jamie Smith is also simply saying that the simple fact is that as we sing in worship together - no matter the level of our engagement cognitively! - we are shaped and molded, as is our perceptions of God, His Mission, the Church, and the World.  Whether we realize it or not, the songs we sing can shape our thinking and reflect our collective understanding of God’s work in our lives and the world, and as that becomes a regular practice in our lives (think: spiritual formation) it is somehow seeping into my bones and slowly stirring our spirit. When we sing, we give God praise and thanks for what he has done – that’s the vertical component of what we’re doing (or aspire to be doing). There’s also a horizontal component to our singing and speaking, that is, how our worship (not just the music) impacts each other when we gather.  How do we gather is another great question that follows all this.  George Hunsberger claims that in the New Testament communities, “life together ’in Christ’ was purposeful, intended to manifest before the watching world the promise and possibilities of the coming age.” “The church as a community, the church’s message, and the church’s worship are all cast in the most public of language. Worship is public witness.”

Our songs, hymns and spiritual songs that we are encouraged to sing in the context of worship and personal devotion deeply reflect the embodied and abiding truths of the good news in living our lives 'outloud' so-to-speak, whether we come with something or nothing at all, like Mama McMasters shares regarding a devotional time of singing around a campfire recently. 

There is some profound stuff to be discovered in the missional-orientation of worship...and the exploration goes on, but I'd like to give Carol Wimber the last word here, as she talks about worship and the context for Vineyard worship:

[to be continued...]